A third of the way there

I have survived another term! Term number 4 of 12 is complete, which I guess means that I'm a third of the way to ordination! Gulp!

It does seem a bit strange to say that "I've survived", but some days that is what it feels like. If I'm not battling with Scripture, I seem to be battling with theology or trying to work out exactly who the guy with the beard was who said some when back in the depths of time something that shifted the sand on which the Church stands. I get to the end of the day worrying about whether it was Zwingli or Calvin who liked to eat cream cakes on a Sunday after preaching four three-hour sermons. Once upon a time, well 15 months ago to be a little more accurate, I had a job, a house, heating and a shower. Now I have a vocation, a rented flat, heating which needs supplementing with woolly jumpers and a bath! However, I do still seems to spend the majority of the day doing one of my least favourite activities: reading. (Another battle in my life - words!)

All this paints a rather negative picture, but where I am now is far from negative. The last 15 months has been a hard slog and that wont change. If it starts to get easy I think I might worry more. But not once can I say I have looked back to where I have come from and wished I was back there. Yes, some mornings it would be nice to walk into a warm bathroom and jump into the shower, or it would be nice to be spending the day collecting temperature readings from a potato rather than tying myself in knots over what Paul actually meant when he used the word 'righteousness' in his letter to the Romans. But hopefully one day soon I will again have a bathroom with a radiator and a shower, and really spending the day measuring the temperature of a potato is not nearly as satisfying as even making the tiniest bit of sense out of what Paul was saying about righteousness.

I know I still lack confidence in my own knowledge, that I would still rather sit and say nothing than say something that may be wrong. Every sermon I write, I doubt myself and worry that I may have strayed into some area of heresy which I am completely oblivious to. But I can now stand up in front of a group of people and share some of what I have discovered during the week with some element of confidence (though deep down I am a gibbering wreck). I can even have unscripted moments!

Theological college has changed me and will continue to change me, as will my ministry in the years to come. I can no longer (and at some level no longer want to) hide away in an office in the background. There of course will always be those moments when I wish the ground would open up and swallow me, but I'm learning that is ok. And maybe, just maybe, I am beginning to really make a start on understanding who God wants me to be.

The waiting time is almost upon us...

So week 7 started today... WEEK 7... just two weeks and term is finished and Advent is here!

Ooooh... Advent... Christmas...

Now I know Christmas seems to get earlier and earlier every year in the shops, but it also arrives very quickly when you study at a University that has very short terms. I have this term joined a choir (yipee, at last I am no longer just singing in the bath), and what do you have to do at the end of Michaelmas term? Well sing carols at a concert or in the streets of Cambridge (or both). And because I have starting singing Christmas carols, I thought that gave me a good enough reason for starting to practice Christmas carols on the trumpet as well. Ok, most probably won't be playing in public this year, but you never know, so it is worth being prepared!

This of course means if I start looking at Christmas carols, I also have to look at Advent carols (usually same chapter in the hymnbook anyway). After all Advent does come before Christmas: a point that sometimes gets forgotten. And as I have to lead worship over Advent, no bad thing getting the tunes into my head now. I do, however, have a favourite Advent carol: 'O come, o come Emmanuel'. Someone in my preaching class the other day did suggest a set of themes to cover the season of Advent which would allow the use of 'O come, o come Emmanuel' on every Advent Sunday! My first pastorate, beware, we will be doing this and I will be playing the trumpet! (Why not, I'll be the minister... I can do what I want... can't I?)

So Advent, that waiting place, that time to prepare and to look forward. A time we sometimes miss because we're too busy with Christmas. Well, this year, things are going to be different. I may be singing Christmas carols in November and going to Christmas dinners in early December, but this year I'm not going to forget Advent and the place of limbo it puts us in and the longing for Christ's coming (again).

Therefore, theme tune for 1st to 24th December: "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel"

What is the priority?

As this term progresses, weeks seems to be getting shorter and shorter whilst the 'to-do-list' gets longer and longer. So when I sat down to plan my morning prayers, that I had lead this morning, at the end of last week, picking up a bit of liturgy I had sat on my computer would have been the sensibly and less complicated thing to do. However, why make life easy for myself, starting with a blank piece of paper is so much more fun!

Not that I was actually starting with a blank piece of paper per se, because as I have found the busyness of term taking over life and seen others beginning to become swamped by work, the words 'cast your burdens upon Jesus, for he cares for you' have entered my head. They are of course Biblical (I am an ordinand after all), but not a direct scriptural quote. I think I possibly learnt them from a song (as that is where I seem to learn most of my almost scriptural quotes I ever remember). But what to do with that - well link it to an image of course!

Now this sounds all very simple, and actually it was, apart from the fact that I needed the image to be the size of 2A0. Surprisingly, I don't own a printer that prints that big, neither does the college - so 36 sheets of A4 and a role of sellotape later, my image appeared on the floor. This was excellent work (well almost), but it also consumed quite a lot of time. Time that I could have been using to read or write an essay, I spent on my knees in chapel sticking pieces of paper together. Do I have my priorities wrong?

As I have sat and reflected today I realise that I didn't have my priorities wrong. Yes, my essay of Righteousness is not going to write itself, but leading the Community of Westminster College in an act of worship, however short, is just as important. For this not just an academic community, it is also a worshipping community; something that is easily forgetting in the stresses and strains of academic life.

Besides which it part-fueled this evening's theological discussion in the pub! Result!!