Leavers' Service

That's it. My time at Ripon College Cuddesdon is over. (Notice I don't say that my training is finished - there's still a lot more of that to come, both during my curacy and afterwards).

We finished our time here with the Leavers' Service this morning. It was a good way to end, with the whole community coming together to celebrate the Eucharist. At the end of the service, those of us who will be ordained later this year went forward to have our deacon's stoles blessed, and then our families joined us to be blessed together. It was very important to me to have Clare & Nathan there at the end, as my ordination will have a profound effect on their lives as well.

After that, there were lots of goodbyes, although we'll still see a few people as we are not moving until Wednesday next week. The good thing is that there are a few ordinations we will be going to next week, so friends will be seen again very soon! The challenge is to make sure those friendships are maintained past the summer.

I will post again before we move with a few reflections on my time here at Cuddesdon, so look out for that one!

Leavers' Course

The Leavers' Course started today, and suddenly it's starting to hit me that we finish in less than 3 weeks! I've always known this, but with things like exams and Themed Study Weeks to think about, it's been something that's there but not totally on the radar. But now there's nothing else to focus on!

There's lots of different things happening. We will have some spiritual and theological input, as well as practical things like Child Protection (not that I've done any of that before!) and Canon Law. Today we began by thinking about 'desert island theology' - basically what might sustain us during curacy. One thing we were asked to do was to think of three books that we would have on a desert island; my three were:

Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense (Vanstone) - a remarkable book about God and authentic love
Restoring the Woven Chord (Mitton) - a book about Celtic spirituality
The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien) - my all-time favourite novel!

Martyn (the principal) gave us a long list of books which sustain him - I have read a grand total of one of them! But that does mean I have a lot of suggestions of things to read in the future!

Work done, baby imminent!

Phew! Time to end the silence of the last few months, as today I finished my second Long Essay, just in time for baby's arrival!

The last few weeks have been pretty much full of activity either baby or essay related! We've been getting the nursery ready and going to antenatal classes, as well as the regular trips to see the midwife and consultant. Clare is now less than a week from her due date (9th September), and looking very good! At the last midwife appointment (Tuesday), we found out that baby was 3/5 engaged, so things really could happen at any moment!

As I mentioned above, both Long Essays are done. They will need a little tweaking, once the tutors have cast their eye over them, but I feel good enough about them that I could hand them in as they are, if necessary. As with the exams, I'm not expecting to get a First for either of them; as long as they are good enough to pass, that's the important thing. More importantly, the reading and writing of them has where the real learning has been for me.

There are 3 weeks until term begins now, so, assuming baby arrives on time, we will have a couple of weeks together before I get back into college life. It's kind of weird being a 2nd year, meeting all the new arrivals, but fun too!

Steppin' Stone

So much for writing at least once a week on the Blog! Ordination training really is incredibly tense!

Much as I love the theological study, it can get quite intense, so I'm very grateful for the two very different placements I have each week. I've mentioned before my Sunday placement at St. Barnabas; today I'll say a little about my midweek one.

Thursday evenings, I'm a volunteer at the Steppin' Stone project for homeless and vulnerably housed people. I won't go into all the details of it here - follow the link to find out more about what it does. My role is to work as part of a team, chatting with the members, serving food and washing up, and helping to clean up afterwards.

I've only had two weeks there so far, but I've already had a number of good conversations with people, and am learning a great deal about the issues facing homeless people today. It's also a valuable experience for me to be a volunteer - having spent the last 9 years working with volunteers, and, of course, moving into the same situation at the end of training! It's very useful to see what it's like from the other side of things! And, personally, it's very fulfilling, and it's helping to keep everything I'm doing at college grounded in the real world - something which could easily be forgotten in a community like RCC, as wonderful as it is!

Update: essays, swine flu and catching breath!

The last two weeks have, frankly, been a whirlwind. There has been so much to get my head around that I only now have a half hour window to finally get onto the blog! So here's a whistle-stop update...

Essays

I think I have mentioned that I have to produce an essay a week, to be discussed in Monday afternoon seminars. They are alternating between Old & New Testament texts each week; so far, there have been essays on Paul's presentation of himself as a model to the Corinthian Christians, an analysis of the Genesis flood story in comparison with the other flood stories of the world at that time, a look at Paul's use of the word 'body' in 1 Corinthians, and, the current one, how (if at all) the book of Deuteronomy can be used in Christian thought.

It's all fascinating stuff, and it can be very easy to get sidetracked into a particular idea - I have to be very careful to stick to the question being asked!

Lectures

These tick along, with the addition that the Thursday morning Oxford University lectures have begun. We have three of them back to back (1 hour each): Old Testament, Patristics and Paul. It's a long morning, but again very interesting.

Placement

St. Barnabas Church has been very welcoming to us in the two weeks we have been there. It is a very different spirituality to anything I have seen before - and I have a fair amount of experience! - and there are lots of questions I would like to ask about the way things are done. To give one example: the Gospel isn't read - it's sung! I have never seen that done before, so am keen to find out what the theology and/or spirituality is behind that.

College Life

We are well settled now, and are getting used to the different rotas there are. Next week, my Group is on Worship Duty, so we lead services, read, assist at Eucharist, etc. I shall be wearing my cassock for the first time on Monday! I will also have a new experience at Wednesday Eucharist, when I will be Assistant 1 - this means that I lead Confession and read the Gospel (nothing new there), but also that I prepare the table - and this will be done from behind the altar (facing the congregation). Obviously, I have assisted as sacristan loads of times before...but never from that perspective. I have a feeling that it will feel very different!

Swine Flu

Last, but by no means least, this has been a very tough week, because poor Clare has caught the dreaded Swine Fle (as has half of college). She's close to recovery now, but was wiped out for the first few days. The Tamiflu brought her high temperature down straight away, thank goodness - it doesn't do that for everyone. Of course, it's meant a lot of dashing backwards and forwards for me, as I haven't wanted to leave her on her own too long. But, like I say, she's nearly back to full health, thank goodness!

That's a very quick update for now - I hope to have time to do another post over the weekend, but with this essay on Deuteronomy to finish, we may have to see about that one!

New Robes!

One of the things about Ripon College that took me by surprise when I went to visit on the Open Day is that ordinands need to have certain robes before they arrive. But after reflection, it seems to make sense:

At Cuddesdon, wearing robes is a part of the Ministerial Formation - the "becoming" a priest. There are many reasons why priests wear robes (and why some choose not to!), and no doubt I will get to learn more about this during training. But some reasons are:

• It's a sign of the priest's calling
• It is a hiding of the self, in that the priest becomes anonymous in a sense, as worship is directed towards God.
• Similarly, a priest's choice of clothing may end up being a distraction to worship; wearing robes prevents this from happening (unless the robes are particularly garish!)
• There is one strand of tradition that saw the wearing of robes as a mark of humility.

During my training, I will be getting used to wearing robes, and, thanks to the generosity of the parishioners of St. Mark's, Biggin Hill (where I worked for five and a half years up until March 2009), my first robes have been ordered and arrived today!

For college, I need a cassock, a surplice and a cassock-alb. They may not mean much to you, so if you click on the words, the links will take you to where you can learn more about them! But in the meantime, I have my first robes, and I would like to publicly thank St. Mark's Church for the gift they gave which enabled me to purchase them.

Welcome to the Captain's (B)log!

Greetings to all, and welcome to my new Blog!

I'm setting this up to be a record of my journey as an ordinand which starts in 2 months time, at Ripon College, Cuddesdon (near Oxford). Having spent 9 years as a Church Army Officer, I will be moving to Cuddesdon for two years, to train for the ordained ministry within the Church of England.

During my training, I will be posting regular updates on all aspects of life at college, from the theology and lectures, to the fellowship and community, to the practical placements.

From time to time, I will also post my thoughts about various issues at large in the Church and the world.

Don't expect too much in the next few weeks, as I will be very busy finishing my work for Keston Parish Church in the Diocese of Rochester and preparing for the move to Cuddesdon. But once there, I intend to update the Blog at least once a week, and hopefully a lot more often! But we will have to see how much time I have - I expect life to be very busy when term starts!