So, I'm within a fortnight of launching into term and so far I have 28 ordinands, 24 partners and 34 children on my list of people I have met. There are lots of crossings-out as I change names and assign people to different partners because I couldn't quite work out who-was-with-who the first time I met them. Quite how the list will look when all 70-ish ordinands are here I do not know!
There's a feeling of excitement in the air. Paul starts his course on Wednesday with me starting a week on Thursday. And when my course starts it's not just the course I'll have to occupy me, it'll be 7.30am morning prayer, breakfast, lunch and dinner in college, evening prayer and compline and all manner of community activities. Although I've been living here a month somehow I feel like I'm not at college yet, and really I'm not.
I wonder whether the 22nd September will mark 'it'? You know, when I started thinking seriously about this whole ordination malarky in April 2010 I remember wondering how I would cope with all of the waiting for 'it'. And what was I waiting for? The BAP? I certainly didn't have a feeling of having reached my goal after the BAP. Finishing my job? No. Moving here? No, somehow not. So maybe when term starts I'll have that feeling of "hurrah - I've started Theological College - this is what I've been thinking and praying about for the last 17 months!" Or maybe I won't. Maybe that's what the call to ordained ministry is, a moving forward towards something, to go wherever God intends for you, but without that victory moment of sticking your flag on the moon "I've done it", a call to be rather than to achieve.
*Gets down from philosophising perch*
So, what have I done this week? On Monday we went into Oxford intending to go to the Ashmolean but it was closed so we had lunch instead. Then Kate texted me in the evening to see if I wanted to go to the pub so I rambled over to find 20 or so Cuddesdonians there, which was very nice indeed. On Tuesday we didn't do much, but then on Wednesday we went to the Oxford Natural History Museum and the Pitt Rivers Collection which was ever so interesting. A properly well thought out museum with artifacts from around the world, and displays you could touch as well as those in glass cabinets. Yesterday we walked to Wheatley and back which is a 3 mile round trip so a good leg-stretcher, and today we went swimming. Altogether a very enjoyable week.
Oh, we got some good news today. Paul has been intending to do the Cuddesdon School of Theology and Ministry, the evening course which runs here on a Thursday. It normally costs £200 per term so we had budgeted £1,800 for him to do it for 3 years, which is no small amount of money any way you look at it. Anyway, today all the spouses got a letter from the college to say that this course was going to be offered to spouses of college students free!
Free I like. Very much.
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