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!