You will endure...

Here is the desktop image for Thursday 29 April, verse from Ps 102. Back to Lyotard, Foucault and Derrida... And thinking about what to do for the all-age service I've picked up at my home church for 22 April. And the sermon I've volunteered for in St Albans Diocese the following Sunday, Vocations Sunday. And the dissertation. Perhaps a glass of wine first...

The Present is a gift...

My penultimate term at Ridley ended on Thursday and the coming Easter term will seem even shorter than it usually does. And as usual I have lots to write over the vacation, partly self-imposed this time as I intend to get the one essay due this semester done and dusted to leave the Easter term in which to get the most of the work on the dissertation done and a good draft prepared. The MA in Pastoral Theology costs about 40,000 words one way or another. In the three years I’ve been here there’s only been one vacation out of a total of eight in which I haven’t done some work, and that was really only because I wasn’t an ordinand then. Good job that I like writing.
This Sunday will be the last at my attachment church, and I am leading the service. It’s been a good place to be and I will miss the people, who have been gracious and welcoming. Not so the lack of heating…I have become used to seeing my breath in front of me when preaching or leading. Thank goodness it is a church where the clergy robe up. Although I have a sneaky feeling that one at least of the three churches I am going to might be similarly challenged.
And Sunday will be extra-busy this week as a member of our particular sermon class preaches at an 8 am BCP service to the north of Cambridge, and I have to be at my attachment to the southwest of Cambridge by about 9 am – breakfast is an interesting idea, given that my attachment church doesn’t have a loo. Add the rehearsal and performance of the Brahms ‘German Requiem’ by the Cambridge Philharmonic Society and another sermon class assessment at 5 pm – plus the loss of an hour for the clocks going forward for British Summer Time. So…early to bed this evening, I think.

The Future is rapidly becoming the Present. Ordination is 3 months and 1 week away, and paperwork arrives frequently from the Diocese. This morning it’s the third set of CRB forms that I have been asked to complete in three years. Yesterday it was something about stipend, and last week a very welcome email telling me what work the Diocese will do on the vicarage, which is most of what needs doing. I expect the request for various evidences of baptism and so on soon. And I’ve been told that the details about the ordination will be sent out shortly. Meanwhile I have already – poor, sad person that I am – sorted out somewhere for people supporting me to gather after the ordination service. How to reconcile this with living in the Now…?

Father of all mercies...

Today was the last time this term that we met together as a college for Morning Prayer. And it was a Morning Prayer that many of us will remember, I suspect. It was a peripatetic service, starting in the bright sun and keen wind on the new front steps. Led by the Principal, the Opening Prayer prayed for all coming into the college and going out over the steps. We also prayed for the skill and well-being of those who made the steps. And sang. Then round to the new bike sheds behind the Chapel. Here we heard the Word of God in the shape of Psalm 136, adapted for the occasion, including some memorable lines. After giving thanks to God for all sorts of things in the words of the psalmist, we gave thanks for God (responsorily by half verse for the technically minded reader):

‘Who cares for all our needs
for his mercy endures for ever
and provides means to travel the city,
for his mercy…
Two-wheeled contraptions for us to ride.
for his mercy…
Bicycles for lower CO2 emissions in the air.
for his mercy…
And bikesheds to keep them dry at night,
for his mercy…
Perspex and metal to please the eye,
for his mercy…
Special lights to keep the riff-raff away,
for his mercy…
Next to the Chapel to remind us to pray
for his mercy....’

The service continued with a Prayer for grace – when cycling, adapted from one of Cranmer’s prayers. Thankfully for those who had forgotten that Morning Prayer was outside, we moved into the Chapel and continued more conventionally in the warm.

It had its moments and I had to check that it wasn’t actually 1 April. Helpfully I was reminded by a tutor that we are all fools for Christ even if it was still March. But it was a good service. We remembered Thomas Cranmer and all that he did for the Church. And, in the tradition of Cranmer, the liturgy showed that you can be creative within the framework and be relevant to today’s needs. I think that Cranmer was smiling this morning.

What we didn’t know when we were round the back of the bikesheds was that one of our ordinands had come off his bike on the way to college…

I keep watch...

Here's today's desktop image from Psalm 102 - just because I like it.