Vicar's Family in Training » College / Training

Lilliput St Gulliver and Laputa St Lindalino (part 2)

husband — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:25:45 +0000

Well, five months have passed, and VIT had her last Sunday morning today at Lilliput St Gulliver and Laputa St Lindalino – her placement parish. What with having a non-operational right leg youngest VKIT and I had to get a lift with one of the parishioners to get to the second service this morning. Youngest VKIT cooperated with helping with intercessions when he could be prised away from his Nintendo DS. Earlier she had been at the other church in the parish where the snowdrops were completely spectacular.

The parish were delightful, presenting VIT with a card and flowers, and then praying for us all.

So far, looking on the bright side is working.

And in this breathless race that is ordination training, she’s off to the East End of London for Easter. What with a mining village and an agricultural community, this is a varied series of placements.

I still haven’t worked out where the rest of family belong in all this, but I dare say that will come.

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I drank coffee and it was good

husband — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:40:06 +0000

The first posting on this blog concerned coffee and the likelihood of my drinking coffee with the Coverdale Hall wives and husbands. Well, I didn’t envisage six weeks off on crutches at that point, so yesterday I went to my first coffee morning. Ever. In my life.

And jolly good were the coffee, cakes and company. Thank you to the host and the company. And my “taxi” driver who once owned an Austin Maxi.

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For now we see through a glass, darkly

husband — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:20:28 +0000

Some years ago I played bass in an ad-hoc worship band. We had a curmudgeonly but inspirational drummer called Bob, who was immensely good fun to make music with. We would each get asked to read bible passages from time to time, and on one occasion the task fell to Bob who, it turned out, had left his glasses at home. So he had to hold the bible as far away from him as he could in order to focus. Inevitably the passage was 1 Corinthians 13:12 “For now we see through a glass*, darkly…” which he read slowly and falteringly since he could hardly see the words. Hold that picture in your mind.

Apart from a few blips, being at Coverdale Hall has been pretty positive for VIT so far. She’s with a great group of people, the lectures are mostly good, she loves the pattern of morning worship, the evening Eucharists are wonderful. She’s learning lots about things she’s never done, as well as more about things she was already pretty competent in. As oldest VKIT would say: “It’s all good.”

In the light of that it may seem odd that I have struggled to see the brighter side of it at times. After years of waiting for this, and huge excitement when it all finally was going ahead, now the reality – which in detail are a whole bunch of things which are neither interesting or any one’s business except mine – has rather got hold of me and rendered me something of a miserable bugger about the whole thing.

On reflection – which always happens too late at night but maybe that’s when one’s guard is down – this has to be a shame. A shame for VIT and the rest of us.

So, as well as giving up walking for Lent (knee operation) I have decided a few days into Lent that regarding that darkly seen glass as half full rather than half empty would be a good thing. So far I have managed to do that about being on crutches, so maybe I can do it about being a VHIT as well.

* I know that “glass” in the KJV really refers to a mirror – as in Looking-Glass – but it spoils the story and the point of this post. So please bear with the pragmatism

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Parties in Breweries

admin — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 20:59:15 +0000

There’s a well known phrase about those who can not organise parties in breweries. The observant amongst you might have noticed from earlier posts on this blog that I have formed a less than favourable opinion of the ability of certain parts of the Church of England to manage anything.

So it was with great delight that I listened to VIT telling me about the Management Module she has just been doing on the MA part of her training. Our conversation sparked all sorts of interesting ideas, not only for VIT’s future management style, but for the company of which I’m a director as well. Issues of power, authority and control, and who exercised which and in what way, and how are they linked.

I’m genuinely reassured that this part of the C of E is taking these things seriously.

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Mountain tops and washing up

admin — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:05:37 +0000

I missed last week’s VFIT support group’s curry night, going instead a High School Musical Evening. That is, an evening of music at the High School which oldest VKIT attends, as opposed to an evening of Disney’s High School Musical. Thankfully. And it was great; shame about the curry though.

Anyway, this week I shall, as often happens, be away for the Wednesday evening support group get together. Which is something of a relief, since it’s a communion service. Now, this seems to me like something of a busman’s holiday. Our spouses are training to be vicars, some of us go to unfamiliar placement churches at weekends, (and even get used as props in sermons) and for relaxation, one option is more of the same.

I find my reaction to this somewhat concerning. If my wife is training to be a vicar, shouldn’t I like going to church? Wouldn’t it help? Well, aside from the fact that my Myers-Briggs type is apparently pathologically opposed to going to church, the more serious response to this is to ask why?

In Chester P Michael and Marie C. Norrisey, Prayer and Temperament (Charlottesville, VA: Open Door, 1991) these two look at Myers Briggs types and attitudes to church. One sentence grabbed me when it said that those with “S” and “F” combinations were characterized as being free, unconfined, compulsive, not tied down by rules, loving action and crisis-oriented. It goes on to say this combination “combines an active view of God speaking in creation through the senses with a need for other-centered action and acts of service.” Gosh – maybe this is why I have frequently felt much closer to God when on a mountain top (or washing up) than in church, and maybe it goes some way to explaining why sitting in a pew on a Wednesday night does not hugely appeal. With that in mind there are a couple of photos in this post, each of which is clickable to get to a larger version of the same.

Ah well, back to comforting VIT who is suffering from a surfeit of Christmas Carol Services (including the college one tonight) when she’d much rather be contemplating ADVENT, which of course, it still is.

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Ground meat formed in a casing traditionally made from intestine

husband — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:31:17 +0000

Imagine a Tesco supermarket fifteen years ago, or maybe Gateway, Hinton’s, or Fine Fare. Now think of yourself next to the sausage counter. You might have found two or three different varieties, maybe thick or thin, and maybe 6 or 12 in a pack. But that’s about it. Now think about what’s needed to make those sausages. You only need one set of raw ingredients, and some wide sausage skin, and some narrow sausage skin. Pretty simple business then.

Go this week to any supermarket, farmers’ market – maybe even a butcher – and the number of varieties is only exceeded by coffee combinations in Starbucks. The sausage industry has diversified: there are mass produced sausages, hand made sausages, long sausages, short ones, Finest sausages, Taste the Difference sausages, chilli and beef sausages, cranberry and venison sausages and so on. Although (to be fair) you can probably make these all in the same machine, the ingredients vary wildly, and so do the resulting sausages.

I am increasingly convinced that most parts of the C of E recruitment and training machine – the system - can really only cope with recruiting, making and using standard sized and flavoured sausages, which is unfortunate if you want to be a sausage, but don’t quite fit the standard recipe (i.e. male, under 30, no kids, little experience in doing the kinds of things you might have to do once ordained.) I used the word system deliberately. In this context I mean a construct put together with the best of intentions which attains a life of its own, is hard to change, and risks failing to serve both the purpose for which it was intended and the values with which it was created. Individual components of the system can still be profoundly good, and some individuals may have a good experience of the system, but taken as a whole, it does not seem to be set up for variety or with imagination. There is no one accountable person or body looking at the whole system. Things (and people) fall through the cracks, and it’s no one’s job to sort it.

A system built to make interesting sausages – to take the raw ingredients – the skills, the talents, learning, life experience as well as the hurts, foibles and tender areas, would say “wow, what an amazing sausage we could make out of this.”

But my observation so far is that it can’t do this: MinDiv centrally, Bishops, DDOs, Selectors, PTE advisors and training courses are either too knackered, too poor, too scared or too busy to make interesting sausages. The system would much rather have safe sausages.

Of course, I must not forget the ultimate creativity and integrity of the Holy Spirit. But He works through humans and the systems they create, and I can’t help thinking that at times the system makes that really really hard. What can be done? An integrated system with a compelling vision in which everyone involved was treated as an equal would be a good start, since that would respect all the ingredients of the sausage to be, and that includes their families too.

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Advancing with Plasticine

husband — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:33:19 +0000

VIT is away on a retreat. (In a few weeks I’m going on a retreat too. Except that the dynamo that is leading it for our company says he does not “retreat” and so we are having a “Company Advance.”)

Anyway, VIT is on retreat, and so today the wonderful people from the spouses group laid on a bring and share lunch which was a relief on both the catering and childcare front. This was no soggy quiche experience. The stew and the puddings were fab. Smallest VIT ate a full portion of both. One marvellous person spent almost her whole lunchtime painting an inexhaustible line of small children, including smallest VKIT who now has a Liverpool logo on one hand and Toon Army stripes on the other.

Various absent spouses had communicated from the diocesan advance house is the wilds of the countryside. Some have texted, at least one has managed a Facebook status update. (I think he’s the one with the turbocharged telephone, since all the others claim the signal is awful.) There has evidently been some serious late night whisky drinking (I like to imagine them at 2 in the morning deciding to invade Scotland even though they claim to have been praying for each other) – and lots of intense stuff about their vocation and future plans.

It’s an odd business this vicar factory. Church of England training uses the word “formation” a lot. Are they are being “formed” like Plasticine into a C of E mould like the familiar character opposite? I don’t think so, but there’s something a bit disturbing about the term. Some of the VITs are single, some just married, others like us have been married for longer than most life sentences. I’ve known my VIT for more than half my life. It’s quite easy to slip into fearing that this formation process risks forming them into a shape you don’t know any more, and I think they fear this too at times. Except that the end result is something they believe and feel called to in an inexplicable and inescapable fashion. So this should actually help them become more perfectly formed. Let’s hope Coverdale Hall takes care of them during the moulding and that they all end up with as much of a smile as Morph.

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Lilliput St Gulliver with Laputa St Lindalino

husband — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:11:51 +0000

Part of VIT’s training is to go to a parish not too far from Coverdale Hall. There she has to take part in services and generally muck in. She’s going to a Saturday breakfast club next week, with a Speaker.

Of course there are almost as many different flavours of local church as there are milk and coffee combinations at Starbucks. In VIT’s case there are two parishes together in the usual incomprehensible Church of England formula which results in a parish called Lilliput St Gulliver with Laputa St Lindalino. (This same formula brought a friend of ours recently, newly instituted as parish priest, to post onto his Facebook status “I’m wondering how I ended up with 2 parishes but eight churchwardens.”)

Anyway, VIT has nice parishes to go to, although not hugely provided with children’s ministry. So the conundrum is, do I, as VHIT go and support my VIT with the VKITs (what a great sentence that is) or do we stay in our home church, in which the youngest VKIT, at least, is well established?

For some families who’ve moved to this little northern city far away, maybe it’s less complicated. The VIT has a placement parish, and families can go too, especially if there are small VKITs and a crèche. But for us it’s more of a conundrum. I have to confess to finding some experiences of church rather unfulfilling, but the one we go to close to home hits a few spots, and it seems odd to go somewhere else. Except that VIT is going somewhere else.

We’ve been a couple of times to the placement parish, and everyone treated us really nicely, almost as if we were the bright shiny “new young family with children” (even though I’m 46, I’m still one of the youngest there), but also as if we were going to be staying. Which, of course, we’re not. VIT is there to get trained and then to go on somewhere else. So if we go, we go….. because…. well… because it’s good to support the “other half” and when I go to a Sunday Eucharist, I quite like going to church with the person I’ve been married to for very nearly half my life.

But I think for me a major part of belonging to a church is belonging to a community. A flawed mixed up, messy, sometimes belligerent community, but a community nonetheless. And of course we have no intention whatsoever of having a long term relationship with the community of Lilliput St Gulliver with Laputa St Lindalino.

I’m still mulling on this…..

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Welcome to the Machine

husband — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:04:24 +0000

I shared a room at school with someone who introduced me to the delights of Pink Floyd. It was around about the time they released “Wish you were here“. One of the songs is called Welcome to the Machine:

“Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
What did you dream?
It’s alright we told you what to dream.”

It feels a bit like we’re on that machine this week: oldest VKIT is back from a school trip, exhausted. Middle one is seeing his friends and watching Japanese Anime cartoons on the internet and youngest (being of an “EP” Myers-Briggs disposition) wants friends around, and new experiences all the time. Meanwhile, college continues as if the world outside were a separate place.

VIT is feeling strangely displaced: normally she’d have done her day and a half at work in half term week, and then would have been largely free to be with the kids for the rest of the week. In fact her college timetable is heavily loaded towards the same days that she used to work, so in some ways not much has changed. But there is no let up in the obligation to eat 8 meals a week, attend 5 morning chapel services, Tuesday evening service, lead Evensong, preach on Sunday (twice), and the Bishop coming in so you have to be there, and so on.

Meanwhile if VHIT doesn’t go to work, he doesn’t earn any money. So I am going away at the end of the week, to coincide with VIT’s less obliged time. What with some very nice time with friends over the weekend, together with Sunday lunch at the placement vicar’s house (will youngest VKIT eat any food, will the two VKITs manage not to fight each other, will the youngest one get savaged by the vicar’s large dog or vice-versa) and taking the chance to see the family of one of the VKITs home for half term, VIT and I are feeling rather deprived of time together.

Time even to sort out how we negotiate the next few weeks of juggling, let alone remember why we got married in the first place.

The first line of “Welcome to the Machine” seems very apt. The next blog will be about the second line.

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It takes me back, and confuses me…

husband — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:51:02 +0000

I had a surreal experience last night.

We went for tea (that’s an evening meal to anyone southern reading this) in Coverdale Hall. A pretty decent mass produced steak and ale pie with some very oddly textured mashed potato (I think there was wallpaper paste in it) followed by some kind of pudding with warm lumpy custard. The latter landed like a brick in my stomach about five minutes after leaving the dining room. But hey, it was food and none of us had to buy it, cook it or do the washing up.

That wasn’t the surreal experience though.

I sat there with VIT and one of her colleagues, a former air traffic controller with some great stories to tell, judging by the “737 nearly lands on a Chinook” one. Opposite was my 15 year old VKIT and next to me, wriggling almost continually except when he was running up and down the dining room, was the 7 year old one.

Now, I am used to VKIT talking about essays she has to write, deadlines she mustn’t miss, deadlines she nearly missed, deadlines she has missed (exceptionally rarely) and so on. She sometimes comes home with her friends, and like any GCSE student, discusses schoolwork with her friends.

What was surreal about last night was that my wife was doing this. She and ATC person were discussing the mission essay, when it had to be in, how long it was, which books they had to read and so on. THIS IS NOT NORMAL. THIS IS WHAT SCHOOLCHILDREN AND STUDENTS DO. Ah yes, but my wife is a VIT and therefore this is normal.

Weird though, because I last heard her saying these kinds of things more than 20 years ago, and that was when she had a notice above her desk that said “Have you done your Greek today”…

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