Visited a pal of my Dad's at Magdalen College today - Dad is/was a professor of French - Toby is his friend, fellow at Magdalen and lecturer of French at Oxford.

Magdalen is another world - there are deer in the deer park out the back of the college, just by the Magdalen meadows that stretch over most of south-east Oxford. They have an original (i.e. done by the school at the same time) of Leonardo's last supper hung in the chapel - most of the chapel wall!

The buildings are awesome, the senior common room oozing history (which was C S Lewis' chair?), the whole set up from a different age, a different planet. It was pretty cool to have a personal tour from a fellow of 26 years' standing!

And my summer placement church is the one where Toby is a lay reader, so will meet in some different contexts. The chat was more church than family or French - very interesting morning!

We set off for Israel.

The news from over there is a little interesting right now.

We will be in Jerusalem and Galilee, rather than Gaza or the West bank, but it is a small country...

Very exciting, but some trepidation at the trip - new group (don't know any of them), new place for me, three weeks away from family (longest). Lots of prayer before and during...

Officially...but

2 essays to write

4 weeks of placement to complete

1 three week trip to Israel (OK, that is a bit of a holiday...)

Practice sermon classes today - I was preaching on David & Jonathan (in 1 Samuel, story of David, just post-Goliath, and the intense relationship he forms with Jonathan, the king's son).

I propose the intense, vulnerable relationship there as an image of our intense, vulnerable, risky relationship with Jesus, with God.

I thought I looked a bit flat on the video, but I hit a nerve with the principal, the assessor - his comment - as in the title...

Most interesting, and an area for some exciting work in the next few months...

would you believe it.

Pretty rubbish second half - where is the skill?

I'm Scottish, and our two children born in Scotland are wearing England strips and celebrating Joe Coles' goal against Sweden.

I do wonder what the final score will be...

We have set up a screen and a projector in the refectory of the college, and are projecting via a digibox. It's theological reflection on a cultural norm, but not as we know it, Jim...

The infamous 18th century Hell-Fire Club met at West Wycombe, where we have been on mission for (bits of) the past week.

Some of the missionere were quite uncomfortable with the feel of the hell-fire caves below the hill in West Wycombe, down below thedeeply strange church of St Lawrence West Wycombe (apparently the golden ball on the church was used by the Hell-Fire club for some rumpy-pumpy-type-activities...)

the oddest bit of all, for me. At the mouth of the caves, now very tacklily developed to try and capture passing tourist trade - what is the first memento of the politically dominant, spiritually deviant, morally bankrupt, sexually debauched clique of noblemen?...

The Hell-Fire Tearooms...

A sudden burst of blogging has come into my consciousness today, after someone Googled ordinand blogs (I think) and came up with this one...

The chap in question is going to Ridley

Tiffer's blog

and has a smattering of links to other Ridley-esqe blogs. It makes you feel all "I'm-not-blogging-deep-or-often-enough"

So - God is acting in my life here in community - I have just written two theological reflections on where God is acting in particular situations.

and I've discovered where I will probably be starting as a curate next year (TOP SECRET for the moment).

Exciting stuff...

It is very hot and humid - 28 degrees centigrade by the car thermometer... feels oppressive as if it could thunder at any moment.

Evening prayer on a Monday here at Cuddesdon is 'special worship', whatever people fancy doing. Today the team put on a 'solemn evensong' - 1662 Book of Common Prayer worship with incense, copes and collars.

The range of worship here is awesome, from guitars and worship, through meditation, through to as ritaulistic as you like. Go back through the centuries and one would have been variously rebuked, jailed or burned at the stake for doing some or any of these. Now, it's part of the educational process...

Interesting how we change what we do - but God remains the same throughout...

I bought something from bidTV!!!!

It's one of these TV auction channels.

They always flash by when surfing the channels, selling useless stuff.

This time, they were selling camera memory cards fairly cheaply (cheaper than PC World, but more than some online stores). I'm off to Israel in a few weeks (for a few weeks), and want to take lots of photos, so a 1GB card (=1000 piccies or so) seems ideal.

Buy! Buy! Sell! Sell!

The exam results escaped today, and we got the first official academic assessment in the nine months since we came here.

No-one on the course failed (the thing is designed to avoid that), and we had quite a spread of marks.

I am very happy with mine - a first for Old Testament and an upper second for New. Maybe I should sign up to be a rabbi instead of a priest...

berinsfield rolls on.

Cough and chest getting a bit nasty. Off to see the doctor today.

Maitre D' for the Guest Night tonight...

Hog roast on Sunday.

bright Hour (sketch show) next Thursday - need some sketches!!!