07/09/2019 Four years since start of exploration of vocation

Now obviously the date this post is published is not that of the title, but the idea of the post is to mark the date in the title, so I've kept it for the look of the thing!

I've been looking over the past anniversary posts, and whilst I did one after one year and one after two years,  I am shocked that I didn't do one last year, and I can only apologise. 2018 and 19 have been sparse for content here, but that doesn't mean I've not been doing anything - it's just that I've been getting on with college, concentrating on the detail of my vocation rather than contemplating the big picture. Why would I? Once I arrived here, I had three years set out in front of me, a red carpet that I only had to follow.

But the end of the carpet is in sight and suddenly the prospect of stepping off it needs addressing. To be honest, my post a few months ago did a good job of summing up the feeling of second year. Since then, I have spend two weeks in Belgium, and done 4 weeks parish placement, which was lovely - great people, and a fabulous vicar, with loads of experiences and stuff; I was very pleased to reflect that I felt very comfortable being the ordinand, the one alongside the vicar ie. I felt competent.

I have also spent 4 days with RAF chaplains, who were so hospitable and generous; I had a proper holiday which did me a lot of good, as well as a holiday visiting friends who are simply mad and joyful; I had a week's retreat at Pluscarden Abbey, which was okay, though I should have gone to an Anglican one really; I took my motorcycle to Scotland so I've had a lot of experience to make me a better rider; and I have just got back from a two week placement with the army chaplains, which was amazing.

That's a lot to go through in 14 weeks. I'm so glad I have a little bit of time before term starts to reorientate and sort out my life a bit. But also, since then the wheel has been turning on conversations around curacy - in case you don't know, I can't tell anyone anything until a curacy is absolutely confirmed, but I can say I am looking at somewhere. Plus I really need to get cracking on my dissertation. The end of this chapter is nigh and the planning for the next already in motion.

In amongst it all, feeling like one is on a conveyor belt, contemplation of vocation is hard to fit in, though I will say I am very interested in army chaplaincy, and I am very pleased that I will be doing my term time placement with a university officers training corps. I haven't had any doubts that I am supposed to be here and I am called to be an ordained priest in the Church of England, and I've been doing overall pretty well. I'm so happy to have the motorcycle, and I think that will have a significant effect in my third year.

It's still weird to think that this time next year I'll be ordained a deacon. Wearing a collar, ministering in a parish, oh, and have money coming in again! A very different life to the last two years, and a new sense of being - to be ordained itself still seems distant and unimaginable.

Four years later, life has changed completely, several times, and will change completely again. God remains consistent and steadfast, but I am changed, almost completely as well. Some of that is growing up, and some is shifting priorities and wider understandings.

I'm starting to waffle, I'm sorry. Life is pretty full and whilst I am glad about that, I can sometimes lose sight of 'me' in 'my life', so reflecting on the last year is a little hazy. Hopefully it'll get processed in the depths of memory and I'll have figured it out once I look back on it in the future. I think that's a common experience of full time college, even without the priestly formation stuff.

Who knows what third year will bring? I cannot guess, but I'll let you know.

Video: Thirteenth visit to the rector

Video: Shadowing a priest in Scotland

That's a little snapshot of my week. I had such a good time. I've known the family for years, so it was good to be with friends and make new ones, and get away from work of course, but I also learnt a lot. I asked Alasdair if I could shadow him because staying with him and his family on previous occasions, I saw peripherally how his life as a priest was so different to the priests I know in central London.

The incident that set the idea in my mind was on his day off, answering the door in his pajamas and having to put on his wellies to go open up the church hall because whoever was supposed to hadn't! The vicar at the church where I work certainly wouldn't have cause to do that. It's good for me to see with my own eyes a situation I haven't really come across, namely a priest who is a radial point, the only full time person who ultimately looks after the church.

Also, his tradition is pretty Anglo-Catholic, and though my churches down in London are high enough to have robed servers and processions, Alasdair's Scottish Episcopal church is almost as far away from what I'm used to as the worship I experienced at the other end of the candle at Momentum or on Pentecost last summer, though not as high as my weekend with the Society of Catholic Priests. It's an important part of being in the Anglican Communion to understand the diversity of traditions held within it, and crucially it is in experiencing all these types of worship for myself that I am able to comprehend on a spiritual level that whilst my tastes and needs in liturgy and worship are different, God is in all of it.

So in doing thee's and thou's morning and evening prayer next door everyday, Mass both east facing and west facing (sometimes just the two of us), serving in cassock and cotta - I got my hands dirty in a way I didn't on the Catholic weekend away, plus Alasdair was very happy to answer my questions. Being with a priest who is not 'my' priest or just 'a' priest, but rather a friend, was a very useful space because (and this is also a mark of Alasdair's patience) I was able to push him to answer my questions further and defend anything I didn't understand or maybe didn't agree with, and also push back and challenge me.

That personal connection and staying with him and his family in the rectory was also able to give me insight into a priest as a whole, 'normal' person, that they talk about at vocation events, but is hard to actually understand in reality, to imagine a priest complexly, as the saying goes. At the same time, when off duty and in civvies, whilst not being the rector, even I as a friend and temporary member of his household could not shake an awareness of him being A Priest. That issue of perception is also often talked about at vocation events.

One thing I learnt about myself was I clarified why I don't like doing certain acts of kneeling in worship. I don't like kneeling to receive communion, and when I served on the Sunday in Scotland I had to genuflect, and boy, I did not like that either. It was as if, as my knee hit the marble, God winced. That kind of abasement is not part of our relationship. That's not to say I don't have a great reference for the Lord of the Universe, but you can have deep respect and show complete obedience without prostrating yourself. Sure, that's how some people show it, but I don't!

I'm also still processing something I 'learnt' in a way, but it's hard to articulate. It's something about being rooted in a place and how I don't feel called to that, at least not right away. I'm reminded of a sermon I heard about Psalm 84, and Hebrews 11 "They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one." I've written before how I don't feel like I have a 'home', but not in a bad way, because I look to making a home in God, and in a more tangible way, making a home where I find God in other people. I don't know, it just doesn't feel like that rootedness is part of my path ahead of me, til the distant future...

Anyway, I got away from my liberal urban bubble and also got to know some of the laity. They were all lovely and when I tagged along for home visits, everyone welcomed me in very gracefully. Sure I heard gossip and politics, but you get that everywhere there are people, and there was no maliciousness amongst the people I met. Talking to the theologian/CofS minister was also interesting to get away from Anglicanism and hear another story of vocation.

But against all that it was just a church serving God and creation. It is reassuring to feel the same undercurrent where ever two or three are gathered in Jesus' name, and to learn from people who are dedicated to God. As I said in the video, where ever I go, "it's still church".

Video: DDO 6 / The Rector's Reference

Since seeing the DDO, I have seen the rector's reference and it's such a relief. It's very positive and shows the depth that Lucy has tried to get a sense of where I'm at, to be sure of her judgement before committing herself to sponsoring me, and I wouldn't expect anything less of her, though of course her doing that has made her feel at times incomprehensible and inaccessible to me.

The reference reflects and clarifies my own understanding of our journey together, which is reassuring, and I am deeply grateful for all her past, current, and continuing support. Her importance lies as my sponsoring incumbent, but I can't help being also aware that support from someone so loved, respected and admired in the Church on a national level is quite the feather in my cap.

Counter to my last statements in the video, if nothing happens for a time, I have a few things to talk about on this blog before the process continues, including the Towards Ordained Ministry course I start on Monday and a week shadowing a priest in Scotland in February, both of which are important parts of my journey I think, so you can look forward to those, plus Gabriel Collective's Leicester Event on Feb 4th, which should include the rather daft promo video which I'll tweet next week @TechieGeorgina. Because it's in February, we're doing luuuurve as our theme! If you fancy joining us, check out the above link and let me know if you're coming!

I also had my second session with a spiritual director yesterday, and it's basically going how I thought it would after finding out what spiritual direction is about, and I like her, I think she's helpful; and it was a well-timed week that the day before, the Pastoral Assistants support group had a session talking about one's inner life as the source of strength and understanding from which to centre the rest of one's life. So after feeling like I'd spiritually unplugged when I went back to my parents over Christmas, I'm inspired to redouble my spiritual efforts.