The absence from here is entirely due to a conveyor belt of marking, collating and responding in feedback to student essays and other assignments. All now safely negotiated and only the final confirmations within the Quality Assurance processes now required.
At this point some unhilarious alleged friends or acquaintances suggest we are now finished for the summer. Once they recover from the instant shock-wave of unspoken but eye-glinting caution to not go there, I explain that the summer is not less busy, just differently busy. Any further attempts at having a go at the alleged easiness of life in the College are not treated with such commendable if barely controlled verbal restraint.
So what happens next. Next year's timetable to be fitted as best can be around the various needs and availabilities of around 40 students doing some of the 50 or so modules. Arranging teaching of modules, accommodation and equipment needs. Aligning College practice and documentation with UWS policies and good practice. Refreshing the Website with next year's information. Research stuff to be progressed and moved towards delivery / publishing. Entire curriculum rebuilding in preparation for revalidation and Subject Health Review. Reconfiguring all our working remits to align our activities with the College Development Plan for the next 5 years, which presupposes extensive personal and institutional development. Oh, and given that we don't take holidays during Semester time which is 30 weeks of the year, there is the not small matter of trying to fit holidays into our lives. These are some of the reasons for the "eye-glinting caution" that greets frivolous comment about life in theological education 🙂
Last night I travelled home to the accompaniment of Mozart. The Exsultate Jubilate is one of the most sublime pieces I know – yes, my repertoire is limited, but music which has the line (translated) "the skies sing psalms with me", played as I drive alongside a low sun and distant hills. Well – it beats any praise song I can think of, and a lot of them I don't want to think of much. One of the interesting reflections on regular long trips in the car, and listening to some music more than once, is the capacity of music to change my inner climate. I can be quite buoyant till I hear, for example, the slow movement of Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Harp, and I move to a wistful longing that fills the mind and heart like a prayer – not asking for anything, just longing for God knows what. That phrase, "longing for God knows what", isn't a careless irreverence, it's a careful reverent recognition that we are beings whose affinities are with that in life which touches us with wonder, gratitude, possibility, hopefulness and goodness.
Likewise I can put on Mary Chapin Carpenter singing her song about John Doe, which tells the story of a child with special needs, told through the mouth and eyes of that same child now as an old man, remembering how he was pitied, institutionalised and treated as less than the full human being he is. And I then know why I am so passionate about affirming and embracing the full humanity of each person, and why I so agree with Jean Vanier that every human being has needs, and is special. The same CD has her song Stones in the Road, and Jubilee – and they remind me why being angry with systems, powers and people whose wealth and power-games presuppose the poverty and exploitation of others, is not only allowed, but obligatory. Or I put on Simon and Garfunkel's live concert and simply explore the infinite range of human expereince and emotion in songs that are still for me definitive of modern popular music that touches the heart because it celebrates life.
The journeys in the car are not time wasted when keeping comapny with such articulate humane travellers on that journey we are all sharing.
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