Vicar's Family in Training » family

This is the last and final stop; all change please

admin — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 22:25:54 +0000

Today is VIT’s last day at Coverdale Hall. It seems an long time ago that she started the fairly surreal process of becoming a vicar. Indeed, it is a generation ago that she first offered the church her services – if the church had said “yes” then at that time she would not have been ordained, but simply licensed as a Deaconess.

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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Spot the difference

husband — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:42:38 +0000

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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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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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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Becoming a Vicar’s Family in Training

husband — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:33:18 +0000

Ever since I’ve known the Vicar in Training (VIT for short) she’s wanted to be a priest – no, more than that – she’s felt this inexplicable “call” to priesthood. It won’t go away. If she’d been applying for any other job she’d have told the Church of England to get stuffed long, long ago. But God is more persisent than that. So finally, 25 years after we met, and 22 after we married, she’s an Ordinand. This means she’s training to be a priest, and that means that the rest of us; husband, three kids, a dog and a cat are the Vicar’s Family in Training – or VFIT for short. (Actually that’s the registration of one of Richard Branson’s planes – but aviation can wait till later.) It’s going to take some adjustment, practically and emotionally.

The kind people at the training college – let’s call it Coverdale Hall – have arranged a thing for spouses (I guess there aren’t too many unmarried partners…) and in some cases their multiple and quite often small children. But as a forty-something male with a job which requires being away a lot I am not sure that a coffee morning with small kids (been there, done that, love that my children are growing up) or a morning Bible Study is going to do it for me. But that’s not to diss the idea completely. This, the welcome dinner, the fact that families can eat in college any time and for no extra charge, and the evening the college laid on explicitly for spouses, all adds up to the most pastorally sensitive things any church body formally involved in this process has done to this VHIT (work it out) for some time. So, initial reaction is BIG TICK TO COVERDALE HALL.

Tomorrow begins a new test: I’m away for nearly 48 hours for work. Can the VIT and the VKITs (I’m sure you can work that one out too) cope? I’m quite sure they can, but the logistics and the emotions are different to when VIT was simply at work.

And I’m genuinely grateful for the invitation to the coffee morning. Honest.

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