Reasons to be Cheerful - Ridley

With apologies to Ian Dury

Old dogs learn new tricks... More straw for the bricks... Need a caffeine fix
Baked beans in the stews... Telling the Good News... Friday staircase booze
Mission fields to gaze on... Study beds to laze on... Kyrie eleison
Reasons to be cheerful - Ridley Reasons to be cheerful - Ridley

Practising your part... Essays you can't start... Soaking in Karl Barth
Fighting the good fight... Reading N T Wright... Never jump the light
Iron sharpening iron... Friends you can rely on... Peter with his tie on
Reasons to be cheerful - Ridley Reasons to be cheerful - Ridley

Practise all your tact... Tell the myth from fact... Read the righteous act
Chapel's atmospheric... Wannabe a cleric... Being evangelic
Thank the church that picked us... Westcott's never licked us... Sing the Benedictus
Reasons to be cheerful - Ridley Reasons to be cheerful - Ridley

Time spent on your knees... Hot pud, cake or cheese... Split up into threes
All the stuff we're taught... Books unread but bought... Please keep off the Court
Preach and they don't boo ya... PCCs can sack or sue ya... Glory, hallelujah
Reasons to be cheerful - Ridley Reasons to be cheerful - Ridley

Never playing hookey... Be a holy rookie... Have a fairtrade cookie
Time for Mission Tea... Using BCP... We're the C of E!
Talented yet humble... Making Dawkins crumble... Watch out, Nicky Gumble
Reasons to be cheerful - Ridley Reasons to be cheerful - Ridley

Preaching to a fen... Singing in the rain... Mission soup again
Up for morning prayer... Time to read's so rare... Napping in my chair
Clinging to the cross... Counting all but loss... Don't forget who's boss
Reasons to be cheerful - Ridley Reasons to be cheerful - Ridley

Whizz past dreaming spires... Reading all the flyers... Pumping up your tyres
Have an essay crisis... Say hi to the Spices... Surtaxed choccy prices
Supper looks alarming... Always being charming... Antiphonal psalming
Reasons to be cheerful - Ridley Reasons to be cheerful - Ridley

Porridge in your bowl... Freedom in your soul... God bless Charlie Moule
Working like a Trojan... Here I'll make my sojourn... I'm a theologian
Ministry formation... Good news for the nation... Up the Federation!
Reasons to be cheerful - Ridley Reasons to be cheerful - Ridley

A Prayer for Christian Unity

My heart is pure, my hands are clean
I lift them now to sing his praise
The words I sing I truly mean
Yes! I shall serve him all my days
With face aglow and heart ablaze
In every season of the year
In every caref'lly chosen phrase
In every place where I appear
And tell his grace both far and near
This great salvation, stripes that heal
The Word Made Flesh who casts out fear
And welcomes sinners at his meal
I never knew you. Go away.
You stand and block the narrow way.

Liminality

Well, I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've used that word.

A time of transitions. For Cambridge ordinands, term began last week, and I have now completed two 'Federation Intensives,' namely Race Awareness (excuse the dated sounding name) and Godly Play.

Having worked in the Caribbean, and been had similar corporate training, my expectations for this course that is compulsory for all at some stage were a little mixed. The issue of racism is clearly a live one, but it is all too easy to end up with a less than useful guilt-fest, exposing authentic and imagined guilt.

In fact I both enjoyed and, I believe, benefited from this course, given a light touch but in no way superficially treated by Bev Thomas. What did I learn? Probably the most valuable outcome for me was finding a few new ways into understanding the issues from a more rounded perspective than I have had access to before.

One piece of that was the well-known-to-many-but-not-me "Blue eyes/brown eyes" exercise. If you know it, read on. If not, grab this link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/view.html

Next came Godly Play, looking at and working with a specific system of religious education - OK, that makes it sound deadly, which it wasn't - and introducing the topic of spiritual development in children. This topic seems to stir up strong feelings one way or another, although because the term sounds rather generic it's hard to know how directly people have experienced what we saw, which was an environment, methods and resources (related to the Montessori tradition), not simply a way of telling stories.

We were led by Rebecca Nye, an academic turned practitioner who first brought Godly Play here, and had a great time, mostly at floor level getting a child's eye view of the process.

I could go on, but I'm more inclined to direct you to the Godly Play UK website, and do a little more reading and reflecting myself. I will say that I was impressed by what I saw, and the approach made sense of some of the joys and the frustrations from my own experience working with younger children in a church context.

(Oh, and frustratingly I used some response time in our complete session to start a poem on journeys, but I think I must have left it behind, bah, I need to go ahead of the admittedly weak - sorry! - 'Turkey.')

This blog also proves that my 'new' laptop seems to work. The old one has a serious problem with its screen, and it turned out that a second hand laptop was more viable than a repair. This one came via eBay, and I confess to a little nervousness, but so far so good...

The normal teaching timetable starts tomorrow, so this is the calm before the storm. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more...