I write this at the Chaplaincy Centre and watching that back, it feels like a million years ago even though it's only a few days since I said goodbye and moved out. It's all going well so far!
Showing posts with label endings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label endings. Show all posts
Thursday, 7 September 2023
I'm in the army! Eight years discernment later
Friday, 17 April 2020
Thursday, 9 January 2020
Sunday, 15 September 2019
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.
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.
Sunday, 9 June 2019
Continuing the Great Adventure to Holy Orders - Two years into training
The actors training alongside me at drama school used to say that their experience of their time there was akin to being broken into small pieces then reassembled bit by bit. I've got to say, my experience of theological college has been very similar.
In my BAP paperwork, I said my hope was that “my formation will be an anvil to God’s blacksmith”, but it’s more like my formation is the workshop for God’s mechanic. I’m up on the axle stand, and I am being sort of taken apart in an act that is actually creative rather than destructive. Some parts are taken out of the whole and worked on separately, or replaced entirely. Some parts are being serviced, renewed and polished, revealing the potential that was already there. Enhancements are being added, new buttons put into the dashboard to access new features, but the essence of the car is not changed. Same colour, same design, same history, same owner, but renewed purpose and updated manual.
Hopefully, this is a similar process to the one described in Colossians 3, that we have "stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator". Only time will tell.
In my BAP paperwork, I said my hope was that “my formation will be an anvil to God’s blacksmith”, but it’s more like my formation is the workshop for God’s mechanic. I’m up on the axle stand, and I am being sort of taken apart in an act that is actually creative rather than destructive. Some parts are taken out of the whole and worked on separately, or replaced entirely. Some parts are being serviced, renewed and polished, revealing the potential that was already there. Enhancements are being added, new buttons put into the dashboard to access new features, but the essence of the car is not changed. Same colour, same design, same history, same owner, but renewed purpose and updated manual.
Hopefully, this is a similar process to the one described in Colossians 3, that we have "stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator". Only time will tell.
I'm coming to the end of my second year as an ordinand, and I have one more academic year to go. I have started conversations with London diocese about curacy, but I have yet to be told if I will be released or not. I have another jam-packed summer ahead of me, including 4 weeks in a parish, and hopefully some placements with military chaplains, but also I've scheduled some actual 'holiday' time, which is better than last year, as well as personal spiritual retreat. Next year, I will write a dissertation, and finish my BA degree, as well as prepare to move and start curacy.
It is so weird to still be here, in Durham, at Cranmer Hall. Not that I mean I'm surprised I haven't been kicked out, but it's just unusual for me to be in the same place with the same people for so long. And even though the community make-up has changed, and it'll change again come October, life is all still basically the same, and that is very unfamiliar territory for me. I might be talking about curacy, but it's still a whole year away; the future has never been so far. Suddenly I'm the one radically changing, not my circumstances. Since coming to Durham, I have gotten two tattoos and a motorcycle licence, and that's just scratching the surface.
I have delved into the Bible in a way completely unknown to me; I have settled into my relationship with God in a manner unfathomable before; I have realised a passion for writing prayers and preaching which has astonished me; I have fought against more biphobia than I have ever experienced in my life; and I have truly picked up the mantle of my future and set it on my shoulders.
But I'm still up on the axle stand, I still feel like I'm in pieces; my capacity to love is growing, my pastoral ability is being enhanced, my vocabulary has been almost replaced it's so different, my commitment to being a Church of England Anglican has been renewed, my potential as a leader has been revealed, and new features include obscure biblical references and unlikely friendships have been added. But at the moment I do not feel like a cohesive whole, and parts of my life and my self sit around me, only strung together by the barest of threads.
The same as this time last year, my mental health has not be so good, making this lack of cohesion harder to bear, but I've made it to the end of term, and now I have a series of interesting projects and trips over the summer to recharge me to get through the last three terms of my degree. And God is constant through it all.
The same as this time last year, my mental health has not be so good, making this lack of cohesion harder to bear, but I've made it to the end of term, and now I have a series of interesting projects and trips over the summer to recharge me to get through the last three terms of my degree. And God is constant through it all.
I've still got a year to go, and details of my future to confirm, so I have hope and faith that I will be made ready in time, and I'll set down off the stand ready to hit the throttle into curacy, to warm up the tyres and get to grips with the upgrades, so that I can journey well in the rest of my life in ministry. I am in pieces but not in despair, and I am being held by the Spirit, the college, my friends and my family.
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