Here’s an updated version of one of those, except that we have two ordinands instead of [...]]]> Do you remember those “spot the difference” pictures you used to do as a child?  Two similar pictures with a number of differences, some of which were fairly obvious and usually two or three which took a while to find.

Here’s an updated version of one of those, except that we have two ordinands instead of two pictures. We still have to spot the difference between the two. We have to imagine that it is a year till ordination and conversations are beginning about where the ordinands might go to do their curacy.  You also have to bear in mind that no ordinand is permitted to look at more than one curacy at once. Nor is any vicar allowed to look at more than one curate once. Nor can an ordinand from one diocese look outside that diocese without it being “released.” Essentially this means you have irrevocable permission to bugger off.  So it is entirely possible that jobs which are geographically close by are not available because they are in a different diocese. (It’s a bit like living in Berwick-upon-Tweed and wanting to go to school in Scotland)  This is not remotely like a normal job recruitment process. It is supposed to allow for “discernment.” This may allow God into the situation, or it may just be a fancy way of dressing up an outmoded process with a spiritualised word.

Anyway, here are the two ordinands whose differences we have to spot.

Well, you might notice that one is male and the other is female. The one left is in black and white while the other is in colour. Still not got it? Perhaps you could try the thought that the man was probably inside when his photograph was taken where is the woman was outside in the country when she was painted. No, that is not it either.

You want  a clue? There are some other people in one of the pictures. Does that tell you anything? You’re getting warmer now.  yes, the female ordinand has a family (and in this case three dogs, a harp and a large Greek vase.)

So, what does this have to do with the Church of England and our two ordinands? Well, the answer of course is deployment. Who is going to find it easier to up sticks and move? No prizes for guessing.

One then has to ask whether the Church of England, or at least some bits of the Church of England, have noticed this? It sometimes feels as if they still think all their ordinands are young, single or recently married, and either childless or with preschool age children.

If the church wants to train married people with families, it has to engage with the question of whether and how to deal with the idea of moving those families around the country. It is a very long time since anyone from the dioceses asked this VHIT what he thought about this, and so far the signs that any of this is being taken into account are not very good.

Of course, in a normal job recruitment situation the occupation, ties and other factors surrounding the spouse of an applicant are strictly off-limits, and rightly so. But this is not a normal job recruitment situation.

I am hoping that God is in there somewhere.

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Anyway, this [...]]]> 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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Of course there are almost as many different flavours of local church as there are [...]]]> 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 my son, welcome to the machine. What did you dream? It’s alright we told [...]]]> 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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