Praying?

When I started at Westminster I was struck by how often we prayed. We prayed in the morning, we prayed at a lunchtime, we prayed at the start of every class and occasionally we prayed as the day drew to an end. But in the last couple of days I've had two questions asked of me:

1. Have you got anyone praying for you?
2. When do you talk about/get taught about spirituality in college?

And then I looked around me... now we sort of pray in the morning, we still occasionally pray as the day draws to a close, but we are not currently praying at a lunchtime and none of my classes have started with pray so far this term.

Now, prayer and spirituality are not things I find easy or am at times particularly comfortable with. Part of that is my tradition, part of it is where I have been on my journey with God.  However, I see what people are saying: where is the prayer and through what do we come to understanding of our spirituality? Maybe what some would call spirituality, I don't recognise as spirituality. Maybe in what I do on a daily basis is where I learn about spirituality. Maybe spirituality is another one of those fuzzy theological terms that is so hard to define that it is even harder to sit and talk about it specifically. And prayer... well that can be in everything we do, so it doesn't especially mean we have to get down on our knees. But sometimes maybe we do need to get down on our knees!

Now as I have discovered, I fall into the Generation Y group, where spirituality is not a term I may ever truly get my head around. But on the other hand, prayer is something I do get. And if the events of the past week have taught me anything, they've taught me that it is time to get back to the praying.

So my challenge is to pray more, however hard or easy I find it on a daily basis. It is also time to ask others to pray: to pray for the joys and struggles that I face as an ordinand on a daily basis and to pray for a theological college and community, which many hold dearly in their hearts, which faces changing and challenging times.

Another 'new' home

I am once again packing my life into boxes, to then unpack them in a new room. Luckily, this time I'm only moving from one wing of Westminster College to another wing, but it is still a task which is far from fun. However, as I sit in my new room I am struck how 'at home' I already feel.

The importance of feeling ‘at home’ has been an issue that has again raised its head for me over the last few weeks. In conversations I have had with new students, I have been reminded of the struggles I had during my first term at Westminster. The struggles of where was home and how do I, if I have to, make this place home. The importance of ‘home’ is one of the reason why I chose to remain in the college grounds with the builders, rather than move out to rented accommodation else where in Cambridge. Westminster has become ‘home’, and ‘home’ is a stability that I find I need when the rest of my world is in chaos. If I know where home is and know I can get back there easily, then I know I can get through everything else. Maybe this seems a bit strange coming from a person who has led a fairly nomadic life and who will continue to live such a life. In my 32½ years, I have lived in six cities on a permanent basis and have had prolonged stays in at least two others. I have already moved house more times than the national average for the lifetime of a Briton! Therefore, home you would not think is something I would find important. But it is, and maybe even more so than for a person has lived in the same place their whole lives. I don’t really have a hometown—I have a town I was born in, because for the time I live somewhere, however long that might be, that place becomes my hometown. It becomes the place where when I get of the train I say, "I’m home". And when I move on, the transition is never an easy one—but what makes it slightly easier is God. In faith I have moved, particularly in most recently years when I have controlled where I live, and through faith I have a spiritual home—a home that goes with me wherever I am and gives me sanctuary from the tumultuous storms of life.

So from my ‘new’ home to you in your home
may God continue to bless the places we call home.