I've been at college for over a week, and it's hard to condense how I feel other than to say that I feel just about the most privileged person in the world at the moment.
I'm living in this small, odd community of people of all ages and from all backgrounds. I get to spend my time in a stunning old building of stone and stained glass, set in the middle of the countryside. There are clubs and activities ranging from choir to cricket to books and debating. I get fed amazing food in a dining hall with long tables and oil paintings on such a regular basis and in such quantities that it would make Dr Gillian McKeath sick. I'm learning church history and liturgy, listening skills and pastoral psychology. I'm getting some proper time to reflect on my own spirituality. Someone is paying for me to do an Oxford University Masters for goodness sake. And attending church twice a day (or four times, if you want!) isn't something you do on top of your everyday life, everything stops for it.
Extraordinarily. Privileged.
Someone described it as 'boarding school without the bullying' and I can just see what they mean. I sense a slightly boarding school undertone here, as one might expect with a number of recent graduates from good Universities. And many people seem to enjoy dressing up, as last night's 'cassocks and canopes' showed (and I have to admit, I enjoyed it too.) But that Oxfordyness doesn't define the community, as I fear it might if we were in Oxford proper. It is contained and tempered by the people who really aren't interested in that sort of thing. The whole community is very friendly. You can sit next to anyone at dinner and have a good conversation. I'm sure that the usual friendship groups will emerge, as they do in any community, but I don't think they will be as cliquey as you would find in most Universities or workplaces.
Reflecting on what it is to live here, I can't help think about the old Residential vs Local Course debate that I was having with myself 18 months ago. Basically, there are two ways of training to be a vicar. The traditional method is what I am doing, moving away to a self-contained college to train full time for 2 or 3 years. The second is to train locally part-time. This is what I was intending to do originally, to keep my house and my job, and to go to the University (but a 10 minute drive from my house!) one evening a week, and a few weekends a year, for training which, I think, generally takes 3 or 4 years.
I know there are certain schools of thought which believe one method to be a better way of training than another, but my view is that they are equally valid. The advantage of the first is that you are able to absorb yourself in training for a short amount of time, which forms a clear break between being lay and being ordained. The biggest advantage of the latter is that you are training to be a priest while being in the real world.
So what I've been reflecting on is how I maintain the real world perspective when most of my day-to-day conversations will be with people-who-are-training-to-be-vicars or spouses-of-people-who-are-training-to-be-vicars or people-that-are-actually-already-vicars.
Placements will help. I wrote a little while ago that I am to do a Sunday church placement and a midweek non-church placement in my first year. Yesterday, we new intake of students went to see three of the forty or so churches which are offering placements. Blackbird Leys - a local ecumenical partnership in a suburb of Oxford, Berinsfield - a village with a number of employment and housing problems, and Dorchester Abbey - a beautiful former-abbey with significant tourist footfall.
I've been thinking for a while that I'd like to go to a very evangelical church, in order to get a contrast from the liberal middle-church I have become accustomed to over the last few years. This continues to be my preference, but I've come to think that I will benefit from being a part of any church community. Just to spend time in a different environment, with people with lives, jobs and priorities outside of church, will be immensely beneficial to me.
And now, to voice class!
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