Author Archives: Gillian

One Year On

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I’m sitting on the train at the moment. It is 6:30am, far too early to be up and on the road (or train tracks), but here I am.

I was sitting in chapel on Wednesday when I realized that my journey to Huron has come full circle. One year ago this week I was in Ontario for a wedding and a meeting. I spent a lovely thanksgiving weekend in Sarnia before travelling, on October 10th, to London to spend the day talking with faculty and students at Huron University College. It is strange to think of myself then from the point of view of myself now. Yet here I am, one year later, on the same train to Montreal that I took last year on this Friday, with half of my first term of classes under my belt. Wow.

Looking Forward

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This can probably be filed under the category of “rant”. Also, under the category of “Gillian is procrastinating from writing a paper”.

I am constantly asked what kind of church or other setting I would like to end up in once I have completed my studies here. The question came up again this week with someone at school and I think that I gave my most coherent answer to date. Reflecting on my answer later at home I realized I’d still gotten it wrong. Or, rather, the question we are asking is wrong.

So I put the question out on twitter and continued to think about the subject.

 

I was surprised when I was interviewed by the Diocesan Committee on Ordained Ministry last year to be asked questions about parish specifics: size and location of where I might want to work, whether I would like to be full- or part-time, paid or unpaid. While I understand that they have to work out if the diocese even needs more priests, I had hoped that they would have had a more forward-looking view of things: Will this model of ministry that we have inherited over the last five billion years (only a slight exaggeration) still be functional and/or relevant when I am finished? When I shared this observation with my bishop, I added that I did not really want to leave my job, move across the country, and go to school for three years in order to maintain a status quo that is broken. (Or, as Dr Horrible says: “Because the status is not quo!”)

It is broken because we are spending more money on maintaining our buildings than on active ministry. It is broken because it isn’t working: the average age of people attending (mainline) churches is increasing and the number of people attending is decreasing. Soon we are all going to die out. Die out, that is, unless we can figure out a different way to do things.

So don’t ask me what kind of priest I want to be when I am all done. Instead ask what your community needs and let us work together to figure out what we can do and where a priest might fit into the mix.

Week One: The Theological School Edition

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It has been awhile since I had to build a life that revolves around a school schedule. My last degree, my MA, did not have a physical class schedule and, as we were all located in many different time zones, school happened when I fit it into my life. Now, however, my life is having to have a distinct school rhythm. I need to regain the art of packed lunches that can be eaten in the classroom. My lack of foresight around this became very evident on Thursday: between 8:40am when chapel begins and 2:30pm when my last class ends I have no breaks. To make matters worse, the last two hours were two instead of the one I was expecting, they happened in an airtight sauna of a room, and they were my first class of attempting to learn a new language (Biblical Hebrew). To say I was cranky would have been an understatement.

With nine textbooks to read from weekly, plus the book for my “book report” in one class, I have never been so thankful that I am a fast reader. Mid-week, my head threatened to explode with the stress of having to figure out when everything was due. So I made a handy colour-coded schedule that is stuck to my cupboard door. Then, when my eyes mutinied in a staggering headache from over use (both from reading and from the scourge that is Plants vs. Zombies), my godmother came to the rescue and took me away from the house for several hours of shopping – both the necessary supplies shopping and the for-fun shopping – and we discovered a fantastic cafe for lunch. (Incidentally, it is in this cafe that I now sit as they have the perfect atmosphere for me to be able to think, read, and write. And they have wifi.) Feeling energized by that and by some living room floor yoga, I was able to tackle the Hebrew alphabet for several hours last night.

But I think the class I have engaged with most, at this point, has been Systematic Theology. My prof looks like Bob Ross (though with slightly less hair on the top of his head) and has nearly as soothing a voice but a superior sense of humour. We spent most of our last class talking about some of the influences existentialism, in particular Kierkegaard, has had on our current ways of thinking theologically. Having read a fair bit of Kierkegaard and having spent a great deal of time immersed in existentialist theories of counselling practice, I found it fascinating. I have filed away these ideas in the “When I actually have time to think about other things” file so that I can further process how my ideas of how I practice as a counsellor fit, or do not fit, with my theology and my views of the individual and society.

Today is my favourite kind of day. It is sunny and cool, but not too cool. Instead of the 35C+ we experienced earlier this week, or the muggy thunder and lighting with tornado warning storms of Wednesday, it is a perfect 18C with a cool breeze that makes cycling perfect. It has the feel of an end-of-summer-beginning-of-autumn day. I’ve cycled about 17km so far today, with another 5 or so before I get home, and that has done wonders for my sense of well-being. I have read a chapter of Church History, glanced at the Hebrew alphabet, and done some work on my bicycle (it is going to take some time to get my bike back to top shape after the movers messed some things up. Fortunately that is the only damage they did to my belongings.). This afternoon will include tea and textbooks before making applesauce while watching a movie recommended by a good friend.

Week one, I own you!

Home is

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Community building exercises. Three words that come second only to role playing in the list of things I will go out of my way to avoid. After seeing that community building was on the agenda for orientation week this week, I spent the long weekend trying to figure out if I could escape. When I realized that the three or four others I already know in the program would likely note my absence, I braced myself to attend.

Fortunately it was little more than introductions, conversation over food, and a scavenger hunt around campus. It is the introductions that always get me.

“Give us your name and where you’re from.

Where am I from? That’s an interesting question, and a tricky one given the amount people move around these days. Technically I guess I’m from Belleville. But I’ve been away from there longer than I ever lived there at this point. Home is wherever I am as I move my things with me when I move for something like this. My move here to London was from Victoria and, to be honest, Victoria still feels like home.

So that’s what I said. Victoria, BC. Eyebrows raised. “Wow, that’s a long way!”

Afterwards I received a lot of questions about why I chose to come to London for school (I don’t think Ontarians realize how few Anglican seminaries are west of here compared to what is in Ontario) and heard lots of stories about people’s visits to BC. Everyone seems to know someone who has retired there…

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I hung up my art on the wall this afternoon. That always feels like the last step to settling into a place and making it homey. Nearly everything has a place and I’m sorting out how I want to do this like dishes in my rather unorthodox kitchen setup.

I’m here. I’m settled. I have an Ontario drivers license. I’ve begun school. This adventure is underway.

The Labyrinth by Candle and Moonlight

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We took the scholars up to the labyrinth and invited them to walk through it contemplating some of the questions of the Examen.

What we didn’t take into account was that small tapers inside of paper bags don’t actually stay lit for very long. Instead of walking the labyrinth with the scholars and the leadership team, I ended up darting here and there throughout the labyrinth relighting candles that had blown out and replacing candles that had burned out.

What I encountered was a very different experience than those who took the winding path through the labyrinth. Upon reflection, it was as though I was a small part of everyone’s journeys: by hunkering down at this corner or that, I ensured that the path was lit for the return home.

 

Rewind and Fastforward

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It has been a long time since I paddled a canoe across a still Ontario lake.

Yes, I’ve canoed in the intervening time, but BC shorelines are not the same as Ontario ones. Ontario ones, in comparison, look so “quaint” and miniature: the trees are smaller here, the rocks less jagged and imposing. As some of our youth scholars reminded me, however, they are no less dramatic, no less beautiful, and no less dangerous.

I found myself reflecting back to weeks spent at the cottage in the lakes of Ontario as a child. We would take early morning paddles around the lake looking for turtles and loon nests and listening for the call of the loon. I relished the stillness and the silence of the moment and would try and paddle as silently as possible.

Like birdwatching, canoeing is one of those things that I associate with my mum.

I was paddling home across Cameron Lake, enjoying silence in the companionship of my fellow-paddlers, when I began to reflect a little more on what I was doing. Mum used to lead canoe trips with young people on Ontario lakes. Here I was, some odd 40 years later, canoeing on Ontario lakes with young people for the first time as a leader. Its the closest I’ve felt to mum in a long time.

Ask & Imagine

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Glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can Ask or Imagine

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I’ve been here for nearly a week but “getting settled in London” still hits me as a bit of a misnomer. I spent two lovely days with my godparents, have seen and dropped a few things off at the place where I will be living come the end of the month, and now am living at Huron University College residences for the program Ask & Imagine.

As of yesterday, we’ve all met, we’ve played games together, we’ve cooked and eaten together, and we’ve worshiped together. Today begins our first full day. It is as much a new experience for all of our young scholars as it is for me. And it is fantastic.

Leaving

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IMG_0793The last few weeks have felt, as I’ve joked with friends, like my “farewell tour” of the West Coast. I spent a solid week of visiting with friends before leaving Victoria, often two-three coffee/meal dates in a day. While tiring in some ways – it was a lot of here and there – it was so much more rewarding and life-giving than a big goodbye party would have been. I cherish the chance to actually speak with people and have good conversations, and that just doesn’t happen in large settings at restaurants. Its been hard to say goodbye to the people I love and the place I have lived for so long, even though I know it is not goodbye and is more of a “see you soon”.IMG_0383 My house and belongings were packed well in advance of move day and, as I had no furniture remaining save a couple of pillows and a camping mattress, I spent much of my time at other people’s houses and in coffee shops.

I have lived in Victoria since August of 2004. Sure, there was a two year period in there where I travelled extensively around China, Europe, and then on a ship in the Pacific, but Victoria has been my home. In fact, it is the longest I have lived anywhere since my first 13 years in the small Ontario town where I was born.

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Christ Church Cathedral has been my church home and the centre of my spiritual community and the beginning of the my more recent, formal journey towards ordination, for the last five years. We said farewell last Sunday and it was tough to not know when I would be back inside that gorgeous building with all of the familiar and supportive faces of friends.

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I have spent the last five days in Vancouver, continuing the “Farewell Tour” with saying goodbye to family and to friends here before I head to Ontario tomorrow.

Today I worshipped in another Christ Church Cathedral, in Vancouver. Again, some familiar faces and familiar spaces were there to greet me.

It is bittersweet, leaving the West Coast. I love it here. I love my friends, I love my way of life. Yet I am so very excited about what the next three years in London will hold and what things I will learn and the people I will meet and, perhaps, the places I will fall in love with there. And, BC, as I have said, it is not a goodbye. It is a See You Again Soon.

(And in the meantime, I’m going to head off and eat some more fresh sushi. Again. Because you never can have enough of that on the West Coast before moving inland!)

Boxes

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I’m in the process of boxing up my life to prepare to move. The process of going from the order of my lovely little home to the chaos of packing is a little unsettling and I’m looking forward to taking this chaos and unpacking it to order when I get to London.

All of my furniture has been sold or spoken for.  My dresser is gone and my clothes and linens are in two large totes on the floor in its place. My armchair is gone. The bookshelves went in a “bookshelves for boxes” trade with some friends who moved a few months ago but needed shelves for their books. My bed is gone and I’m camped out on my very comfy thermarest. The couch will go in two weeks and then I’ll have nothing left but boxes.

Spare moments are few and far between right now, with most of them taken outside of my house: partially because of the sunshine and partially because being at home seems to mean needing to pack.

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I’m at the library right now. Well, I’m sitting right outside because I overheard staff talking about a fire drill at some point today and I thought I’d rather sit in the sunshine and use the wifi than have to pack up and move mid-way through something if the drill were to happen. There is a distinct odor of urine around me that I hope I haven’t sat on top of. I’ve seen a number of my clients walk by and passed even more on my way to the library. The way that they and I interact in public, while largely driven by them, is yet another set of boxes. Sometimes we exist in completely distinct worlds and frames and there is no acknowledgement of the other. Sometimes, like yesterday, we’ll run into each other downtown and walk a block together, talking and enjoying the day, before going our separate ways.