Ridleians grapple with contemporary issues of conflict

Time flu

He looks like I felt. Flu was the story of my Easter holiday, and as someone who isn't often ill I'm a lousy patient.

Not good for reading, revising or writing, sigh.

(In case you're wondering about the picture, Doctor Who came to town - assorted monsters, at least - for Science Week.)

So this, the traditional time for lazy pursuits, needs to be the term when Jack is a very dull boy indeed. Hence I suspect I won't be a-blogging much or often.

I thought I was fully recovered at the end of last week, but here at the end of this week I realise that I was still a long way off form - so maybe there's a bit of post-viral pain still to come. But with that reservation, at last I'm back somewhere that I can get excited about what I'm reading, hearing, seeing, doing.

One sign of that is that I need a little time to digest what's exciting, usually through another activity like cycling, poetry or photography.

For several reasons I could have done with a free morning, but I'm very glad I made it to Michael Green's lecture.

21 years ago, it was in his study that I turned my back on the clinical atheism of my teenage years and the trendy agnosticism of the start of my twenties, and got set on the path that got me here.

Twenty years late, maybe, but perhaps even this dry old stick may bud and blossom.

Wholly Weak

From a busy end of (teaching) term to a busy vacation - assessed essays to write, Greek to get back on track.

It's at this stage of the course - next term has a few teaching weeks then exams - that lots of us are thinking about the tension between learning and developing for ministry.

If only we knew what, from all this, will be useful, what we'll forget and regret, what we'll look back and wish we'd taken better advantage of the opportunity to explore.

I take great comfort from generations of ordinands who have completed courses like ours and lived out fruitful lives of ministry; I take note with humility of the statistics for stressed-out and demotivated clergy.

Please pray for those in training, especially those going ahead, this year's leavers who will very soon be heading off to parishes around the country, longing to be as Christ to those to whom they are send, offering their weakness and seeking his glory.