Saturday 28 January 2017

Towards Ordained Ministry course: Session One

A few nights ago I went to the first session of the London Diocese’s ‘Towards Ordained Ministry’ course. DDOs and college chaplains in the diocese refer candidates and potential candidates to this every year; it is another tool within the resources for discernment, but it lies in that in-between world of not quite being BAP prep but also being more intentional and sure than initial exploration events. Talks are based on the vows in the Ordinal in the context of ‘Pursuing your Vocation in the Diocese of London’.

This is how they put it:
“Here is a great opportunity
-to explore and learn more of your vocation to the ordained ministry
-to get to know others from different traditions than your own
-to hear speakers who themselves have been along this road
-to share in discussion and prayer”

I’ve got to be honest, it’s the first time I’ve felt positive about the Diocese’ vocation resources; it’s such a shame that they don’t manage to support people earlier in the process as well as this course supports people who are further along.

Richard Chartres
Anyway, the first session was a corker. The theme was Authority, based on the vow to “accept the discipline of this Church and give due respect to those in authority” and we were honoured to be addressed by The Rt Revd and Rt Hon Dr Richard Chartres, outgoing Bishop of London.

All my experiences of Bishop Richard – my confirmation, a drinks reception at his residence, several Easter Vigil services at St Paul’s – have confirmed his reputation as a wise and caring yet competent man, and this session was no exception. It was a privilege to hear him speak, with eloquence, wisdom and humility, and a smattering of humour, as well as get a chance to talk to him in the relaxed mingling beforehand. He asked where I had come from and when I said St Martin’s, his follow-up was “Ah, which part of the empire?” which shows you a little of our reputation within the city.

I knew one other pastoral assistant there, from our Area PA support group, and he and I chatted with three girls sitting next to us, two from slightly higher churches and one from a very much lower church.

He spoke for about an hour, so I’m going to just summarise my notes, but I didn’t write everything down, just the things that struck me, though hopefully I’ll be able to convey a flavour of his talk.

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In his introduction, he talked of balancing a need to ‘listen profoundly to colleagues’ whilst also being aware of the danger that ‘heavy structure’ (like endless committees) can be a huge ‘energy drainer’.

1.
His talk was then structured in three parts. The first was the root of being ‘one holy, catholic, and apostolic church’, and the importance of the Church of England’s identity as part of its authority. We have never denied that there are other parts of the ‘1HCAC’ and often, if not quite adapted to, at least encouraged local expression of faith (subtext being: remember we’re not Catholics, homogenising and exclusivist).

Ecumenism is now framed in a context of looking forward to the ‘great and coming’ church of the Kingdom, but the CofE has the privilege of being able to reach in any direction and touch the whole spectrum of ‘church’.

One of my favourite points he made was that the clergy must not just be collaborative, but instead ‘conjunctive’, not just making joint-efforts but genuinely joining and combining. Because we are fundamentally and intentionally not sectarian, we must look for allies in the mission on the ‘shared passion’ simply for the Lord Jesus Christ.

2.
An ‘assent on worship’. This was an interesting section which touched on the fundamental difference between Christian and Muslim understandings of God. Whilst in Islam they submit to a Supreme Will, Christians reach out to an Almighty Love. The key is the transforming truth of the Trinity, for our communion is not static but dynamic, as God’s true nature is. From ‘Adam where are you?’ through ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ through ‘Mary!’ to the climax of the Incarnation itself, it is into dynamic relationship that we are called. Bishop Richard advocated the BCP as a ‘balanced and simple diet of scripture-based worship’...

3.
…which led nicely into the authority of scripture and the creeds. A wonderful phrase he used about
scripture was the importance of ‘hearing the whole symphony’ rather than extracting ‘bleeding gobbets’ to rely on and 'bash each other over the head' with. ‘Spacious inhabiting of scripture’ is important, within a ‘community of interpretation’. Crucially this includes the writers of the Creeds, that though long-dead, using the Creeds is a way of reading scripture not just with our contemporaries but also our predecessors, who deserve as much respectful deep listening as anyone alive now.

This leads us into being able to, as Common Worship puts it ‘proclaim [the faith] afresh in each generation’. Bishop Richard emphasised the importance of having a presence on modern platforms, and inhabiting the ‘territory of the 92%’ ie. the population of London that does not engage in Christianity. He advocated creativity as crucial to success in this.

After his talk, there was a time for questions. The first was ‘When did you discover your vocation?’ and his immediate response was ‘After I was ordained’. He explained that it was only once he was a deacon working in a parish that he found his vocation in doing the ‘ordinary work and being admitted to the tragedy behind every face’. He also pointed out that it was necessary to have healthy distance between the role and your own person – do not assimilate.

He also returned to ecumenism, which he said works when we look to the whole community and as conjunctive allies, looking in that same direction together. He warned of the trouble in the future (that we will inherit as the next generation of clergy) and condemned schism as ‘obstinately metaphysical’ especially in the context that for the under 30s, church is becoming ‘post-denominational’. He went on to lament the ‘ignorance of Christian grammar’ in the country.

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Future sessions will be:

- The Bible - Do you accept the holy Scriptures as revealing all things necessary for eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ?
- Doctrine - Do you believe the doctrine of the Christian faith as the Church of England has received it, and in your ministry will you expound and teach it?
- Ministry - Will you be a faithful servant in the household of God, after the example of Christ, who came not to be served but to serve?
- Spirituality - Will you be diligent in prayer, in reading holy Scripture, and in all studies that will deepen your faith, and fit you to bear witness to the truth of the Gospel?
- Mission - Will you lead Christ’s people in proclaiming his glorious gospel, so that the good news of salvation may be heard in every place?



Sunday 22 January 2017

Video: DDO 6 / The Rector's Reference



Since seeing the DDO, I have seen the rector's reference and it's such a relief. It's very positive and shows the depth that Lucy has tried to get a sense of where I'm at, to be sure of her judgement before committing herself to sponsoring me, and I wouldn't expect anything less of her, though of course her doing that has made her feel at times incomprehensible and inaccessible to me.

The reference reflects and clarifies my own understanding of our journey together, which is reassuring, and I am deeply grateful for all her past, current, and continuing support. Her importance lies as my sponsoring incumbent, but I can't help being also aware that support from someone so loved, respected and admired in the Church on a national level is quite the feather in my cap.

Counter to my last statements in the video, if nothing happens for a time, I have a few things to talk about on this blog before the process continues, including the Towards Ordained Ministry course I start on Monday and a week shadowing a priest in Scotland in February, both of which are important parts of my journey I think, so you can look forward to those, plus Gabriel Collective's Leicester Event on Feb 4th, which should include the rather daft promo video which I'll tweet next week @TechieGeorgina. Because it's in February, we're doing luuuurve as our theme! If you fancy joining us, check out the above link and let me know if you're coming!

I also had my second session with a spiritual director yesterday, and it's basically going how I thought it would after finding out what spiritual direction is about, and I like her, I think she's helpful; and it was a well-timed week that the day before, the Pastoral Assistants support group had a session talking about one's inner life as the source of strength and understanding from which to centre the rest of one's life. So after feeling like I'd spiritually unplugged when I went back to my parents over Christmas, I'm inspired to redouble my spiritual efforts.

Tuesday 10 January 2017

Video: Twelfth visit to the rector


The topic Lucy emphasised in our conversation was 'unmendedness', that of others and that of yourself, and coping with it as a priest. It isn't skill, but wisdom, part of the wisdom of just being a person - remaining 'alive' inside, and finding strategies that keep you connected.

Sometimes there's a temptation to 'pastoral lust', the desire to give someone clear direction because you think you can fix their life. But Lucy said you are always wrong. You've got to let people go to hell in their own way; your job is to accompany them but not end up in hell yourself. The way to do that is getting into your own mess. The harsh truths about myself don't stop here, the job is a perpetual journey and the harsh truths keep coming. The strategies that keep you connected have to deepen your trust in God.

It was all very interesting and really getting into the formation nitty gritty of priesthood, the personhood that is essential, the wisdom that must be opened to rather than learnt like a skill.
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Since things are going to get serious once the DDO kicks off the next stage, Lucy also wanted to make sure I don't approach this like any other job interview, like some exam or achievement to attain. As much as positive thinking and optimism is essential to fend off despair and hopelessness, neither extreme is the right attitude.

Between getting a BAP date and going on it, Lucy recommended that I take some time out to truly imagine getting a 'no', or a 'not yet'. It's important that I don't lose sight of the reality of the possibility that that will be my result. The way I put it was that I'm consciously trying to keep my attitude in the 'if' space. I never say 'when I go to theological college', only 'if'. Otherwise I'm really risking my emotional health.

That's about it, the cliffsnotes version anyway. See you after the next meeting!

Wednesday 4 January 2017

Video: This is what discerning feels like/DDO 5

This won't make sense unless you watch the video, which is clips from 5th December and 15th December so make sure you watch it first:

This post was written throughout the following weeks since the video over Christmas.

I will paraphrase the report, as it is a personal document between me, my DDO, and the psychotherapist who wrote it, so I'll try not to break confidence and quote it directly. The part that caused concern was it was felt that my emotional maturity still needed some development; that I didn't let or allow painful experiences affect me ie. I put truly difficult feelings at a distance. This led to doubts that I should go forward for selection at this time. It wasn't a 'no', just a 'not yet'.

Firstly, I'll step back and address why this was flagged; why, if it's true, this is a problem for a potential priest. Lucy was helpful in explaining this context. It has become an important part of the discernment process that as well as assessing whether someone has the call, would be good at the job, and would an asset to the Church and its congregations, etc, there's also an emphasis on assessing whether they will be able to handle the job, and can look after their own health and mental health.

Priests are under so much pressure and encounter so much of the drama of life, so much of other people's suffering, that without the proper tools - eg understanding how they work best, having a support network that is reliable, making good use of that network, having stable strategies to deal with their own emotions in emotional situations - they will probably eventually implode or explode, or 'burn out' as is the common phrase.

This is referencing Criterion D: Personality and Character, which says "Candidates should be sufficiently self-aware, mature and stable to show that they are able to sustain the demanding role of an ordained minister. They should be able to demonstrate how they have faced change and pressure in a balanced and flexible way and how they manage stress." To evidence this to the selectors, candidates "should be able to speak of how they have coped with difficult life experiences, how they have reflected upon them and incorporated them within their life and understanding."

Drawing further from the criteria, I don't think the therapist thought I am completely reconciled to my own vulnerabilities and limitations, and she had worries about my capacity to assimilate and deal appropriately with my own response to negative or difficult life experiences. If I were to be a priest like this, the chances are that it would break me.

Talking with Lucy was tough. I felt like she really jumped on this as a grade A excuse to stop me going forward, making suggestions of what I could do instead in September, like spending a year at a L'Arche community. I was glad I went to her, because she emphasised the importance of not thinking about the timing, not letting the practicalities cloud my thinking about the important stuff, which was in fact discerning something personal. But it was disheartening that she seemed quite so keen to stop me; she did say she would support me if I decided to continue, but with a look that suggested she was already trying to work out how to comfort me when I get rejected. But this could just be bias based on residual resentment from the first part of our exploration, when I was wrongly frustrated at her.

I have since talked to my parents, who have the advantage of coming at this report with a fairly comprehensive understanding of my emotional/psychological history, and I was unsurprised that it was this conversation that has been most helpful. I can now see the grain of truth that the psychotherapist was trying to point out. She didn't get it right, of course not, she met me for only 90minutes, so she over-estimated what she saw. But she did identify something that could be a problem if I went ahead unaware of it.

I do compartmentalise when it comes to crisis or problem-solving or being helpless. And there have been times that I have parked my emotional response to a situation over to one side and not dealt with it as well as I could have. But it's not something I do every time. Most of the time I do deal with it, but up til now it's not been a conscious process - I've been lucky that without realising I needed something, like to do something about the situation, or talk to my boyfriend, or go out with friends, or take a day to myself, or whatever the strategy was, I did it without thinking. So the times I didn't handle it well were the times that I wasn't lucky, that I didn't accidentally sort myself out. Now I'm aware of my lack of strategy, over the next few years I can put conscious thought into what I need and eventually those moments of failing to deal properly will be very rare and not based on accidental luck.

Pausing the discernment process now isn't going to help. Yes, there are things I could do to show I have started addressing the issue raised, and talking to my landlord who is studying to be a priest himself, I understand I can't just give empty reassurance that I will mature in my relationship with my emotions - they need hard evidence, so I will have to do one or two of those things, like work experience with a prison chaplain or volunteering for the Samaritans. Lucy was keen that I get more experience of being in situations where someone is suffering and I cannot fix it, which mean I can't respond with action, and those seem more plausible options than her main suggestion.

Sure I can see her concern that if I was plopped into a job as priest right now, I might not cope so well. That's what the psychotherapist thought as well. But I'm not going forward to be a priest now. I'm going forward to selection for training. Three years of academic study and formation at college, then three to four years of experience and formation in curacy - this will bring me to being a minimum of 31yo before I am officially able to work as an unsupervised priest, and 31yo me will look a lot different to 24yo me. She'll have learnt about herself and gone through years of life, and life generally matures you even if you resist. And now I'm forewarned of one of the issues to put some effort into developing, I'm doing the opposite of resisting!

This report hasn't been given to me to stop me. Like I said in the video, I would know something like that in my gut, in my bones. It's not got the feeling of a change in direction. No, this was handed to me as an opportunity to start digging into myself below the surface, and listen to the people around me. I had a similar experience in the first year at Guildhall, so God has precedent doing this in my life. That time I needed to become more aware of myself and some of my faults to get into the right frame of mind to train as a stage manager; this time I need to do the same and go deeper, building on everything my 8 years in backstage theatre has given me, to begin the second stage of my vocation, and become the priest I'm meant to be.

As Lucy and I discussed, this is what discerning feels like. This is the inward looking journey that I need to go on, because it's not just the Church that needs to get to know me - I need to learn more about myself as well. This has been hard. As you can see, I got this news weeks ago and it's only now that I'm getting a handle on what it means for me. I didn't want to acknowledge that I had issues to resolve - you can see in the video how determined I was in my initial reaction to circumvent the long hard look at myself to which Lucy pushed me. But this is what is needed. Even if I become the Archbishop of Canterbury - first among equals, primate, archbishop, bishop, priest - I am always laity first, a frail human being that is a single part of the body of Christ. If I don't know who I am as a person, I won't come to know myself as a priest.

I want to see Lucy one more time before I go back to the DDO and tell him I want to continue. Hers is always a useful insight and I want to further our conversation with the developments in my own thinking since our last meeting. I've also received a 'write something every day for 365 days' notebook for Christmas, and I've challenged myself to express my emotions in this notebook - not what I think, but how I feel, and it's already proving that I'm not very clear on my own emotions, so hopefully it'll be another useful tool in self-awareness.

Post Script
As for the priest's report, to be honest it was just really nice. He said I seemed to have two sides, a more precise side and a wilder side, and he said that as a compliment, he found me to be engaging; and it's also had quite an impact on me by pointing out that I do in fact have quite a dedicated prayer life, I've just been too perfectionist about it. This was useful to have pointed out, and I'm less anxious now about feeling inadequate vis a vis prayer. Those are the things that have stuck with me, so I'm not going to get it out and analyse further.

Happy New Year! (Next time you see me, I'll be filming on my new camera, wahoo!)