Tired already

That's partly just physically tired, and partly just sick of a constant cycle of reading.

I might have mentioned before that this term's timetable contains both Old and New Testament modules - I did it that way to ensure I had a reasonably balanced timetable each side of Christmas. The only downside is that both modules involve large amounts of reading and preparation from week to week, in order to ensure that I get the most from each lecture or seminar, and this has meant that I've have relatively little free time during the day at college, and that I'm usually mentally exhausted by the time I drag myself home.

However, I did learn that it's not good to mention this at the dinner table, as a day slaving over hot library books is not equivalent to a day cleaning the house from top to bottom. Apparently.

The Trinity of Power

We had a big power failure at college yesterday. I was in the right place at the wrong time, and ended up discovering where most of the electricity distribution panels are as we tried to work out what was going on, whilst our Facilities Manager, Trevor, was in the wrong place, stuck in a traffic jam on the wrong side of town, dictating instructions by phone!

In the end the fault was too big to be fixed simply by resetting switches and breakers - a huge mains fuse had blown, and taken out one 'phase' of electricity, which means that approximately a third of the college had no power. Whilst I was trained in this sort of stuff the last time I was at college I struggled to explain to a load of theological book-heads why seemingly random buildings were in darkness. It was only much later that I realised that explaining it in terms of the Trinity would be much easier. So here goes. Let me know if this makes sense!

Christians believe that God has three distinct 'personalities' - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They co-exist a bit like water does (as ice, liquid and steam). All three are inseparable, and although sometimes one may seem to be acting a bit more than the others, they generally work in balance. Electricity is delivered a bit like that too.....here's the science bit

When electricity is generated on a large scale at the power station, in a wind turbine etc, the generator always makes three 'phases' of electricity during each rotation of the machine (there's a whole load of maths behind this, but you really don't want to know - it's simply the best way to do it). Like the vanes of a 3 blade wind turbine these phases are spaced 120 degrees apart, and are called red, blue and yellow. In a modern street typically the first and fourth house is wired to red, the second and fifth to blue, the third and sixth to yellow, and so on, so in a power cut you may find that your neighbour still has power while you don't. Big buildings or complexes will use all three phases, with different bits wired to red, blue and yellow in order to balance the load across the phases - if the load isn't balanced it starts causing real problems when everybody switches their kettles on after EastEnders. Now for us, overnight our electrician temporarily re-wired some parts of the college to ensure heat and light to as many people as possible, but this wouldn't be safe for too long. Still with me? Good. Now for the Jesus bit.

If we place too much emphasis on any one part of God's trinity we are in danger of becoming unsafe ourselves. If we rely on God the Father too much, if we do not demonstrate the love of Jesus or fail to acknowledge the role that the Holy Spirit has to play, we are not presenting a balanced view of God. When we place too much load on one or two where we should lean equally on three we will eventually fail. Some churches overemphasise aspects of one of the Trinity and the people there receive an incomplete picture of God.

The three parts of God never go away. Just like the electricity at Ridley, when the electrician installs the new main switch all three phases red, blue and yellow are waiting to flow back into those wires. The utility company continues to pump electricity down the cables towards us, but our fault in the blue phase means we can't connect to it until we fix that fault. The fault is on our side, not the Provider's.

A week of contrasts

A real mixed week - it started with a 2.5 day Intensive Course on "Sexuality and the Pastoral Encounter". This is a requirement of the Church of England, and it's not one that many people look forward to - it has the potential for some serious controversy. We looked at attitudes to relationships, marriage, sex, homosexuality, before eventually getting round to the title of the course in the last 3 hours, where we looked at appropriate boundaries for behaviour and protecting ourselves, given that our job is likely to find us alone with people...

Following that I led Morning Prayer in chapel on Thursday morning, the day that lectures resumed. I commemorated St Edmund, briefly summarising his life as 'a former Archbishop of Canterbury at a time when belief in God was not a requirement of the job. His immediate predecessors in the job met with sudden and violent deaths, and to avoid a similar fate he disguised himself as a nun and hid in a convent'. This story raised a few giggles in chapel, with a member of staff overheard saying "Those were the good old days!". I then continued with the service for the next 30 minutes. However, I have to confess my St Edmund was a complete wind-up. St Edmund's Day isn't in January, and the Edmund Archbishop of Canterbury that I was referring to was the one portrayed by Rowan Atkinson in the first series of Blackadder!

Divine justice was dealt later in the day when a major electrical fault cut the power to 1/3rd of the college in the late afternoon. In the growing darkness our weekly Thursday evening Communion service was cancelled, and a half cooked dinner was distributed to staircase kitchens for completion!

Finally, today we were in a 'Life and Service' class, learning about the right and wrong ways to do funerals, and reflecting on how you may have to go from a funeral to a school assembly or a baptism visit when we got a text message telling us of the imminent birth of yet another Ridley baby. A perfect illustration of the point!

Two doorbells?

Having had my "last Christmas off", I started preparations for next Christmas by doing what clergy normally do - disappearing for a good long break!

We went back 'home' to Ferndown for a few days, staying with friends Lisa and Ian and celebrating New Year with various 'Singstar' renditions. Tasha was most displeased that I can outsing her on karaoke!!

A flying visit to St Mary's Church where I promoted the Ridley Lent Book (of which more soon) and shared the good news of the curacy situation. Far too many familiar faces and only 30 minutes of coffee time to speak to not many at all....

After that, we were treated to a visit to the pantomime in Bournemouth, and then we retreated further west to Lee Abbey in North Devon, where several Ridley (and many other) ordinands and their spouses and families gathered, to be led by the Bishop of Bolton, Chris Edmondson. Note to future curates: try to get a job with this man!!

Titled 'Navigating a sea of change' we considered many of the practical aspects of life in the vicarage - much of which was not new to the ordinands, but maybe was to the spouses, and anyway it was being presented in a fresh way, by a bishop! Several sessions were immediately followed by detailed discussions on whether to have one or two telephones / mobiles / doorbells, development of family policies on answering the door etc.

We hardly saw our children all week - one of the many benefits of youth workers! We were afraid that the usual (deliberate) lack of facilities of a retreat centre (no TV, no internet, no mobile network even!) would be a bit of a problem, but Lee Abbey are realistic about what children need, and at least the TV was not denied them - Beth kept us up to date on developments in EastEnders from the youth suite TV!

However, we didn't see the news. Daily weather reports didn't prepare us for the snow that was blanketing the country. We assumed the lack of newspapers was because there was a slightly icy hill between the paper shop and the Abbey. It was only when we were on the way home, having driven through some cleared snow drifts, that we stopped at a service station and saw a newspaper with that iconic satellite image of a snow covered UK that we realised what had been happening.

The snow was unbroken either side of the car until we got home, when we discovered that the gas engineer who had been fixing our boiler in our absence had tripped the electricity safety devices 48 hours previously and had been unable to access our fusebox! Fortunately it was so cold inside the house that the contents of the freezer were virtually unaffected, and after a small hiccup restarting the boiler (gas man didn't look impressed at being called out on a Friday evening) we finally got the house up to temperature by the time we got out of bed on Saturday morning.

All in all a leisurely break, slightly extended for both me and the children by the Lee Abbey week, but now back in anger to the January Intensive courses. I'm doing a compulsory one on Sexuality. Deep joy.....