Who's side?

Now that the academic year is over and I'm sat with my feet up, watching the world go by with plenty of time to muse about life, the universe and everything, I thought it was time to get blogging again. Don't want to let my theological reflection practice to slip!

Hmmm... to be sat around with my feet up, watching the world go by - now that would be nice. In reality I'm blogging to avoid sermon writing! Now almost a week back on placement and just about to start writing sermon number 3! The delusion that as a minister I only have to work Sundays has now well and truly evaporated.

As a student minister, being attached to a church in Cambridge has its advantages and disadvantages. There is always plenty of intellectual and simulating conversation to be had and you get to meet some amazing people who have done some amazing things for the advancement of knowledge and society. However, there is also a high population of retired ministers - Cambridge must rival Bognor in the statistics! When you add them into the mix with the academics, other ministers who are based in Cambridge with no pastoral charge and the members whose husbands, wives, parents and/or grandparents where ministers - the congregation becomes all of a sudden very daunting. Every at of worship you lead has the tendency to start to feel like an accessed service.

So when your supervisor turns to you and says he wants you to experiment, imagine the fear that gripped me. However, this was just a midweek service in the chapel with a congregation of around 8 individuals, who I have learnt over the year are not too scary. Fear subsided a little - then the congregation walked in - of the 10, four were ministers! If I could aparate, that moment was the moment I would have used that skill; but alas however much I wished I was somewhere else I remained where I was. But at least I could proved my supervisor and my college tutor wrong spectacularly!

There are some days when you have to wonder whether God does take sides - yesterday was one of those for me. Unfortunately, the experiment worked and my supervisor and tutor were proved right. No spectacular mess ups, theological fopars or fish impressions - only words inspired by God and delivered through the strength of God, for I didn't do it on my own.

Maybe God doesn't take sides, God just knows what's best. But since my tutor didn't witness the experiment, I might be able to keep my comfort blanket for a little longer :)

The demon in my head

From about the age of 10, the education system pretty much wrote me off. Sure I could do maths, but reading and language were a mystery. I had teachers who defined me as backward, whilst others told me I would never survive Secondary School because I could not do dictation let alone read anything that was more complex than something that you'd find in a 6 year old's reading bag these days. I was not a child you would 'statement', but I was also not a child that anyone believed would get very far. Luckily I have a mother who thought otherwise.

Twenty-two years down the line and I have just completed my second year of a theology undergraduate course at the University of Cambridge. This is not my first degree either, I have already successfully completed an undergraduate masters and postgraduate masters in engineering. However, the last 22 years have been a continuous battle - not just with the words on the page, but with a demon telling me I can't and shouldn't be doing what I'm doing and how ever hard I try to prove it wrong, its still there.

This week was results week, never a good week in my life especially these past couple of years. I doubt and over analyse. I beat myself up over the smallest of errors and the most insignificant comments. I convince myself I did not work hard enough or put enough effort in. I am very rarely happy with the results that are written on the piece of paper, because however high or low the marks are, I have still failed.

All of this I know is stupid, and there are plenty of people who will read this and tell me to stop being stupid. But I do wonder somedays whether if my dyslexia had been diagnosed at the age of 10 things may have been different. Would I be sat here now, two years into a Cambridge degree? Would I have spent the last 22 years trying to prove a point?

Who knows, but maybe it is time to say whatever point it was I set out to prove I have now proved. But please forgive me if I occassionally still beat myself up.

Dead week...

This week in the Cambridge Easter term is officially known as 'Dead Week' and I have to say at the beginning of the week, it was fairly apt for how I felt - dead. On paper the Easter term looks like it should be a walk in the park: no lectures, maybe a couple of supervisions, but the rest of time is free to finish essays and revise for those four exams that are all over and done within a week. But that is so far from the truth - everyone's stress levels rise, heads are full of looming deadlines and little else matters. And then the students hit this week and everything sudden stops... essays handed, exams written, no reading to be done yesterday... and so we crash, we crash into a week of nothingness.

Now because this is a theological college, a week of nothingness is not really an option. There are things as ordinands we must do which are not covered in the academic syllabus, so we have had other things to do and a couple of seminars we've needed to attend, but there has been time just to pause, to recover and return to life.

Over the week, I have come to realise how lost I had become within this world of looming deadlines over the past six weeks. I'd moved from word to word, book to book, worry to worry, praying that I'd have the strength to finish each essay and write each exams, but that was about it. There was not really a world outside the world in my head... God kind of became more about theory than practice, more about was in my head than what was in my heart. And when I did go to seek a place of peace, to seek a space to be with God in practice, all I found was discordant noise, literally as well as metaphorically.

Now the melody is coming back, that peaceful space with God returns, and another step in learning about ministry has been taken.