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Posted by husband March 3 2010 | Tags: moaning, optimism | | 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
Posted by husband February 17 2010 | Tags: holidays, MinDiv, work, work-life balance | | Last week at General Synod there was a discussion on clergy pay, conditions, disciplinary procedures, performance management and so on. Issues which have dogged public sector organisations for the last 10 to 15 years. In the NHS the conversation was called “Agenda for Change” while in higher education it was called “Role Evaluation” and a “Single Pay Spine.” At Synod someone made the radical suggestion that clergy should have two days off each week. I have to confess that I hadn’t quite clocked that VIT was heading for an employment arrangement which requires six days a week, even though I’m fully aware that weddings happen on Saturdays and you can’t predict when you need to run a funeral. It’s one of those things where you have all the available information but you haven’t quite processed it properly (or if you have, you’ve done so and filed it somewhere inaccessible.) I’m also aware that I don’t work regular hours, nor regular days and that I’m away from home a great deal.
However, the church believes that, in giving clergy six weeks off each year (two of those weeks are usually taken immediately after Christmas and Easter) it is compensating a six-day week workload with a relatively generous holiday entitlement. In fact the holiday entitlement is only 7% more generous than the statutory minimum (from which the church is in fact exempt.)
 There is a national problem with workaholic clergy who end up overtired and burnt out. A friend of mine who did some research in Northern Ireland with nonconformist ministers found that 10% of them were leaving the church each year for this reason.
At times, College seems to reinforce this – indeed the philosophy appears to be “you’re going to have to work like this once you’re ordained so you might as well learn how to do it now.” Theological Colleges are only servants of the Regional General Managers (sorry, Bishops) and the central Ministry Division, so they are limited to at least an extent in their flexibility. But I wonder how it would be if the philosophy changed to “it’s really important you have time to think, recuperate, read, pray – and maybe even play.” This week is College Reading Week – in many ways an attempt to do this. But it’s also half term for our three children and Ash Wednesday and although there is more flexibility than usual, it’s clear that this is not a week off. And although college holidays are quite long, six weeks of placements and essays have to be fitted into them
Life is complicated: the juggle between VIT’s course, the need to earn a living, the need (and desire) to spend time with the children and each other sometimes seems hard and it’s difficult to get the balance right, and even harder to know if you are.
Posted by admin January 24 2010 | Tags: management | | 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.
Posted by admin December 8 2009 | Tags: church, family | |  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.
Posted by husband December 1 2009 | Tags: MinDiv, training | | 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.
Posted by husband November 26 2009 | Tags: integrity, openness, vision | |  I have left VIT at home with the family to come away with our company to a remote part of Scotland. We are having what would normally be called a retreat, but since Michael Wolff, one of our facilitators, does not do “retreats”, this is a Company Advance. We are here to work out “Who we are” and “What are our values and our qualities.”
Michael has written a pamphlet entitled “You are a towel.” His premise is that if you go to a hotel and the towel in the bathroom is dirty you will blame the hotel. Then you will see everything else that is wrong with the hotel, the city and maybe even the country. You form opinions, unaware that all the way along you are editing them and making subconscious assumptions about everything else connected with that towel. However much the hotel might claim to be interested in customer satisfaction, if the towel is dirty and no-one is bothered, then you know the claim is rubbish. The vision and the practice do not coincide.
He then suggests that in our organisations, each of us is like a towel. The values and qualities each of us brings to our organisation have a huge impact on the organisation and on perception of the organisation. If that perception is not glorious, then what can be done? The solution, Michael argues, is not to sort the towel, since there will always be another dirty towel. Instead he argues it’s the vision and value of the organisation which needs to be understood and shared by and with all the people in the organisation. ‘Passionate companies engage everyone involved in their organisation by inspiration. Everyone knows that they are the company…. there are no bits or parts of the company, and no unimportant people. They have moved from “top-down” fragmented organisations to “centre-out” holistic ones.’ That’s what our little firm is – imperfectly – aiming for too. This way, even if the towel is occasionally dirty, the ethos shines through, and the dirty towel is forgiven for being dirty, because you understand how that happened, and anyway, someone will care enough to sort it out.
The Church’s ethos – its value statement – is surely the command to love God and to love one another. Without this, everything else is pointless. But so far, my perception is that there are a lot of dirty towels in the C of E priestly recruitment process through which VIT has travelled so far, the system is very poor at working out whether or not they are dirty, (despite the perception created) and has little idea how to clean them if it wanted to. This suggests to me that the vision and the practice are some way apart. What has Mr Wolff to say about this?
“If you don’t see consistent experiences, clarity and integrity, you are not realising your full potential….”
So there is work to be done: a start might be for this organisation, the Church, to have recruitment, training and personnel placement and management processes characterised by consistency, clarity and integrity. If Michael is right (and I think he is) then this should give us something to pray for.
And, by the way, the towels in the remote house we are staying in on the Cowal Peninsula are excellent.
Posted by husband November 20 2009 | Tags: authority, obedience, power | | 
When VIT and I got married she promised to Love, Honour and Obey me. (Yeah, don’t laugh but she did, wearing her red shoes and looking fabulous.) I had just promised to Love, Honour and Worship her. Whether or not you like the idea of a woman promising to obey her husband, there is a mutuality about this promise – she has to obey me  – but I have to worship her. Hold on to that thought for a moment.
No one tells you when your other half becomes a VIT quite how much control is surrendered. Their own control over their life, and the VFITs over theirs. It’s partly practical – “you shall be at Morning Prayer” – but that’s really only a sign of something much bigger.
When someone is ordained (or when they’re licenced as a reader) they have to promise to obey their bishop “in all things lawful and godly.” Most parts of the church take this promise very seriously indeed. This requirement for obedience appears to extend to ordinands too, although VIT (as an ordinand) has never formally had to swear any oath of obedience.
So, here’s a question. Has the church thought about the mutuality of this obedience? Will the church, and its leaders in particular, worship their ordinands in return?
Posted by husband November 19 2009 | Tags: power, training, vocation | |  I’ve been trying to write a blog about vocation, interference, arrogance, uninformed decisions relayed by third parties, complete lack of negotiation on the part of someone who does not know all the facts and can’t be bothered to find out. And then I gave up since saying what I actually think at the moment would probably not be politically advisable. I have therefore suppressed myself – at least a bit.
Back to Pink Floyd again: Dark Side of the Moon this time.
“I’ve always been mad,
I know I’ve been mad, like the most of us are…
very hard to explain why you’re mad,
even if you’re not mad…”
If accused of being mad, it’s just as hard to explain that you are not mad, since trying to prove it only underlines your need to prove you are not mad, which must mean you are mad.
This is directed at the C of E, not Coverdale Hall by the way. They’re mostly still wonderful.
Posted by admin November 12 2009 | Tags: trains, work | | I have perhaps already alluded to the logistical challenge of being a VFIT. Many people have jobs which take them away from home, and many of those have both partners doing full time jobs. So we are by no means unique. But VIT and I are renegotiating the way we interact with each other over diaries – it’s not easy but I think it will be OK. In fact I think it may end up better than before.
 A related aside: if there can be such a thing. The government is taking our local railway company back into public ownership on Friday night (the 13th…). I think that this will be a good thing, although it does mean new ties for the staff, new logos, trains and stations will need repainting again etc etc. But in case the new company decided to take away the online booking thing, I thought I should look up how much I have spent on train fares in the last 18 months. A shocking £12,690. I wonder how much of the next lot will be spent on new ties.
Posted by husband November 7 2009 | Tags: calling, spouse | | 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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