Wycliffe Student Summer Placement 2010

I am Judith Griffin (below), a first year theology student from Wycliffe Hall, Oxford (left) and hope to be ordained into the Church of England next summer. At the end of the first year we need to have 5 weeks on a work placement where we will gain experience of a church environment which is different from that of our own. I have come from an inner city church so I was keen to know more about country parish life and ministry.

I was completely overwhelmed by the kindness and the warm welcome which I received from everyone whom I met in Dorchester. I was particularly struck at how much time many people give up volunteering for so many roles within and associated to the Abbey. The hard work and team spirit enables this historical place of prayer to be open and accessible to everyone. I was amazed at the variety of events and services that are available that reach out to all different sorts of tastes, needs and age groups.

Under the excellent leadership of Sue and the willingness of the volunteers to coach me, I feel that I have been privileged with the best experience that I could have ever imagined. I have learnt so much practically, but what stands out as a continual thread is the community and the way in which people relate to one another in love and understanding. Through Sue’s example the practical aspect of being a priest and being part of such a community is something that I can see is lived and enjoyed and is not contrived or something confined to a 9 to 5.30 perspective.

I will take away many valuable nuggets of experience and remember my time at Dorchester with warmth. This positive time has added to my excitement about the prospect of becoming ordained and I can’t wait to get out there and use what I have learnt this summer.

Thank you Sue, to you, your family, the team and everyone who I met; it was like being part of a large family .......and I shall also miss the cake!

(Blogged by Judith Griffin, Wycliffe Hall Ordinand on a 5 week placement at Dorchester Abbey during June/July 2010)

Discovering Dorchester Archaeological Schools Visits and Public Open Day 2010

Saturday 24th was a very busy Excavation Open Day on the allotment site for the Discovering Dorchester Community Archaeology Project, with well over 250 people visiting the site. This was the culmination of the July excavations by Oxford Archaeology and University of Oxford students; as Education Officer for the Project, I was pleased with the very enthusiastic response of children and adults.

My name is Jo Richards (seen in background of picture below right). I have worked in professional archaeology throughout my career; for many years as an archaeological illustrator and reconstruction artist, and more recently in the field of archaeology education, heritage interpretation and exhibition design. As a freelance adviser I also demonstrate late medieval plant use and 14th century needlework. I believe the current term for this is ‘portfolio working’!

This is my second summer in Dorchester-on-Thames, since I was recruited through Oxford Archaeology South. I work closely with Oxford Archaeology and the University of Oxford, who are directly responsible for the archaeological excavation programme, thereby providing a broadly historical and site-specific educational programme. In conjunction with the educational work at the dig I collaborate with Margaret Craig at Dorchester Abbey and John Metcalfe of Dorchester Museum, and we have had a very successful season, with over 70 pupils from two local schools visiting the excavation on the allotments site.

On these visit days, we ‘rotate’ groups between the abbey, museum and excavation, where children and their teachers and helpers have a site tour to see archaeology in action. There is a dedicated education marquee, and children can experience a number of activities including finds-washing, using micro-digs, examining tiny snail samples under the microscope and design their own roman coin/roman road/roman pot. After a site tour, I give a brief introduction to timelines, local history and what archaeologists do, including a chance to try on a hard hat, high-visibility jacket and a pair of enormous steel-capped boots!

It doesn’t stop there! There are Roman and Saxon Loans Boxes available for Oxfordshire schools to borrow free of charge throughout the year. I am available for pre-visits to schools before the excavation season starts, and in 2011 we are looking to expand this opportunity further. A number of teachers and parents have been very enthusiastic about the opportunities for hands-on experience of archaeology – there is no better way to enthuse the local community about the impressive and unique historic landscape on their doorstep.
(Blogged by Jo Richards, Discovering Dorchester Archaeological Educational Officer)

Mayors and Chairs Welcome Dinner

On a sultry (but dry!) Monday evening on Monday 19th July 2010, a large group of almost 80 people gathered for drinks on the lawn outside the Abbey. Principle guests were the Mayors and Chairs of the County, district and town councils from across Oxfordshire together with their partners.
The hosts were the Bishop of Dorchester, Colin Fletcher (photo right), and Oxfordshire’s Lieutenancy. Some 20 of the County’s 35 Deputy Lieutenants and their partners were there to welcome the guests. The Bishop of Oxford, John Pritchard (photo left), and his wife were also present. The Rev Canon Sue Booys, generously lending the gloriously spacious Abbey for the evening, enabled it all to happen.

The main purpose of the evening was to wish the Mayors and Chairs well at the start of their Civic year; to give them an opportunity to meet and mingle with each other, and for the group of Deputy Lieutenants, increasingly engaged in activity across the County, to get to know their opposite numbers in the Civic Community.

Being a Mayor or Chair is an onerous task: the list of events which they are asked to attend and be involved with is very substantial, and continues unabated through the whole of the Civic year. The impact that they can have, particularly in encouraging volunteering activity and thanking people all over the county for the tireless contribution that so many make to the well being of their local communities, is of great importance. This is true especially at a time of real economic austerity in public services, when the demands on our Civic authorities and the volunteering sector is greater than it has been for many years. So the evening was a big opportunity to thank and support and encourage our Mayors and Chairs, and to forge links with the Lieutenancy which should help both sides to do their jobs more effectively than would otherwise be the case. But if this makes it all sound too serious, it wasn’t. Drinks were followed by dinner in the Abbey – delicious food prepared and served by Sean and his team from the White Hart. A seating plan for the first course was matched by a free for all seating for the pudding giving maximum opportunity for guests to mingle and talk and gossip and moan and discuss current issues and problems. Some (short!) speeches were part of the mix.

At the end of dinner, all guests were invited to move down into the Chancel where Bishop Colin said Compline, a service which has been used in the Abbey, at the end of the day, for hundreds of years stretching right back to the Abbey’s 12th C monastic traditions. It is a service which encourages quiet contemplation and thought at the close of what had no doubt for all been a busy Monday, but more importantly an opportunity to think quietly about the challenges ahead. An appropriate end to a very special evening.

(Blogged by the Lord-Lieutenant of Oxford, Tim Steventon)

On Women Bishops ….shark infested waters, expectations and the media!

I was going to blog from General Synod but I’m much better at ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’ (Wordsworth) – or at least the relative tranquillity of home compared to Synod. There are some great synod bloggers whose blogs you can find at http://gensyn.blogspot.com if you want a flavour of Synod as it went. If you read them – especially Justin Brett’s (a good friend) you might understand why it’s taken me a week to write!! http://dodgyliberal.blogspot.com

For the second or third time now I’ve been at a meeting of General Synod about which it has been possible for the press to report that the Church of England has agreed to have women Bishops. The reality is that it’s a long way off yet - rather like the Kingdom in R S Thomas wonderful poem of that name!* Therein, as they say, lies the problem. Most places I go people have read the papers and offer their congratulations – but do I feel like cheering? Frankly – No!

Of course I would be delighted if the Synod had made this decision and I AM pleased that we have taken another step along that path. BUT I am also really dismayed for a number of reasons.
First the ‘shark infested waters’ – if you have read the Bishop of Oxford’s Pastoral letter published immediately after Synod (www.oxford.anglican.org/documents/PASTORALLETTERJULY10.pdflink) you’ll know that I have said this! Over the last several years two groups of people with strongly held views have, for the most part, gradually come closer together and really do not now stand so very far apart. Asked by their leaders for generosity and compromise they have done their best - one side is no longer asking for a ‘single clause measure’ (women can be Bishop’s full stop) nor the other for a ‘third province’ (Church within a Church) so we have moved. The water between us that Synod – and the Archbishops – failed to bridge is that of ‘transfer’ versus ‘delegation’. Would a woman Bishop be really a Bishop if she had to transfer her authority to someone else and could someone who genuinely believed she wasn’t a Bishop accept that she could delegate her authority?
The most dangerous ‘sharks’ are lack of trust, fear and the taking of public positions. I’m not yet certain whether the waters are murky and the sharks just magnified by my own worst fears – or whether they are deep and much too dangerous to attempt a crossing. I could never do those ‘reasoning’ puzzles about single boats, foxes and hens crossing to the other side of such rivers when I was at school but there were people who could and I wish they would!! However, in our present situation that’s tantamount to asking someone to wave a magic wand to do work that I need to do by the sweat of my own brow!
Another reason for my dismay is that even people of good will don’t really grasp how it feels to be a woman in this debate. At Synod I sat in a meeting of friends and colleagues (albeit of differing opinions) when three men talked about whether I might want to be asked to offer my opinion. This was so much like what it sometimes feels to be a woman in the midst of these discussions that I was reduced to tears (VERY embarrassing). I’m not convinced that anyone much understood why!

Finally I am dismayed by some of the press reporting – interviewed by Phil Mercer and Malcolm Boyden on Radio Oxford I recognised myself, even if I knew I’d been typically long winded, at once the great advantage and worst disadvantage of a live interview!! In print half a reply can be reported as the whole and it can sound rather different from your original comment! Having read the interview with the Bishop of Fulham in yesterday’s Sunday Times (Women priests made me take up smoking again is one of the tamer comments!) I can only hope that he feels the same! Reporters are looking for adversarial positions and we often seem only too willing to offer them – or too careless not to. Maybe we should ALL refuse all interviews – and NOT do blogging and maybe then we would find it easier to talk and trust!

And for the record … lest you want to ask … there are many women in the Church of England who will, I believe make wonderful Bishops – and I long for the day when that is possible. But it is for God and the Church to call them not me – or any journalist – to name them!!

*Here’s the poem – what it says is worth more than all the reams of paper expended on Women Bishops!!

The Kingdom by R S Thomas

It’s a long way off but inside it
There are quite different things going on:
Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is
Healed; mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back; and industry is for mending
The bent bones and the minds fractured
By life. It’s a long way off, but to get
There takes no time and admission
Is free, if you purge yourself
Of desire, and present yourself with
Your need only and the simple offering
Of your faith, green as a leaf.

(Blogged by Rev. Canon Sue Booys, Rector of Dorchester Abbey)

Life on Placement

As an ordinand in training at Cuddesdon (photo left), I had a conversation a few months ago with the tutor responsible for placements about where to spend 4 weeks in the summer. Having spent 9 years as a Church Army Officer, I have a fair amount of experience in the Church of England, but always in places with one church, one vicar. I asked, therefore, to have a different experience: to go to a church that was part of a bigger team.

I can’t imagine anywhere that would have given me the breadth of experience in such a short space of time as I have found at Dorchester Abbey. Granted, it has been a particularly busy month (meeting Bishop Colin 6 times in a little over 2 weeks is indicative of the number of special events that have happened), but I have learnt much from the day-to-day life of the Abbey and Dorchester Team as well.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Team is blessed with an array of highly capable leaders – both lay and ordained – and it has been a privilege to meet and chat with many of them. The breadth of gifting obviously extends into parish life with so many people serving their parish church in numerous different ways. I was especially impressed with the way that many people from across the Team came together to provide hospitality so effectively for the Ordination Service a couple of weeks ago.

There are lots of things I could talk about regarding this time on placement, but I will limit myself to two more things which I will take from my experience in Dorchester. The first is the team of Churchwardens and Assistant Churchwardens, with particular people having particular responsibilities within the Abbey – it is something which I have not experienced before, yet makes perfect sense, and seems to be working well – an idea which I may well pinch for the future! I am not surprised that a parish which is part of a wider team should have effective teams within itself as well (and there are many more teams besides the churchwardens).

Finally, it has been a real privilege spending these few short weeks witnessing the way that Sue works, as Team Rector. It is a hugely demanding task, being both named incumbent for this particular cluster, and also leading the whole team (and that is without taking into account the additional responsibilities that come with being Area Dean). I have been impressed with the way she models leadership, and have appreciated her insights about taking time off. We had a very interesting discussion about Sabbath the other week, which has given me much food for thought for the future.

May I end by saying thank you to all those I have met in this short time in the Dorchester Team, especially those who have very kindly given up time to talk about life in the Abbey and/or team. It is hard to believe that this Sunday is the end of the placement, but I intend to go out with a bang (perhaps literally – I will be speaking at the Family Service, and balloons will be involved!!) I hope to see many of you there, but whether you can make it or not, I wish Dorchester and the Team every blessing for the future.

(Blogged by Chris Routledge, Cuddesdon Ordinand on a 4 week placement at Dorchester Abbey)

The Dorchester Lecture, 24th June 2010

One of the highlights of the year for the Friends of Dorchester Abbey is the Dorchester Lecture. For the past five years eminent speakers have spoken to us about aspects of morality connected with the area of their own expertise. So far we have kept the speakers in house –the House of Lords that is – and to date Lord Hurd, Baroness Neuberger, the Bishop of London and Lord Winston have inspired us and brought to the Abbey an audience of fascinating and fascinated people.

Last week we welcomed Lord Carlile QC. An eminent lawyer, for fifteen years a Liberal then Liberal Democrat MP and in 1999 created a Life Peer, he is now the Government’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation. This is probably a subject on which not many of us have reflected overmuch but in the current climate it bears examination from all of us.

Lord Carlile asked the question ‘Terrorism: have we got the law right?’ He spoke about the balancing act required between protecting
national security and the rights of the individual. Anecdotal illustrations
of stop and search techniques by police of a top Asian
lawyer and an elderly white couple helped demonstrate the conundrum facing law-makers and enforcers in achieving that balance.
Lord Carlile welcomed the Home Secretary’s announcement that very day of the retention of the 28 day detention without charge rule for the next six months whilst a thorough review of anti terrorism legislation is undertaken. No woolly liberal he.

So timely was our lecture that both the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian used it as a focus for interviewing our speaker and running articles. After the Lecture and a hastily swallowed supper Lord Carlile was whisked off to London to appear on Newsnight with the inimitable Kirsty Wark who managed to pronounce Dorchester quite intelligibly in her introduction!

At the next meeting of the Trustees of the Friends we will be considering whom to ask to speak to us next year. Should we stay with the House of Lords or should we jump ship? All suggestions very welcome.

(Blogged by Anne Kelaart, on behalf of the Trustees of the Friends of Dorchester Abbey)