Please pray for Mark Autherson

I've added a new link to my list of recommended blogs - http://pleasepray4markautherson.blogspot.com

Mark Autherson is a fellow ordinand here at Ridley Hall, except I haven't had chance to meet him yet, as he's seriously ill in hospital suffering from complications following a bone marrow transplant he received in June. Both staff and students here are covering Mark and his wife and young family in prayer and I bring it to your attention here so that you can pray for them too.

His Spirit is with us!

We have just been challenged in a foundation lecture. Good Anglicans amongst you will be familiar with the statement and response that follows:

Leader: "The Lord is here"
The People: "His Spirit is with us"

But what happens in your church when that second line comes along Sunday by Sunday? Do you shout it out, as if you mean it, or is it mumbled, as if you're rather embarrassed about it all? Does the rousing shout of the congregation cause the roof timbers to shift, or are the bats able to carry on sleeping undisturbed? Is it in bold, 40 point font? Do You Mean It? Or is it in pale grey ink, 8 point?

Even here at Ridley (where chapel worship is rousing and sometimes thunderous, and responses are usually quite loud) we sheepishly whispered our response on this occasion, and embarrassed ourselves. It doesn't matter that we weren't mid-service and therefore not expecting a bit of standard liturgy to be thrown at us - we weren't convicting. We won't be able to write 'be convicting here' in the margins of our sermon notes.

Leader: "Lift up your hearts"
The People: "We lift them to the Lord, but we'd rather he didn't know about it"


(with thanks to Paul Weston, whose thunder it is that I am stealing)

Tired boy

I'm not sure what happened to the last 7 days - it's that long since I last posted anything, although I thought it was about 3.

Since then I've done loads! There's been more forms to fill out, chapel, opportunities to take advantage of, chapel, 2 library briefings, chapel, chapel briefings, chapel, placement briefings, chapel, foundation lectures, chapel, a pastoral/academic interview, chapel, a puddings evening, and church. Oh, and Thursday evening chapel, and Greek twice as frequently as chapel!! My feet seem to have hardly touched the ground (apart from the day when my bike brakes were fading fast and my feet had to touch the ground....). We, the first years, have had a pretty packed programme, with barely a space to make a quick cuppa before we were due to be elsewhere, to the extent that when we did actually legitimately have 35 minutes free this morning we felt sure that we should be somewhere else being talked at.

It should all start to ease off in a couple of days when the lecture timetable kicks in, as the general pattern of my day becomes lectures in the morning and study in the afternoon. I'm going to try to keep my academic work at college as much as possible, as I lose 3 hours doing tea-and-childrens-bedtime, and 9pm isn't a good time to be doing difficult thinking type stuff. Watch this space to find out if I achieve that. There's a danger of getting involved with too many things and filling your time up beyond your capacity to cope. I've only got 2 years here and there is a lot to squeeze in, not only in terms of formal timetabled stuff, but also missions, placements and family time. On paper I have a lot of holiday in those 2 years, in practice we're already starting to think about plans for next summer, so that we do actually manage to get some family time together.

Related to that we had a foundation lecture on so called 'Life and Service' today - this is the 'Vicar School' part of Ridley, as opposed to the theological side. During this it was pointed out that a college full of ordinands is by definition full of people who have been selected for their leadership potential, and therefore there are an awful lot of Chiefs and very few Indians. Two possible results of this are huge conflicts, or total withdrawal from community life. We have to aim somewhere between the two - get involved, but don't try to run everything. I'm trying to get that balance right. How much do I get involved in, and how much is too much? Yesterday saw my first 7pm return home for a very long time, and that wasn't a good start for my college-family balance.

It was Isaac's birthday today - it was good to be able to share my concerns over his settling-down with my staircase friends yesterday and to have them pray for him and us, and so nice today that everybody wanted to know how his birthday was actually going. He's happy - he's got a new bike, and a party planned for the weekend.

Talking of birthdays, we've got an amazing coincidence on my staircase. We're a group of 13, and 2 share a birthday on Jan 29th, and 2 on May 3rd. I'm one of the latter, and next year myself and Christina will be 21 and 40 years old on the same day. Lots of tea will be drunk on that day I'm sure. Maybe even a packet of chocolate Hob-Nobs will be opened in celebration.

From the ordinand's study

My study, which I share with Phil, is high above almost anything else in Ridley Hall, except the roof. In fact it's so High up here that we have to pause on the landing before the final ascent to don ornate robes and set the incense burning. We get extra marks for chanting....

From the base camp underneath the main entrance arch we go through a door, past something called a vacuum cleaner, up some stairs, past the young and not so young people in hoodies and baseball caps (the Centre for Youth Ministry), up another flight of stairs, then push on to the top via another long flight of stairs. A total of 55 stairs. I'll get fit doing that several times a day.

This is called 'A' Staircase. I'm pretty certain it's THE staircase to end all staircases.

But it's worth the effort. I'm told this is the best view in the college, and from my seat I can see (left to right) the lawn, the E and F 'staircases' and the chapel. The lawn is sacred - not sure how we're going to keep Isaac off that until we're allowed on it in the summer term.

Stu-dent!!!!

It's all go today! Pens and paper poised, I've taken on far too much information and forgotten much of it already. I've just about understood how to book my daily lunch via a complex system of coloured index cards and paper clips. I have advised a fellow novice on where to buy a bike, cycled the wrong way up one way streets and have endured/enjoyed an hour of Greek, during which we did not recite the Greek Alphabet once.

So repeat after me - Alpha, Beta, Gamma.

A couple of weeks ago I was looking at rather expensive jackets in a shop. I was reminded in no uncertain terms that those jackets wouldn't go with anything I owned and Why Do You Think You Need A Jacket Anyway You Aren't A Jacket Sort Of Person. So I let it lie quietly for a couple of weeks. Before I know it, Suitable Jackets are being procured on A Well Known Internet Auction Site, and the vicarofdidley now has a choice of two jackets, both of which are very Cambridgey and one of which debuted at Greek this afternoon. I feel like a real student now, cycling along with one button done up.

And finally, an absence of promotion for a product which won't be receiving publicity on this blog. I received a spam e-mail asking me to promote a product for - (cough) - male enhancement. The deal offered was that if I wrote a favourable review on the Vicar of Didley's blog I would receive a free trial of the product. My moral dilemma lasted for approximately one micro-second. Funds aren't that tight yet.....

21 years and 1 day on

It's 21 years and a day since I first started college at Brighton, and now I'm back, albeit in Cambridge. Last time I'd just finished my A-levels and changed tack from Pharmacy to Electronics on the basis of my results. This time I have been intending to do the course for 4 or 5 years, rather than 4 or 5 weeks.

And finally it's all about to happen. I've collected my keys to the college today, found out what a High Tea is, lost a parachute game, and met more than a few people.

I've already got a feeling for what the first day in a new parish must be like - I can only remember about 10% of the people by the time I get home!

I know that the next few weeks are going to be a blur. My timetable for the next couple of weeks includes a lot of foundation courses, and it looks like there will be a few decisions to be made about exactly which modules I want to study. Last time I just followed the timetable and was meant to turn up to everything. This time the advice is "Don't try to do everything".

Tasha and I have spent the last 18 weeks in close proximity since I left work at the end of May, and it will be nice for both of us to have something else to do with our time, although the calendar for this week already seems so full that I'm not sure if we'll actually see much of each other at all - by the time we are both back home together after college/childrens activities/SpiceGirls/somethingelse we could be lucky to get any sense out of each other. Especially as I'll be thinking in Greek.....

Are we nearly there yet?

It's Thursday today, Friday is 'our' last quiet day of normality together before life is never quite the same again, my sister is visiting on Saturday, and college starts on Sunday.

That's a bit of an odd day to start term, until I remind you that this is a Theological College, then it starts to make a bit of sense. One major difference between theological colleges and regular colleges is that they are a community in the real sense of the word - families have a part to play as well as me. Sunday kicks off with an informal meeting of students and families (a bouncy castle on the college quadrangle - whatever next?), followed by 'High Tea' and a short All-Age Worship, which means there will be a few people trying to make a good impression whilst trying to work out the rules for how long you let your toddler explore the chapel before rugby tackling him.

So Sunday is fairly laid back. But then it really gets busy. I received the calendar for the Michaelmas Term today (that's not churchy language, it's Cambridge speak for 'Autumn') and needed to read it through about three times before I'd worked out what events I am required to take part in (as opposed to those I would like to take part in, or those that Tasha won't let me out for). After that I went through it with an orange highlighter pen to make it perfectly clear, and concluded that it would have been easier to mark those things I'm not doing! Either that or start off with an orange piece of paper.
And that doesn't include lectures. The timetable is yet to come.

The important thing is that I take a calendar and diary along on Monday (no pen?), and try to keep up with everything that will be thrown at me. As long as I turn up to everything IN CAPITAL LETTERS I'll be fine. That's only 11 things in the first week, along with 2 Greek sessions per day. The returning students tell me it'll be Christmas before my feet touch the ground again....