To give some kind of structure to my whimsical thoughts I have asked myself a rather basic question: Knowing what I know now about life as a new curate (of a few weeks!) what do I consider to be the most valuable aspects of my training on the Course?

 

The first thing that springs to mind is the value of training on a Course, such as OMC, which attracts people from across a wide spectrum of churchmanship and from different backgrounds. We were all, to a lesser or greater degree, influenced and changed by each other. It’s hard to imagine that this would have happened in a more homogeneous group. And this is really important because one of the things I can now see as vital for ministry is, for want of a less pretentious phrase, a pilgrim heart. By this I mean both an openness to the road ahead and a delight in those we travel with. (I might add that patience is very much related to this. I have discovered that there is a level of patience required for full-time parish work that borders on the saintly.) I can’t help but wonder whether ministerial training with a like-minded group, all ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’, might actually limit one’s ability to minister effectively in an ordinary parish context. Anyhow, I have valued and I do value what I learnt about myself as part of this motley band of OMC pilgrims.

 

This leads to my next point which is about the opportunity the course gives for a second adolescence. I have checked my dictionary – adolescence is a ‘state of growing up’ but, as we know (perhaps only too well) this is achieved through varying degrees of rebellion, self-obsession, angst, insecurity, silliness… The chance to step outside the normal expectations and responsibilities of ‘grown-up’ life and explore ideas, emotions, past experience and, actually, simply to learn, is a wonderful thing – a genuine privilege – and something that I treasure about these past few years. And the truth is that ordained ministry calls for a maturity that goes beyond what we might ordinarily expect of ourselves or others: self-giving is the name of the game. It’s very grown-up.

 

The temptation of course is to view training as the acquisition of skills, of becoming more accomplished in the practical stuff of ministry. Viewed like this, the course can be rather frustrating – we would occasionally question the relevance of some of the more abstract or obscure parts of our study. ‘How can X or Y possibly help us in our ministry?’ ‘And why haven’t we covered A or B, surely these are essential to our ability to do the job?’ But what is much clearer to me now is that the ‘hands-on’ practical training takes place after ordination in the title post. The Course is very much stage one of an on-going process, it provides the framework or context – and the basic tools – to enable a deacon to apply herself to the next stage of learning. An example of what I mean here came up this week. I took a funeral of someone who died very young of alcohol abuse. Nothing on the Course taught me how to conduct the funeral, that had to be learnt here, but the theological framework which allowed me to explore in my own mind the issues it threw up for me, came entirely from the three years leading up to this point. The same is true of countless other experiences I have had over the past couple of months. I even blew the dust off an essay on Chalcedonian Christology after an extraordinary discussion in the Emmaus group on the humanity and divinity of Christ - yes, really…

 

This brings me to my final thought. In a sense all that I have said relates to the feeling I have that my time on the Course was part of an on-going process, a journey of exploration, which preceded selection and continues, well, for ever. OMC was the perfect ‘fit’ for me for that chapter of the story. It strikes me therefore that trusting the process, and not rushing the fences, is another important lesson learnt. I realise now, as I write this reflection, that I appreciate the Course even more with hindsight than I did at the time. This could just be nostalgia, but it could be to do with the inevitable widening of perspective as the journey continues.

 

I can’t finish without saying how much fun we had on OMC – there really was a lot of laughter – and how deep the friendships are that are made in this second adolescence. I’m very glad that we had the ‘wisdom’ not to take the Course too seriously…