back from the US of A

had a great time with Rob and Steph, and Steve and Rachael (who flew out with me) if you want to see the photos just click on the Flickr thing on the left... Myrtle Beach is pretty surreal place!

and now it's Christmas all of a sudden... life is rather full - services to organise for this year and the next, presents to buy and the bathroom is being ripped out as well! woo-hoo... still I'm glad to say that coming back to Northampton, did feel like coming home:)

s'been loooong time no speak no?

so been assiduously reading other people's blogs, but not feeling too inspired to write much myself - just been taking the temperature re: my new job... and it's pretty good, but it takes up a LOT of brain space - hence no blogging!

so, what have i been up to? well, i've joined a gym - which much to my surprise i'm really quite enjoying, and so far I've been going fairly regularly... apparently I've even lost some weight - I'm so cynical about these things, that i didn't really expect it! but that and signing up for some personal trainer sessions have been really motivating...

I've also had a few visitors, which has been really nice and I have taken at least one of them to see one of my favourite things about Northampton - and enthused to everbody else about it! a little odd perhaps, I'm just pleased that these Christians saw the light on healthy eating, and eco responsibilty long before it became fashionable! (am also loving the countryside round here, Becky T and I did a great walk round Castle Ashby last weekend).

other than that, well i'm enjoying being a curate, but although in some ways i feel like i've reached and enjoying a goal that i've been heading towards for a long time, that there's still some deep changes in identity on the horizon - how do i cope with people seeing me as a leader/clergywoman/curate - do i hide it or big it up? neither seems right to me, but i'm not sure how to find a happy medium... what is a leader after all? how do i really become one?!

off to see Rob and Steph in the States in less than two weeks time (woo-hoo!!) but in the mean time am letting Mal loose on the evening congregation at St Giles... really not sure what the result will be!!

a new pass-time...

so this is the boat i slid out of on Bank Holiday Monday... (it was v gusty and i was steering!!) certainly took my breath away and I ached for days afterwards because i've no upper body strength for hauling myself back in!




and this is where me and two colleagues puttered round the resevoir in very light winds... and i gave them a few scares by turning the boat in the wrong direction when tacking!! (oh the joy of being a learner...) I think it's good for me, because i'm a physical coward most of the time and hate looking foolish - so there's plenty of scope for challenging both whilst sailing!!

D2-ish

so, feeling a bit hormonally-challenged last two days, plus the kick back of delivering my last sermon v badly and having to lead the morning service next two weeks with the vicar on holiday... its times like this I miss having my close friends and family around...

talking of which, Mum and Dad finally arrived in Pakistan today to be houseparents to 5 teenage boys (!) at Murree Christian School for 10 months... thankfully they can come back for my first Christmas here and I will go out and join them for a bit of a holiday before I'm priested in June next year... funny though, them being that far away, I think with Skype it should be better than when they were in Bangladesh for 6 months a couple of years ago...

St Giles, Northampton and all that jazz...

as promised, some photos of 'where I am' ...

here you see they are pretty quick off the mark at St Giles and have already got my name on the noticeboard... very scary and official looking!

and this is the house and my first car... worryingly grown up I think!

and a photo of the church building itself... complete with parishoner leaving after the Sunday morning service!!

Flickr photos...

I'm hoping following the link will take you to my Spain photies... please excuse the fact they are called 'Christmas...' I did the set up wrong when I got given the camera at, you guessed it, Christmas!

Enjoy!

on-line, plugged in, rev'd up!

hello to all my fans out there, you'll be pleased to know that I am now plugged into broadband again... even though the rest of my life is not yet sorted... (desk and dining room table & chairs proving especially elusive - either in bits (desk) or on order (table and chairs).

anyhow despite icky health over the last few weeks, I did manage to get ordained:

and wriggled out of v hot clothing asap to show I'm still 'normal' underneath - my friends, family and godparents came to support me:)


more pictures from St Giles and Northampton will follow when the study is more sorted and i can upload them!

last post... for a while!

so, back from the hot and beautiful Spain... now packing up and tomorrow I move to Northampton!

Not sure when I'll be back on line again... no more 100MB Oxford Uni connection, and nothing to replace it set up yet...





A garden court in the Alhambra palace, Granada

saying goodbye to Oxford...

only a few more days left - Sunday was my last one at hOME, just had the leaver's quiet day, Commissioning Day tomorrow - it all seems a bit unreal... especially since I go on holiday to Spain on Sunday and then come back and leave for Northampton on Tuesday 20th June. V strange, but I take lots of good memories and more importantly, friendships with me - I'm looking forward to keeping in touch with all my class, seeing where they end up etc etc, and I'm especially looking forward to hanging out with my leaver's cell (the beautiful people in the picture) 4 times a year or so - a good crew!

Photos from my travels this weekend:

first I went to see the Bishop of Peterborough in his Palace (that's not just a technical term - it really is a palace!) - he's going to be ordaining me on 2nd July in Peterborough Cathedral, hopefully in better weather than there was on Thursday:
Then after leaving Peterborough that afternoon I went to stay with Val in her and Kiralee's beautiful house, on Friday, I off went to Alex and Katell's wedding just outside Sheffield (in it's only Michelin starred hotel, The Old Vicarage) where there was lots and lots of yummy food!

Then on Saturday, after a pub lunch with Ruth Deller, Andy and Gill Weir, Val, and Rachel Hall we walked round the Damflask Resevoir, stopping at Low Bradfield to buy ice cream and watch a bit of the village cricket! The sky was so blue and the temperature so perfect that it was hard to believe we were still in England...















On Sunday I went down to Northampton, went to church and then met up with Emma to look at our new house with David the vicar to see what needs doing to it before we move in two weeks tomorrow!! I forgot to take photos at that point such was the excitement... next time perhaps!

Rather tired now...

a marathon, not a sprint?

well, tonight's service at hOME was really helpful for me in many ways - firstly in the worship, which I entered very aware of my own weakness (I really disappointed myself today - nothing major, but not something I could pretend was OK either!) and God's love and grace, and my need for them, became very evident to me... again, which was truly, deeply lovely.

secondly as Kyle was talking about John 15:9-17, it struck me that I have always thought that my Christian life is about progress and that I will get better at it. But being a Christian is fundamentally about a relationship with God, not a skill set. Relationships, like the vine and its branches, not only grow, but they also get pruned - and as they go on get more difficult and costly not less, because they bring up in you not only the nice stuff that you set out at the beginning, but if they are to be real there will also be hard times and hard things to face - which isn't progress so much as depth. That is so releasing, that as a Christian I will continue to learn and fail to learn, and practise and fail to practise what it entails, for my entire life - I will never be an expert who never gets things wrong...

So, resolution, leave behind 'modernist' values of 'progress' and embrace relationship with God - hooray!

the far side...

...of exams, and essays, and any more academic work at Oxford!! Hoorah!! It's a miracle - I had no idea how I was going to get everything done and it happened - Praise God!

So it's now just over a week since I did my last exam ever at Wycliffe, and while I didn't exactly give my greatest performance in exams (that may be an understatement...) and I am now learning the ropes of a whole new existence without the pressure of academic work hanging over me and also radically disconnecting with life in Oxford. It's taking a while, for example yesterday was really the first day I did nice things that I wanted to do and didn't do any admin ... it was lovely! I had coffee with Matt - we sat outside in the garden of the University Church cafe for a couple of hours, and then I had a picnic lunch with my old flatmate Tracy in the University Parks watching the cricket and then my friend Ruth, who is training to be a Baptist Minister at Regent's Park College, just down the road, picked me up for my first great shopping expedition in 6 months or so - my wardrobe really needed it ... we had a lovely road-trip to Reading, and never made it outside the Oracle where one of my favourite chains, Kew, has a nice big store... but with Ruth's help I did pretty well! Then after a meal together we headed back to Oxford and I rounded the day off by watching The Incredibles on DVD with my current flatmate, Kate! hooray!

and of course the rest of the time I have been busy making lists of things I need for the new house, co-ordinating my move, and looking forward to the Leaver's programme (which starts next week) and also my week's walking holiday in Spain when I finish here and before I go to Northampton!

So lot's of positives which I want to make the most of, but it must be said that emotionally and spiritually it is a funny time with lots of ups and downs and general disorientation...

accidie?

'A state of lethargy attested by monks, especially hermits, engaged in intense spiritual warfare. The word derives from the Greek akedia, which means weariness... the concept is little understood today and does not figure in most manuals of Christian spirituality. Accidie was defined by Nilus of Ancyra (died c.430 AD) as a weariness of the soul, rendering it incapable of having spiritual interests and unable to resist temptations (De octo spiritbus malitae 13).
Its earliest exponent was Evagrius of Pontus (346-99 AD) who contrasted it with 'patience' and linked it to the concept of the midday plague or 'demon' (Psalm 91:6) because its pressure was most keenly felt in the midday heat. Accidie would tempt the monk to abandon his devotions, and sometimes even his calling itself... The main cure for accidie are given as hard labour, constant prayer and contemplation of the nearness of death.'

GL Bray in Atkinson, DJ(ed), New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology (Leicester: 1995, IVP)

so that's what I've got eh? I certainly feel like a hermit since I spend a great deal of my days alone with the books, wondering whether it's all worth it... and in the face of yesterday's subject - abortion - it has been particularly challenging for me to keep it together, as the idea of children being done away with is very hard to contemplate, and yet sometimes there are some really difficult calls... it really is a deal living in this broken world.

anyhow it's good to know that my spiritual lethargy is an ancient phenomenon , in these last few weeks of academic study the 'midday heat' of work pressures certainly seem to be taking their toll - so a bit of hard labour needs to be fitted in perhaps? any workable suggestions?! ... I'm not sure how one contemplates the nearness of death having been brought up in a death-phobic society!

signs of the future...

So, I went to the clerical outfitters on Friday to be measured up, thought y'all might want to see the tentative results (as in, these aren't my robes, but I'll have something like them when they're made!)... scary or what?! I think you can tell from my uncomfortable stance I'm very glad I'll only be wearing these once a week at a traditional mid-week service!


And although you can't see very much of the church I thought you might also want to see a few photos of me with my lovely friend Rob and Steph Sturdy who are off back to the States in the summer, so they came with me to visit St Giles when I last went a few weeks ago... stupidly I didn't take any photos of the house...

people who've cheered me up this week...

... and I've certainly needed it!

I'd just like to particularly pay tribute to my friend Rob Sturdy who mixes a mean Marguerita and laughs in all the right places when we watched Pirates of the Caribbean on Wednesday - we were both feeling pretty grumpy, and helped each other out of bad place!

Also my friend's from Sheffield, and old next door neighbours, Alex and Katell rang to say that they are getting hitched in June and would I like to come? so I'm really pleased for them and very chuffed to be asked!

Tonight my friend Valerie, also from Sheffield rang to ask if she could pop in for lunch tomorrow on her way darn sarf... she's great, and writes one of my two current favourite blogs (Dan's is the other one!) ... or perhaps i should stop with the favourite blogs idea, i keep thinking of more I like and I don't want it to turn into a popularity contest... I love you all, in your own special ways!

Friends eh? they'rrrrrre great!

well done me!

have completed my last long essay draft... hopefully the tutor will say not too much needs changing!

so, now on to the four short essays (Old Testament and Ethics oh yes.) and revision... this still mainly involves working by myself, which is really beginning to drive me a little bonkers, especially 'cos my flatmates are away! Yesterday I had a proper conversation with one person - that's surely not right... (Although that one person is my future housemate and a very nice lady, which compensates somewhat;)

ho-hum, just a lull I'm sure...

counting down...

only 10, 000 words, 3 exams, and 5 weeks to go 'til the end of my academic course... then leaver's programme and i'm outta here on 9th June (for a week's holiday and then move to Northampton on 20th June...) crikey...

Twisted perceptions

As many of y'all already know, last summer my little brother married the lovely Monica Kimani in Nairobi, Kenya last summer (they had both worked for Medair in relief and capacity building work in South Sudan) ... One of the things that really struck me, when they showed a video of the wedding day back in England at their blessing, was how suddenly foreign it looked - when I was there all the African ladies from the village dancing and singing at Monica's parents' house before we set off for the church was beautiful and atmospheric, watching a recording of it, it just seemed generically African, not something I could relate to at all... I guess because I wasn't relating anymore, I was just observing...

I found being there I had to come to grips with something that I'd picked up from media and indeed charity transmitted attitudes that Africans aren't really grown ups, that they are children who need to be looked after. In reality of course they are very much grown ups and equals, but it is easier to help people who you feel you are superior to in some way isn't it?

still chewing it over!

funny peculiar or funny ha-ha?

this story in the Guardian gives Brits some pause for thought; maybe the Americans haven't completely taken over...!?

four things...

Ok, so I've succumbed to peer pressure and joined in with this crazee fad... oh yes.

FOUR JOBS I'VE HAD

1. Paper girl
2. Catering Assistant
3. 'Teacher' (of English in Pakistan - if this was graded on whether you had fulfilled expected outcomes it wouldn't count)
4. Adminstrative Assistant... in lots of interesting places

FOUR MOVIES/SHOWS I'VE BEEN ADDICTED TO:
1. Lord of the Rings...
i don't generally get addicted, and besides i don't have a telly

FOUR PLACES I'VE LIVED:
1. Woking, Surrey
2. York, Yorkshire
3. Hyderabad, Pakistan
4. Cambridge, Cambridgeshire

FOUR COUNTRIES I WOULD LIKE TO VISIT:
1. India
2. New Zealand
3. China
4. Chile

FOUR POPULAR FALSE ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT ME:
1. I'm very holy
2. I'm very serious
3. I'm easily shocked
4. I play the piano!!

FOUR PEOPLE I LOOK LIKE (according to some people):
0 - clearly too funny lookin'

FOUR THINGS (I HOPE) TO DO BEFORE I DIE:
1. Be able to sing in tune all the time
2. learn to play the piano
3. preach a great sermon
4. Become fluent in another language

PEOPLE I TAG NEXT:
1. Suzie
2. Val
3. Andrew
4. Andy