Roshi's ramblings

Hello everyone, in this weeks post I'm going to be talking about the basics of my placement.  What it is, where it is, why I'm doing it and what it involves..  What is a placement? A placement is a church you attend at the behest of your diocesan director of ordinands that has been agreed upon by them and the Bishop.  How long it lasts is different depending on your previous experience.  For me it is going to be 3 months, taking me through one of the busiest times of the Christian year - Christmas. Where is it? I am attending and helping out at a benefice of rural churches.  St Mark's Dolphinholme, St Peter's Quernmore and Christ Church Over Wyresdale.  These are the churches run by my ADDO and they are roughly 15 minutes away from one another. Why do it?   When you are exploring your vocation in the Diocese of Blackburn they like for you to have a placement in a church outside of your own tradition/circumstances so you can see a broad range of Christianit

One of the Harvest displays The view up the chancel   Hello everyone, in today's post I'm going to talk about the services I attended at The Priory in Lancaster.   The church is a beautiful building and I arrived on harvest festival day so it was decked out with various harvest-related items made by the groups associated with the church highlighting what they do to help provide for those in need, or how what they do can link in with food.   The services were brilliant, in my tradition of Anglo-catholic with the bells and smells approach.  I found it interesting that the thurifer didn't carry the thurible in the procession, carrying a sceptre instead, the reason being the smoke could irritate asthmatics. The services were also accompanied throughout by a 25 strong choir, the first week I went it was the men and boys, the other week was men and girls.  It meant it was a truly sung Eucharist with almost every prayer being accompanied by their powerful vocals.  I

How I feel at the moment!  Hi everyone, I'm currently super super busy with everything going on in my work life as well as in my religious life, but I don't want to abandon this blog so I'm going to make a conscious effort over the next couple of weeks to get some more content written. It'll also help me reflect upon everything going on and give me a chance to take a step back! So throughout October I went to the Priory in Lancaster, it's a beautiful church and it has a full 25 person choir male, boys and girls. Naturally that means the services were sung and sung beautifully. It showed me what can be done with a willing, we'll trained choir.   I'll talk more about it in another post, all I need to do now is stop being tone deaf so I can sing along too! A very interesting and thought provoking book I've started attending a bible/book study group of 20 to 30s and we are studying a book called 'Too Busy Not To Pray' though sadly I

My blog is currently being ignored, not because I have nothing to say, quite the opposite in fact! However I am currently working as a supply teacher at a school 50 miles from home so the daily commute is taking it out of me and along with the work I don't have much time to post my ramblings! I have recently started a 3 month placement at my ADDO's churches and have lots and lots to write about. Once I finish this work at the end of November I will be back in full force I promise!

The same day as I went to the family mass at St Tee's I also went to their '7 @ St Tees' service. This was very clearly designed as a fresh expression of worship for students and young adults such as myself. As such it really appealed to me. To begin with there were coffee and cakes on offer as you entered the Church and everyone was happy and very welcoming. The Church was lit by stage lighting to provide ambience throughout At about 5 to 7 a 5 minute countdown came on the projectors accompanied by fly through of areas of natural beauty. It also had dramatic countdown music as you would associate with news programmes or such like. It was a good display, much like I used to use as a starter for lessons to help bring people's attention to the front and prepare for what's to come. The projectors and computer were used to good effect throughout the service. From showing a video to make you think about taking time to think about God.; showing a selection of image

This has been a very interesting read. It takes the 9 selection criteria for becoming  ordained and uses pop culture, art and film to explore them in depth and realistically. Whilst the book doesn't give you all the answers to what you need to show for the criteria it does a very good job of guiding you in reflecting upon them. In using modern culture for the examples it makes the criteria instantly more accessible and understandable to young people such as myself.   It definitely helps me as I go through each criteria. I'm currently exploring criteria B and C as part of my exploration and go back to the relevant chapters for inspiration!

I'm writing this blog post having just been to the family mass at St Tees... And I loved it! The sheer sense of joy at worshipping Christ, the fact the Church was packed to the rafters with people and that there were multiple Sunday schools running was wonderful to see. The Church was full, ground floor and balconies!  As with the Wednesday service the focus was predominantly on the scripture. And the preaching that followed, but there was also time given to the young people to talk about the summer camps they had been on and what they had been up to. This was at the very start of the service, giving a clear focus to the youth, rather than tagged on at the end. Making sure everyone can see and get involved The Church itself has 2 projectors with screens either side of the altar and for those behind pillars there are televisions set up above each row.  There is a camera at the back that's used to follow the 'action' throughout so everyone can see what's g

Another good book on calling. I read this whilst on the SCP vocations weekend and it tied in perfectly with what I was learning about. It covers callings and vocation in an accessible and easy to read fashion that, as the title suggests, are about vocation in young people. Each chapter is based on a different person's experiences, though the editor and compiler have done a very good job of maintaining the same writing style throughout. The chapters also coincide with callings in the Bible, making them relevant to the modern day. It's a very good read if like me you are young and exploring your vocation. It's also good if you want to understand the feelings behind callings in the Bible. I highly recommend it.

Hi everyone, a few weeks ago I had the privilege of having a casual meeting with my sponsoring bishop regarding my vocation and calling. We discussed my time line of faith, what the good news is, what the role of a priest is, what I envision as being important within the Church and what I am to expect in the coming months. Timelines, past, present... Perhaps not future thouvh He was impressed with my time line, though noted I had a tendency to refer to how I had left things behind, using negative terminology and suggested I put a more positive spin on it all. Rather than saying 'I went from this church to that because I didn't like this' I should phrase it more like 'after having my faith shaken at 16 I decided to explore different denominations within my faith as well as other faiths until I realised that there really was only anglicanism for me.' which sounds much better. Pray tell?  I gave a 5 minute ramble, as I am want to do (this blog is called

The very first book I read to help me explore my call to vocation was this called or Collared by Francis Dewar.   It was the first title in the bibliography I got off the callwaiting site that jumped out at me. I found it a very illuminating and useful book. It laid out very clearly what a calling is and what vocation is. The author uses his own personal experience, as well as information provided by a wide variety of would-be-ordinands to help describe the feelings and thoughts a person may go through, as well as the myriad reasons people feel called by God to do or be something - even if this may not actually be ordination. In chapter one he addresses callings in general, before specifically talking about callings in terms of how you want to be and what you want to do in the following 2 chapters.  These first 3 highlight the difference between being called by God to ministry and being called by God to do what you are naturally good at.  In summary everyone is called by Go

A few Wednesday's ago I happened to be free at lunchtime so went along to the lunchtime mass at my local Evangelical church. So what do I mean when I say Evangelical? If you've been into a church and the sermon is the most important part of the service you are probably at an Evangelical service.   In an Anglo-Catholic service the focus is in the Eucharist, that is where Jesus and God lay, for Evangelicals it is the sermon as it's within scripture you find God. The Bible is his word, it has fundamental truth within it.   This doesn't mean it's all 100% historically accurate, though highly conservative evangelicals (such as those found in America) would argue it was.  Because of this the main focus of reverence in the service is on the reading of scripture and the sermon which follows.   Receiving communion is still important but not the focus, and is celebrated using any form of bread and wine that just quickly get blessed, if it is celebrated at all

Prayer roots you for the day The primary role of a priest is to administer the sacraments. That and pray. Prayer should be an ingrained and constant thing within your life. Whilst exploring my vocation one of the things I have found most difficult to do initially was find time for prayer, yet I know at theological college and throughout curacy it will be at the very least a twice daily event. With this in mind I thought I’d discuss some of the methods I have found that help.  Panoramic picture of my godspace on Morecambe prom, taken this morning First things first, you need an area for yourself where you can pray, or just be with God in quiet contemplation, a Godspace if you will. This could be a specific chair in your living room, your bed, an area you’ve set up in a spare room or even a place you go on a morning walk. For myself I do the last one. I’m blessed to live right next to Morecambe promenade and there is a small jetty with a bench on it right out into Morecambe ba

I've had my 2nd meeting with the ADDO and it went well. We discussed the time line I have created as well as my ideas about the vocations criteria. The main 2 aspects the ADDO wanted to explore in depth were my being priestly and my stickability. First we went over the being priestly part.   I'm doing a lot at the moment towards becoming a priest, reading lots of books, attending various churches, becoming heavily involved in my parish church, but doing is not the same as being so she wanted examples of how I'm changing due to my vocation. We talked about how I now tend to pray a lot more, if a hearse drives past I say a prayer for the departed, if I see something horrific on the news I pray for the victims and the perpetrators. I also relate things to God's presence more often. I've quit a job I hated to follow my call more clearly and I am much happier for it. I feel it's accepting my calling that has made me happier, especially because the stres