Blog on retreat

No...not blogging on retreat, Heaven forbid. Although, partly because I think I am developing a reputation as someone who can not do anything without a PC, to the extent that people might not be surprised to hear that I was blogging on retreat, this blog is taking a retreat!

So imagine Re vis.e Re form on a beach somewhere, Bible in one hand, Pina Colada in the other, soaking up some rays, thinking about the next blog-post she is going to write, some day soon.

...actually my sofa and a cup of tea and a pile of books about the Bible and the Bible, more likely. 

Ay revoir til.....well, however long I can bear it, really. Never fix rules or times, too tempting to break them!

God bless, all!


Update - phuph - only 'offblog' for one week!!

man's way to freedom

'...the presence of the priest provides coherence for the community to fulfil God's purposes in the world. That is why both sexes need to be priests: the community of Christ is the foretaste of one human community in which women and men take co-equal responsibility for the life of humanity and creation.'   (R. Green, Only Connect: Worship and Liturgy from the perspective of Pastoral Care, London: DLT, 1987)
p.121)

'...women and men will only be free if it resolved. It is the issue of the images of leadership within the Church and its liturgies...It is about creating changes in the way in which God is imaged within the liturgy. Radical changes are required in the power structures and leadership of the Church if it is to be faithful to the biblical vision of the co-equality in priesthood of women and men before God (Genesis 1:27; Galatians 3:27-8). The Church talks about itself as a servant Church, but it is very difficult to detect the operational effectiveness of that theological conviction. If we are to take the image of the Body of Christ seriously, we have to examine the fact that in most churches men still hold the leadership. That usually means they also hold the power. This is focussed sharply in the leadership of the liturgy. For that reason alone some men will need to offer themselves as the servants of women in the struggle to change the icon of leadership within the Church. It is bound to be a threatening process and will be met with much resistance: "For every women who takes a step towards her own liberation, there is a man who finds the way to freedom has been made a little easier (Nancy Smith)."' (R. Green, Only Connect: Worship and Liturgy from the perspective of Pastoral Care, London: DLT, 1987, p.98)

'We must expect that women will radically change our whole symbolic grasp of leadership.' (R. Green, Only Connect: Worship and Liturgy from the perspective of Pastoral Care, London: DLT, 1987, p.99)

 

No wonder the Church is in crisis. 

I am looking at symbolism and liminality for an essay and I am beginning to understand the pain that some men (and women!) must be going through as they let go of what they have always known and imagine themselves embracing the new. Let's face it, some just will not make it. I wonder how we make it easier? Paul, of course, writes about how we 'welcome ... [and are] not to quarrel over opinions' (Romans 14). How do we square this teaching with the issue of women in the ordained and consecrated offices and reconcile ourselves to one another for Christ's sake?

Any suggestions gratefully received ;-)

Please don't go...

Flips!

Liberate the 'no' in the S N O W

In John 21, the disciples have caught nothing. All night long they have been fishing the lake to no avail. Their nets are empty, they must be exhausted. No doubt, they have a remit to fulfil. They are required to deliver their catch to the markets so that they might earn their livings and satisfy demand. How many of us in that situation would have continued to fish throughout the next day too?

But after daybreak, Jesus standing on the beach, says to them:
'Children, you have caught no fish, have you?'

We all face this at some time or another. What do we say in return? I am working on it but I am one of those people who seems to need to qualify everything. Do we not justify our failures sometimes, waffle through lengthy excuses? But look at the disciples' reply. It is a simple 'No'. This is the only word that they speak. Their next words are 'It is the Lord!' where we sense with them their relief and joy.There is something liberating about that 'No', that we too need to say this. That God can work through the 'No'. That we must admit our limitations. our seeming failures out of which God can bring fruit, or fish in this case!

After their 'No', the disciples are open to God. They are ready to rely upon him completely, they have surrendered their own determination, they are waiting on his grace, they are open to listening to him, aware that they can not do this alone and they are instructed clearly and emphatically as a consequence, no riddles here, no ambiguity, no...'take time to interpret what I mean', they are simply directed to drop their nets on the right side rather than the left of the lake.

The are obedient. They still have to work and it is still hard, but now they are working in cooperation with God. Now the nets are so heavy they can hardly lift them, there is still struggle here but it is a joyful struggle. Imagine those flapping tails, the salt-water spraying everywhere, the laughter and the abundance, for abundance is what there is.

They must have sat by that fire on the beach afterwards and counted those fish: there are 153!

Not only will they fullfil their remit for the markets, they are nourished also on the very fish they have have caught as they sit and eat with the Lord.

When we work in conjunction with the Lord, he will not leave us hungry. When we work in cooperation with the Lord, we will struggle for this is the nature of work in a fallen world but he will not leave us broken. When the disciples pull up their nets, they must have been amazed, their nets are in tact, even under the strain of such a huge quantity of fish; they are undamaged.

Sometimes we might need to say 'No' like the disciples before we can say 'Yes' to God. Sense the liberation of the 'No', where we admit our own limitations. Rather than feeling like we are letting people down, we might just wait and trust to see what God will do next. His is the plan, we are but his co-workers. His is the work but he invites us to lift the nets, his is the catch but he invites us to row with him, and we share in the feast.

In a crisis, there is the opportunity to decide, to say 'No', and 'this is outside my control', for many of us the weather will cause this crisis, something so much larger than our will and desires, our aims and agenda stands in our way, like those waters not relinquishing their fish. When we have the grace to accept, we might leave room for God to work, God might just provide the help that we need whether this be in his provision of the patience we need to relinquish our plans to him, now dashed or whether its in his provision of that directing other, 'turn your wheel, let me help guide you out, I'll clear your driveway, we'll travel together, have a lift with me' or 'today, we'll just stay home, the world will continue to turn without us...'

....and now for something completely different....ha ha ha...well, come on, we have to laugh...

H/T Iconoclast, who never fails to bring humour and wisdom to bear on issues under scrutiny here, bless him!

One very funny, and, oh can so relate....cartoon:
Funny

Caught up in church politics again but never forgetting the beauty of God

Reading around the blogosphere today and curious about 'Open-theism'. Curious partly because it throws so many people into such a stink and also because it has informed some of the second years at college when they come to writing about whether God suffers and how he allows evil to happen. So I came across a writer who is 'purging his soul, one blog at a time'. He describes his conversion to Open-theism which makes for interesting reading.

I can hear Packer and Carson and Brian MClaren arging in my head, yes, I know, I am a bit weird....but anyway, I found this reflection deeply engaging and it is always a good idea, when you dabble your toe in church politics to make sure the feet are actually soaking in something very much lovelier:

God is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Before the creation of the world, God interacted within his own persons, giving and receiving from each part in communion and unity, expressing the reality of his nature: love (1 John 4:7-11). Scholars (Jenson or Fiddes are good places to start) call this concept perichoresis: the equal interpenetration and mutual indwelling of divine persons. Trinitarian theology in this regard is still making its way into the popular religious mind. Due to subordinationism’s subtle influence on Protestant theology, perichoresis may sound strange to you...

God is “playful” in the way he relates to each person of the Trinity and how he relates to us. He’s dynamic, social, interactive, and above all, recreational. That’s the word I like to use. He draws significance from interaction and co-habitation. He seeks relationship for relationship’s sake. As such, humans, made in the image of God, are meant to be social, recreational, and interdependent upon one another as well. We are called to be more than human – we are called to be co-human: humans in communion with God and each other. That’s why God created the world – so he could interact with it, affirming its significance. God is the essence of loving community…and draws us to share in his goodness.

For the rest of the article click here.

I also want to say that if this is the God we worship and if this is true to the way that God communicates with us through Scripture, reason, tradition and experience, is this not then the same God who would want women and men to work alongside each other as servant-leaders of his church (as Bishops)?

A carefully argued letter in reply to Reform worth reading

From the CEN Thursday 18th February 2010
Peter picks up on this at Anglican Down Under and takes an interesting angle on Paul and female conservative evangelical anonymity.

In some senses the recent rise in discussion over women and the episcopate is healthy. There also seems to be more and more confident and articulate Scriptural argumentation for women's ordination and consecration being put forward.

When I first naively began to understand the debate some years ago, two things literally drove me to near despair, had it not been for wise counsel. The first was the supposition, that Ugley vicar proposes, that those women hearing God's call must be liberal when it comes to the Bible, this is just not the case. I am conservative. Trust me, it is possible, although 'post-conservative' feels more apt.

The second thing that 'did my head in' (I know, aren't these types of expressions jolly useful in these situations) was the idea that the ordaining/consecrating of women would naturally lead to the ordination/consecration of people in same-sex relationships. I will not debate the same-sex issue just here (I have elsewhere), but why should these two things be related? The arguments in scripture are completely different and speak into each case differently.

Essentially, what I am seeing gives me great hope. People are beginning to wrestle with the scriptures, as I did on this issue before saying 'yes' to God and they are bringing some very intelligent reasoning to bear on the topic. Reason it sometimes has to be to counteract all the cerebral responses to God's Holy Word, one of the problems of the Reformation as I see it. And reason is good, do not get me wrong, I have done my homework on the Logos and wisdom and Christ as God's reason, but you know what I am getting at.

The other great reason for hope, is that alongside scriptural warrant for the ordination of women, there seems to be more and more attention being given to the Holy Spirit. The letters in the CEN this week, surrounding the one I reproduce above, appeal to movements of God's Spirit too, praise God!

So ultimately Our Lord Jesus Christ, God, the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit are being considered as carefully as that one itsy bitsy teeny weeny sentence of the oft-mis-quoted and much misunderstood Spirit-filled and transformed Paul (1 Tim 2:11-15).

Hoorah!

Clayboy's reflections on mine

Soul-connections

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin  describes how "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience" 

I am doing a lot of reading at the moment about Spiritual direction.

It makes for really interesting reading. I am supposed to be concentrating on how the Eucharist is a key context for pastoral care but I keep getting side-tracked by all the other chapters in books devoted to exploring soul care.

Robin Green's 'Only Connect' is proving a good read. A little off track, I have been enjoying reading D Benner (look him up on Google books). He has a lot to say about our 'somatic-psycho-spiritual' status and the relationships that can develop between Christians as you journey alongside each other in explorations  of God.

I have also been to some 'praying using the imagination' workshops. If only I had always known that life with God was this exciting.

Since Andrew Greystone visited college, I have also been thinking about how we might further grow God's Kingdom on the web. Andrew really held my attention as he spoke about how he supposes the church can not ignore our fast-pace culture.

I am wondering about my own 'on-line life', which is hectic and fun. So, can I really think that rather than community is dying, instead, it is that people want to spend time with each other but are finding other ways to connect whether it be on the move with mobile phones and across time zones on the internet? Are we a culture threatened by individualism or a culture where continual contact has started to evolve? Is community now based on communication rather than gathering?

Dr Elaine Storkey in yesterday's CEN said 'the place of television in the lives of younger generations was shrinking as the internet took its place. Social networking sites and user-generated content media sites like YouTube were now the arena in which the Church should be concentrating on establishing itself.'

If God can reach us with the printed word (at first people struggled with tracts and pamphlets after Gutenberg, supposing that real evangelism happened from the pulpit with people present) surely his Holy Spirit can travel through our WI-FI connections, if the earth and everything in it belongs to him.

Pete Ward describes how, 'In Paul's vision of the body of Christ, unity does not arise from living in the same place; rather, it comes from a common allegiance or connection to Christ.' Pete Ward, in his book Liquid Church, does not deny that the church is the body of Christ but he also wants us to understand that the body of Christ is the Church, if you're with me, a subtle but important difference. He does not accept that church is the only way to express the corporate Christ. 

And so when we make connections with one another, we are communicating Christ, if we share and pray and enter into each others' lives. There is something quite profound about the quality of the relationship.

So as I have been reading I have been reflecting on my 'on-line' relationships and one in particular, with someone who I meet to pray with by typing prayers together, sharing experiences of the Holy Spirit and our theological education and discussing what we have seen God do that day or that week. We regret there is no accompanying cup of coffee or sharing of the peace, but it is all still very profound and deeply engaging. 

I have found a piece of writing which helps me to express some of the connectedness God is giving me to experience of late, levels of friendship I did not know were possible. 

I have adapted the following article a little because it is about the therapist and client and I think that there is a level of mutuality in relationships where Jesus is Lord that is quite exquisite. It helps me to express, from a scientific point of view, some of what I am experiencing.

From a contemporary neuroscience perspective, attachment creates a brain-to-brain bridge, a "neural WiFi" connection (Goleman, 2006). The two brains...become functionally linked--or "coupled"--crossing the barrier of skin-and-skull. Each brain is then online with respect to the other as they actively communicate and mutually influence each other. In a very real sense, the two brains become "wirelessly" connected, forming a feedback loop in which the output of the one brain becomes the input of the other's brain, and vice versa. In neural WiFi, then each brain has access to the resources of the other's--the information it processes, and the way it processes information. Becoming attached ... means, in part, that ... emotional communications are received by our brains, and translated into relational meanings through our own subsymbolic (gut level) processing (Bucci, 1997). This is, neurobiologically speaking, how we take on each other's suffering. In other words, we enter into each other's emotional range and subjective experiences, yet without losing ourselves and our own emotional range. Furthermore, .... our brains ideally have more influence, [through the Holy Spirit we]... enter into each other's emotional range. In short, attachment creates a brain linkup that in turn creates a "therapeutic brain circuit" across two brains.

Adapted from "Psychoanalysis, Attachment, and Spirituality Part I: The Emergence of Two Relational Traditions", Journal article by Todd W. Hall; Journal of Psychology and Theology, Vol. 35, 2007. 

I think that these connections happen through the power of the Holy Spirit. Relationality is at the heart of the trinity. In their perichoretic dance, God the Father, God the Son and God the holy Spirit exist in perfect communication with one another. I suspect it is this level of connectedness that we all crave with one another, with our partners, our children, our parents and our friends. We seek ultimately connection with God and love. Scripture explores relationship. God walks with the people made in his image in the coolness of the garden (Genesis 3:8). God calls Abraham and in his covenant with God all people are to be blessed (Genesis 12:2-3). God created Israel for a monotheistic relationship with himself (Deuteronomy 4:32-40). God entering our history by the incarnation and revealed immeasurable depths of love and desire for an intimate relationship with us (Matthew 1:18-23). Jesus intimately related to his disciples as vine to their branches (John 15:4). And through the giving of the Holy Spirit brings us into relationship with him too.

WOW!!

After your wisdom again

This time I am writing on pastoral care. My question is:


In what way might the worship of the church be said to be an appropriate and a key context for pastoral care?  Illustrate with special reference to the Eucharist.

I feel excited about this question. It will give me an opportunity to explore in more depth what, God willing, I might get to celebrate (oops I do mean 'preside', I humbly stand corrected, subtle but important difference - thank you) one day: the Lord's Supper.

I am going to look at 'Mass Culture' and the postmodern response in a book edited by Pete Ward, whose 'Liquid Church' helped me present on 'Growing God's kingdom on the web' at BAP. I like his stuff.

Bits of several Grove booklets I have photocopied are proving useful.

I need to consider Lake's pastoral cycle and models proposed by Clebsch and; Jaekle, so I better get researching.

I also need to be able to talk about liminality.

Reflecting on personal experience, I will consider how profoundly moving it has been to offer the sacraments to the sick on hospital placement. It has changed the way I feel about this ritual.

I will consider privately how growing up with Catholic parents-in-law (I met my husband at 16) and my own evangelical Anglican faith have shaped my response to the eucharist over time.

Most importantly I need to consider how in itself this liturgical celebration can be a place of pastoral encounter and healing. What does it say about God's people individually and corporately and the Son he sent to save us?

Any thoughts or book recommendations would be appreciated. Thank you.

Losing 'troublesome extremists'?

I have received the latest update from REFORM on the Women Bishops situation and their threat to deprive the church of their support, particularly their financial support (well, there's a surprise!). I was about to reflect on the content of their letter but scoured the web first to see that Peter Kirk has written an analysis in my stead, so without further ado, I shall point you in his direction.

I am rather more hopeful than he is at the beginning of his analysis because I do not think that a large portion of the evangelical wing of the church will jump ship if women are consecrated. I attend an evangelical theological training college (pretty conservative, on the whole) and evangelicalism seems to be alive and kicking and open to servant-leadership from both genders.

By the end of Peter's analysis, I suspect that he also thinks withdrawal will be in short number and of minimal effect.  He prefers to think of those who might leave in terms of the elimination of 'troublesome extremists'.

There is certainly a level of political polemic and veiled threat that one has come now to expect from REFORM. It is easy to lose sight of the people behind the propaganda and I have had to search myself thoroughly so that I might engage with their views with a degree of openness and attentiveness, possible once I have stifled my emotions somewhat and the evangelical hermeneutic I find persuasive, the one which I think does justice to the bigger picture perspective, the over-arching narrative trajectory, Jesus and (the much misunderstood) Pauline perspective on women.

Anyway, with schism threatened, we will wait and see whether this amounts to a boulder drop displacing gallons with tidal waves to boot or a small penny dropped and lost in the murky deep, unnoticed and losing its shine, or perhaps more appropriately, if we are talking about REFORM, a penny retrieved from the lake and re-pocketed for their purposes! Roll on July!

The Church and media network guy: Andrew Greystone

We are with Andrew Greystone and looking at the creative God and the concealing and revealing God. Andrew has worked for the BBC and now works to try to integrate Church and media. He is very engaging and dynamic. He tells us about a creative theology and how all art is actually struggling to tell the truth about God's world. In television, we see people's creativity and we come to understand culture.

With Andrew, we are engaging with media in a positive way- how refreshing! We are critical but positive. Where is God in the media? The whole world belongs to him, including television. Where is he concealed/revealed?

Why do we watch TV? There are multiple reasons. We think about how we are looking for stories and commonality.

Our exposure to the media affects us.

Andrew promises us a tool for reading the meta-narrative of television and talks about David Hesslegrave, who proposes we look at the actions of the culture we are looking at and then we need to ask ourselves about the values that are driving people. From this we can identify their beliefs.

The television frames the culture in the way that the church used to. Andrew would even go as far as to say that Television frames the liturgical calendar - comic relief at Easter etc. The Synod debate on Wednesday last week was about the Church and its relationship with the media.

Andrew believes that television can help us to engage missionally. We need to understand the people we are going to be living alongside. Television tells us about ourselves and our concerns and desires.



TV is everywhere, they're watching Dallas in the most deprived slum communities of the world.

We look at the core values in "The Weakest Link", which seems so Darwinian and "Deal or No Deal'"which is much more about the corporate good. You have a powerful, paternalistic advocate in Noel Edmonds. We think about the 'God-figure' and the power dynamics. We consider the American show "Friends" - intimacy, sex, identity in one another, life is tough, we'll be there for one another.

All of this is fascinating.

The broadcast era started in 1921 when Vatican radio went on air. We are now in the digital age. Andrew will talk to us about Discipleship in a digital Culture.

Andrew looks at 'Second Life'; an alternative reality based on the creation of an Avatar who leads a parallel life, whom you become and control. We can choose and shape our identities in Second Life. We look at 'Inside life' - how in your 'off-line' life, you can communicate with an avatar in 'on-line life'. The virtual world is connected to real life with a meta mixed reality.

It is very interesting to reflect on how we do prayer, this mixed reality - we communicate with the deity!

Hey, this is getting exciting.

We think about St Pixels, the virtual church community. There are real opportunities for pastoral engagement here but we have to trust that people say they are whom they claim to be.

We look at how our on-line life is only going to increase; the television and Internet will become incorporated. We will increasingly shape television and the internet. It is governed by speed. There is a huge exponential rate of growth in that computer speeds double every two years (Moore's Law) and the size of memory doubles every eighteen months.

In ten years I will have 60 x the power in my computer. But Nano-technology is coming in and so the rate of growth is going to be much more quick than we anticipate.

There are 350 million people on Facebook. We are getting more and more adaptable to new technological advancements.

Do we see ourselves as digital natives or digital immigrants?

Interesting how we polarise - can we really say that our children do not have bedtime stories? Can we say that the television tells our children their bedtime stories? So we can not say there are no stories being accessed. Instead we have to think about who is telling the story. Emmm.

There are social networking 'second life' spaces 'Habbo Hotel. DE'  and 'Penguin Club' for children.

Wii fit was driven by the desire to make computer gaming more family/women friendly.

Advertising occurs now within the gaming environment.

Christians in the digital age
297 TV channels in the UK now.  Andrew talks about how our experiences are not richer as a consequence. There is still the propagation of a Western liberal agenda - interesting.

The internet will dominate. TV and radio will be seen as subsets of the internet, Andrew explains. Through this we have the proliferation of major brands. We are navigating through brands. Branding is very powerful - do we speak into it and adopt its techniques or stand in opposition to it, critique it, be counter-cultural? What should the Church do?

Egalitarian?
So is power being taken out of the hands of a controlling and authoritative elite? Yes, it is. The consequences are that there are questions over standards and intellectual property which are impossible to govern. Youtube will beat the hierarchies to it and show footage that they have chosen to edit. What are the driving forces? Standards are hard to maintain and much is driven by consumer capture concerns.

It would be easy for us to want to forget it all and not engage. Andrew helps to redeem all of this for us - hooray!!!!

There is a lack of authority - so we have to face this and think about how we go with it and create accountability.

We have to engage with our cyber-connected communities. Rather than lamenting a lack  of community, maybe we need a wider vision about what community is all about.

What is community? Look at this blog about the community in the Second Life Anglican Cathedral.

This is what I am most interested in - how we create authenticity. Andrew gets us to engage with the fact that we already have multiple personalities. On the web, we are to behave as we would in our off-line life. I like the Anglican blogosphere culture, which sets blogging commandments and we all declare our names and who we are.

...so much to think about

What is truth?
What does Christ's incarnation, his embodiment say about our virtual relationships?
How will the church engage with our changing culture?

Kingdom come

I have been reflecting on my hospital placement. I get into the car at about 8am on a Sunday and I drive on empty roads to the Queen's Medical Centre. There is not another car on the road and the A52 is very straight and at certain times of the year, you drive straight into the rising sun.

I have been thinking about how in many ways the Kingdom work which people associate with God is somehow an easier undertaking than other tasks, more mundane. It struck me this morning driving back home to consider all the things my husband does on a Sunday morning to enable me to do this, as he looks after our two young children.

At the hospital, I collect people for church. We keep picking up slips for random wards which we visit with a wheelchair so that we can take people to chapel. The service is broadcast on the hospital radio for people who can not attend. After the service, I visit people on the Gynacology ward. I walk from bed to bed pulling up a chair here and there with people who don't mind my dropping by. All these people with their stories... I have met with confusion, sadness and desperation but not bitterness or cynicism, yet. In some ways I am surprised and in some ways I am not.

I find I am faced with the very uniqueness of each person, assumptions are blasted away if you ask questions. I am collecting narratives in my head. I was there with E as she ran for buses in her youth to the factory where she replaced the springs on the bobbin machines, I can see L's three handsome Italian sons in my imagination and the wives that she has welcomed into her home. B's mind had convinced her that she had not a single relative in the whole world until the small fluffy elephant clutching the word 'Nana' on her bedside cabinet demonstrated otherwise. It must have been someone else's she convinced herself as she kissed it repeatedly, asking me if I knew those people (the nursing staff) and were they my family?

D had come in for a fall and been told she had cancer and felt guilty that she kept crying. M had been moved for causing a nuisance on the ward and seemed to drift in and out of consciousness as I spoke to her. We spoke about crisps...yes just crisps and what flavours she liked and the view from her window and she smiled about the yellow walls and the space she had since they had moved her... and the view, tower blocks! But what a fabulous view! C lifted her legs with such finesse and speed as the nurse's broom came near, she revealed a dexterity about which she was proud and we spoke about her keep-fit regime, Peter her budgie who likes to watch TV, and how she really had not been out in years and sometimes just goes to bed in the middle of the day.

It is not difficult to see these women, more often than not in their seventies and eighties, as teenagers, mothers and then middle-aged. Children have grown-up and husbands have died and as the years have passed their worlds seem to have shrunk.

On my way back home, I ask that I might help God's Kingdom to come back in my world. Life has gone on as normal without me. I arrive home alone for half an hour, pyjama bottoms litter the hall, thrown off in a hurry as the kids have got dressed downstairs for church. There is a chicken and some potatoes already cooking in the oven and I will prepare vegetables as my husband and the children come back from swimming lessons.

I put it all out on the table as they bustle through the door, patience with one another frayed, hungry and cold with dripping wet chlorine hair. But I am struck by all the colour and energy here. Children with tempers and pink cheeks, noise and mess and busyness. And here is the test...here is the mundane and ordinary, nothing heroic about the tasks here...dinner time, bath time, squabbles to sort out, hair to dry and games to referee, budgets to balance and forward-planning for the week ahead to negotiate. And in many ways it is harder than anything I have done in the hospital.

Glimpses of life beyond and within college

This week has been an emotional roller-coaster, from feeling like I was going to explode on Monday to implode by Thursday, it sure ain't dull.

Every time I think that I have buried the voice in me that wants to speak out and up for women, she is encouraged to breathe again. I wonder how long I will fight and try to suffocate this call and I wonder how the voice will be heard, I mean, really, not just virtually here and apologetically at college. Maybe I will just always sit with this restlessness and that is what life in the Church of England will be like. Rosie Ward is doing a lot of work at CPAS on Growing Women Leaders and has a book of the same title, which is definitely worth a read.

This week I have met two very different women who speak into the gender issues that afflict our planet and they do raise the issues that affect women rather than men. That is their call. Elaine Storkey provided us with horrifying statistics regarding female abuse and oppression the world over and Michelle Guinness encouraged us to 'shake up' the church and our practices a little so that we are not relying on the institution to nurture the faith of our children, we are creating homes where God reigns and children can explore him, communities where we create community and creep out of our individualistic comfort-zones to discover the comfort we might be to one another. My passions have been stirred afresh!

Following Jesus is a call to radicalism. Jesus also calls us to community and loving our brothers and sisters. Okay - Lord, now let's work out how those two things get negotiated! There is something I find attractive about Mark Driscoll's presentation of the gospel. He tends to think that he is delivering a Jesus for men, the warrior, the radical, but do we not all need to hear about this Jesus? The feminised Jesus, oh heck, the masculinised Jesus, oh dear - no just Jesus - gentle disturber! Comfort/discomfort - ease/dis-ease - it's all of this and more. Such half-baked thoughts and if I sounded shrill, I didn't mean to.

Ouch

Leviticus 6:21 “…present the grain offering broken in pieces as an aroma pleasing to the LORD.”

There is a 'form', it is mine, made of flesh and blood and it is being broken up...no...it always was broken up but I am being invited to gather up some of the bits and inspect them before the form is put back together in a newer, still imperfect shape. This is the 'form' in the formation. The 'a' in the middle is the audible sound of the 'a' of ache, it is also the 'A' of 'Hey!' - the protest - 'get off, leave me alone....can't I just stay as I am'. The 'tion' is harsh, it makes the mouth pucker as you spit out the ending, it is aggressive, it is 'shun', which is what I am tempted to do but trying not to, things need facing, preaching wholeness in Christ and not seeking it for myself would be like opening a can of baked beans to find sawdust inside instead. 

At university, for a joke, they would raid my cupboards, the Rugby lads, and take the labels off my tins so that I never knew what I was going to eat and on opening the can, it was always a surprise, sometimes pleasant, sometimes not. 

So formation is sometimes pleasant and sometimes not and at the moment, I want macaroni cheese and I'm getting sour plum tomatoes. I am discovering that there are ingredients inside the shiny tin that need their flavours enhancing, in fact, some of them are a little synthetic and shouldn't be there at all. I am asking God to deal with all this and make me fresh, change me into something altogether more nourishing and I'm currently just in the process of being liquidised. 

...so the things below do not reflect the ethos of my theological training institution, anymore than declaring than tinned tomatoes are sour and tinned macaroni cheese is pleasing constitutes truth, for judging by the latter assertion, particularly, it will be deduced that such responses are very subjective! 

 ...so without further ado...my form (hey!) shun:

...to be honest...all is not good here. This formation stuff is really tough. I keep hearing that the honeymoon is over. I think I am resistant. I am an idealist. It all seems so great on the surface, you know learning about God and singing and praying and chatting with people and eating together and doing your bit in what you hope are 'Kingdom-building projects'.

The reality is that it is also really hard to be an individual here. It is a real struggle to tame the inner rebel, to quieten the one who struggles against systems! There are many things that I must and must not do. There are the explicit rules: the clearing up your crockery routine, the way to conduct a lunch-time notice, the forms to fill out for essay submission. These can be learnt and adopted. These can be 'put on'. You learn, organise, plan and deliver - no depletion of self really, just conformity for conformity's sake, to keep everything smooth, to make life easy for everyone.

But then there are the other rules, the implicit ones. These become part of your thinking. It is failure to comply to these rules that cuts deep and has consequence. This is where the struggle is encountered over how to be who you are and how to surrender to transformation, whilst at the same time being wary about to whom you are surrendering: God or the institution or more likely God through the institution, for rarely are the two in disagreement or so it would seem in the end, but it's always worth asking!

So some of this 'formation stuff' seems to be about 'letting go', surrendering my will to the corporate will (God's will?) and sometimes it is done through gritted teeth.

....so I will go on a walk for 6 hours to satisfy 'creative week' requirements, even though I usually stay at home and work that day and I will try to blend in a little bit more and say a little bit less, perhaps, or perhaps not, I am working on that one and in some ways I absolutely love it here and also at the same time I want to run out of this place as fast as my legs will carry me and climb up some really rather small mountain, for I need to get to the top fast and have a bloody good SCREAM!!!!

....for now however, I'll grit my teeth, smile to myself, as I imagine myself getting a prescription filled out for a touch of 'eschatological tension' and I'll carry on loving God passionately, even though it is at times half killing me to serve him - death of self is probably what is really requires anyway!

Oh dear, quickly, open up another tin....