A few days (over a week) delayed, but here are some snapshots of my Thanksgiving Weekend in Montreal.
Category Archives: Life
Bicycling in London
I like my bicycle and I enjoy cycling all over the place on it. Cycling has become a really good way for me to get to know this new city. Some roads have bicycle paths (and some of those are in better shape than others) and there are trails all along both sides of the river that I use to get to and from downtown.
I’m not going to rant about bad London drivers, though there are a few of those (the lovely SUV that drove into the curb in order to prevent me from passing him during rush hour comes to mind), but I will share the ongoing saga that has been my bicycle since I moved.
Due to the message not getting to the driver of my moving truck, I ended up being out of town when the movers dropped off my belongings in London. Thankfully friends stepped in to receive my things and everything arrived more-or-less in one piece. When I returned to London I was overjoyed to have my bicycle to get around on again (I don’t know what I’m going to do when it snows. Apparently I can’t ride all year around like I did in Victoria!). The first day we were reunited in London, the seat fell off: I was riding through the parking lot at school and the seat fell off while I was sitting on it. I stopped to look and to pick up the pieces and discovered that the bolt holding the seat to the seat post had sheared in half, leaving part of the bolt in the clamp and rendering it useless. Fortunately there is a bicycle co-op on campus and we were able to jury rig a fix.
The next week I was cycling early morning along some trails on the way to sort out an Ontario driver’s license when I finally discovered why I was experiencing some unusual friction around my front wheel. It turns out that the brake was lose. Not having my tools with me, I stopped at the nearest bike shop for them to tighten it and make things a little safer.
A little later the same day I bicycled through a puddle and got wet. Generally speaking that wouldn’t be a big deal, except for the fact that I have excellent fenders – as is required of all West Coast cyclists. Upon further inspection I realized that the front fender was completely gone. My suspicion is that the movers took it off when they removed my front wheel for packing, and then lost it, which also explains the loose brake. They couldn’t find the fender when I called and so sent me money to buy a new one.
And so everything was fine. I thought. I’ve known for awhile that I may have to replace my derailer at some point. I took my bike in to the shop a couple of weeks ago for them to fix my jury rigged seat and to look at the derailer as my chain had been slipping quite a bit as of late. It turns out the derailer is fine but I needed to replace my crank wheel and gears. Ouch.
Safety first! It shifts and rides quite smoothly now and is all ready for winter. Until I got two flats in two days. I now have a new front tire.
Some might say that I’ve sunk more money into this ancient bicycle than it is worth. But it is a bike that I love, it is sturdy and rides well, and it doesn’t look like anything much so it likely won’t get stolen. We’ve cycled through Victoria and Vancouver, Seattle and San Juan Island, and are now exploring London together. Hopefully, with all of her new parts, we have many more trips to come!
One Year On
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
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.
Can we stop asking what kind of church I want to work at when I’m ordained & start asking what we need 2 do 2 ensure we still have a church?
— Gillian (@gillrh) September 25, 2013
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
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
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…
***
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
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
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
Glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can Ask or Imagine
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.
En Route
A quick hello from Calgary airport after a stunning flight out of Vancouver.
gillian's island 