Made it!

Which is to say that I've made it as far as theological college, which at the moment feels like a minor miracle in itself - and I'm not talking about the feat of surviving moving when jetlagged from a trans-Atlantic flight, though that's probably one too.

It's the third day of inductions.  At times I'm feeling somewhat buffeted by various pressures, ranging from the mild shock of going back into somewhat cramped student accommodation, to meeting a large number of new people, to trying to get my head round the degree requirements, and the frankly terrifying manner in which the idea of the priesthood is beginning to resume reality - and above all, information overload.  But for all that I'm enjoying things, and feel like I'm in the right place, strange as that may seem.  Though it is strange to look round all the (very friendly) faces and imagine them all above black shirts and clerical collars.

I was amused that the inaugural Eucharist involved the hymn Father hear the prayer we offer, which as you may knows goes:

Father, hear the prayer we offer:
not for ease that prayer shall be,
but for strength, that we may ever
live our lives courageously.

Not for ever in green pastures
do we ask our way to be ;
but the steep and rugged pathway
may we tread rejoicingly.

Not forever by still waters
would we idly rest and stay;
but would smite the living fountains
from the rocks along our way.

Be our strength in hours of weakness,
in our wanderings be our Guide;
through endeavor, failure, danger,
Savior, be thou at our side. 

I will forever associate this hymn with the priest who conducted a retreat I was on recently, who, in the course of telling us that we should make sure we were being honest when we prayed or sang, not just repeating things we considered pious, told us how he refused to sing this hymn.  "I don't want to tread the rugged pathways, I'd much rather stay by the still waters.  Especially if there's someone to bring me a cocktail."

In some ways I saw his point - the masochistic urge to psuedo-martyrdom is unhealthy! - especially as I knew he had gone through some fairly hellish times.  It did strike me, though that the hymn was written by a woman, in the nineteenth century, and that does make a difference to how we read the hymn.  Maria Love Wilkes, a Unitarian from Boston, was a magazine editor and married to a doctor.  While she had, as far as I know, an active and fulfilling life by the standards of comfortably off Victorian women, it's easy to read the hymn as the cry of someone who is sick to death of being protected and told that their role consists of being 'the angel in the house' while the men do the dangerous and dirty work.   A job, however difficult, and the strength to do it, is vastly preferable.

Of course, that's assuming you don't get a job that's beyond your strength.  The role of women in the church still isn't easy - particularly if you're in the catholic tradition - and our divisions and differences are painfully felt.  And the life of a priest can be lonely, frustrating, and difficult, in any case.

Still, whatever the path before me, I'd like the strength to tread it rejoicingly (which applies to the degree, too).

And I do think the next couple of years are going to be a lot of fun, as well as hard work, too.