Sunday, September 23, 2012

And life changes again...

Tomorrow I officially start my second year at Westminster... the summer is over and its time to get back to the books!

Where have the last three months gone?

It is quite strange to think that it has been three months since the college was full of students and I was living in a routine of chapel, lectures and supervisions; but then over the summer, apart from a couple of short breaks, I haven't left the college. And the college hasn't been quiet and deserted over that time, there has been a constant flow of people through the doors. We even managed to have a fire alarm at two in the morning! My daily routine may not have revolved around college-based activities, but I have still lived as part of the college community and I think most days I have found myself walking the college corridors.

So being 'back at college' is a misnomer for me or is it? Yesterday, I met someone in the college corridors and they said to me 'how does it feel to now be a second year?" and that was when it hit me... life is about to change again! I am going to be seen as someone who has some idea of how things work, know where things are and what it means to live as part of the college community.

Well, I don't I know how everything works and I definitely don't know where everything is (I'm still trying to learn where all the light switches are). As for living in the community, well maybe the best advice I have on that one is that nothing can ever be described as normal and things are forever changing.

So life is about to change again, but if I learnt anything last year, life is always changing. It's not always a walk in the park, but it's what makes us who we are. So bring it on, I'm ready (I think)!

Sunday, September 9, 2012

In Flanders fields...

As I mentioned in my last post, I have just had the opportunity to spend a week in Belgium seeing the battlefields of Flanders - once wasted lands full of death, now green fields full of life.

Our base for the week was Talbot House in Poperinge; a house that was a place of relaxation, refreshment for both body and soul away from the front line during the first world war. It was run by Rev Philip 'Tubby' Clayton, a British Army Padre who was determined to provide a haven from the hell of the trenches. A house where everyone was welcome, rank and class did not matter. And almost 100 years on that is what the house still offers - a warm welcome, a place of refuge, a place to rest - though it is a museum with the public walking through it daily.

I have been left with many memories and reflections from my week - how conflict can scar a landscape and a people; how so many gave there lives for a vision of a future that the world has not yet realised; how even in the time of deepest despair there can be a glimmer of hope.

In the landscape of Flanders today it is sometimes difficult to see the devastation there was, but then all of sudden in the corner of a farmer's field would be a small cemetary of a dozen or so graves, or on the horizon a cemetary with hundreds of graves and wall after wall of names. Buildings may have been rebuilt, the land may again be farmland, but there are constant reminders of the devastation caused.

One of the images that will stay with me is the number of graves for unknown soldiers, soldiers who had no way of being identifed. On every grave of a soldier from one of the allied forces is the inscription 'known unto God', however on the German graves there is nothing, and in many German graves there is more than one soldier. I don't think I will ever forget reading the words 'Zwanzig Unbekannte Deutsche Soldaten' on numerous graves. But though there is no recognition on these graves that though they were not known to the people who buried them, they were known by God, they were. For though it is hard to see how God could have allowed so much death and destruction, God was on each battlefield with every soldier whether living or dying.

God was there and God is still there.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Church History... to study or not to study it?

As the weeks of the summer vacation quickly disappear, I seem to have embarked on a whistle stop historic tour. Last week I spent most of the week talking, or rather listening to numerous papers, about the church in England during the 17th century and tomorrow I head to Belgium and the Western Front to find out about what the Church was doing during the First World War.

But I'm training to minister in the world today, so why bother with what happened in the past?

Well, as was pointed out to us last week, Christianity is a religion rooted in history. The Bible is full of historic stories. The Church, its faith and mission, have been shaped by history. The Church today is the result of what happened in history.

And as I train for ministry in the United Reformed Church, I am training alongside others who are training to minister in the Anglican Church, the Methodist Church, the Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church. There are of course theological differences between the denominations, but the only way to truly understand where these difference emerged is to look back in history. It is also a good place to start when trying to work out how we can work together.

1662, the year of the Book of Common Prayer or the year of the Great Ejectment - depends which denomination you are - but an important date for the church in England. However, what happened has, for most, been lost in time and as the church in England we have just been living with the consequences. But maybe its time to stop living with the consequences and start trying to understand what happened and how what seems on the surface to be a negative event can be something positive. So as denominations together we come to understand more about our differences and use this knowledge to allow us to work together for the glory of God in our neighbourhoods.

See Church History does that a point!