But here we are, just three weeks away from the big day, and an opportunity to look back over 20 months or so at Coverdale.  I am sure she’s learned a lot, but what have I learned about being a VHIT?

I have learned that being a vicar is not a normal job - it demands odd things of the person doing the job, at odd times of day. It demands that everything she does is mediated by belief or faith and a way of living which is 24/7.  In so many ways that’s no different from simply being a Christian, except that much of what she will be doing will be done in the public domain.  And that expectation, and the training for it, has an impact on the vicar and their families that is greater than a “normal” job.  None of that is necessarily good or bad. It is just a thing.

I have learned that the church is very trying, and trying hard. There appears to be a genuine attempt to accommodate the needs of families, at least in some dioceses and by some people. This need has a different priority in different places, and depending very much on the bishops, selectors, DDOs and college staff that the trainees interact with.

I have learned that the process of finding a curacy stinks, even if the outcomes are often surprisingly good. I have written about this before, but I still feel pretty scarred by the whole business and it’s left me needing to remind myself that the individuals involved in the shittier bits of the process are also people whom God loves, because I find it pretty hard to love them.  And I need to remind myself that maybe there are good outcomes from the shitty bits of the process which I am yet to see or understand.  I still maintain that the process could be much better, much less linear, much less secretive and patrician. It’s no way to treat grown ups or their families.

I have learned that I have a pretty bipolar attitude towards change: sometimes I find it really exciting, and at others I find it profoundly anxiety provoking, especially when the change is outside my control. (See paragraph above)

I have leaned that, if VIT’s colleagues at college are anything to go by, then the future of the Church in this country is in pretty good shape. VIT has had a fabulous, ecclectic and diverse group of people with whom to train. Of course there are some whom she (and I) have become closer friends with than others.  There are no doubt people there who will eventually become bishops and deans, while others will spend their lives in parish ministry.  But the energy and passion to tell the transforming story of the carpenter from Nazareth is writ large in everyone. I am proud and genuinely honoured and privileged to have had the chance to meet every one of them and their diverse families.  (And the youngest VKIT has found the ready made community of adults and children an immensely attractive and “safe” place to be.)

And now back to the title of this post.  As they used to say on the fabulously branded Great North East Railway “this is the  last and (tautologous) final stop.”

However, just as a train pulls out of the station to begin its travelling again less than an hour later, so the end of the Coverdale Hall leg of this journey does not mark the end of this blog.  There’s now two and a half weeks of a slightly strange limbo, followed by ordination, followed by three years of curacy.  The Vicar is still in training, and so is her family.

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There is a real sense in which you are being asked to give up control of aspects of your life.   Things like where you might live and work; who owns and manages the house in which you might live, which church you attend, where your children go to school, the days and months in which you might take your holidays, and a bundle of other things. All are up for grabs, or uncertain at least.

What follows may sound like special pleading, but I recently read a PhD thesis by Sarah-Jane Page who’s a researcher in the Social Policy department at the University of Nottingham.  She looked at women clergy with children, and at non-ordained husbands of clergywomen.  In the case of the latter she identifies some of this loss of control as especially counter-cultural for the men involved, since it challenges their sense that these are the things that the man “is supposed to provide” for his family.

Now I am more of a “new man” than some: I can do an entire load of washing and ironing, I do collect my small child from school and I can shop and cook the tea, amongst other things. (I’m also very good at pastry.) I won’t deny though that the domestic management load falls more on VIT than me.

Anyway, what I’m saying is that I am not a classic “alpha male.” Nevertheless I could really connect with Dr Page’s observations that deep in the male psyche somewhere is a voice that says it’s his job to provide for his family.  And the lack of control about “what next?” in terms of where, in what, and how we live is a challenge to that voice which goes very deep.  This must be true for men becoming curates too, but the loss of control is more complete where the interface for such negotiations as are possible is not direct but through your spouse. (No one core to this process has directly asked the future vicar’s husband what he thinks, it’s all done through the ordinand.)

Then there’s the faith part which says “trust God.”  I think have found few things since becoming a Christian 34 years ago which have stretched me more than this.  If this is God’s voice saying “trust me” and “in what do you find your security?” then it’s a good thing to listen.

But how do I work out if it’s God?

And isn’t this a rather similar question to that asked by the ordinand before they go for selection?

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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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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.

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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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