Let packing commence...

7 days of "freedom" left before entering the first stages of seminary life. What to do?! Our packing list is pretty brief:

Morning & Evening Prayer book
Bible
Bed linen and towels
Clothes and toiletries for a month

...that's it. We won't exactly be slumming it, but there is an attempt to get away from a lot of things that we expect as essential - broadband, mobiles, TV and radio, fine brandy, the usual ;o)

I've tried living without interruption from the outside world before (mainly over a long weekend while on retreat) but haven't broken the "handful of days" barrier. This could be interesting. I might never want to blog again on return lol :D No, I will be making notes and reflecting along the way and hope to summarise this when I arrive again in Laptopland. 5 men from Down & Connor diocese and 2 from Derry & Raphoe will be spending a month in St Pat's College, Maynooth getting acquainted with all things seminary-ish during a spiritual month of formation.

Should be enlightening and empowering for the first year which lies ahead - now, where did I leave my toothbrush?...

A tourist in your own town

I took a random notion to go walking up the Belfast hills today, spending three hours covering nearly all of the Cavehill Country Park. It was a balmy, stormy day (as you might be able to see from the heavy clouds over the lough above) but good for a yomp. I like taking time out to appreciate the good things on my own doorstep but often bemoan the fact that people don't do it often enough (myself included). That said, I am looking forward to the arrival of the Tall Ships next week and the re-opening of the Ulster Museum here so that I can pretend in passing that I'm a visitor here rather than a local. It's good to see the same old things with fresh eyes :)

Feeling Flummoxed?

We've only been advised to invest in one book as such for the beginning of seminary life. It will be used to help us in our daily prayer routine, the Liturgy of the Hours (Divine Office). This is how the church prays outside of the concept of the Mass and continues the dialogue between man and God throughout the day, making a frequent sacrifice of praise if you like.

So I gladly ordered the compulsory guide (pictured) off Amazon - my first purchase there, incidentally. First impressions are that it's not exactly user-friendly...quite bewildering in fact. Fair enough: it is so flexible that it can be used for several years around a rotating liturgical calendar but it took me by surprise as to how lost and helpless I felt as I flicked through it, directionless.

We never really stop learning I guess, but sometimes we assume we know it all. So on some occasions it's good to feel like a kid on the first day at school again, open to learning and relying on a guiding hand from someone who's been there before. Perhaps during the introductory month that lies ahead we will have plenty of time to make head and tail of what seems at first like a daunting minefield of potential embarrassment rather than daily bread.

In the meantime I'll be reading the PDF guide (click on the blog title - Feeling Flummoxed?) Discovering Prayer which will hopefully unveil a lot of the mystery :)

Remember and Celebrate

This weekend I celebrated three birthdays with family and friends. It's good to stop along the way and recall what the journey has been like as we reach certain milestones. It's an important part of our human culture to set aside certain days and have some way of making it memorable - today it's with digital cameras or a feast in numbers. We come together and eat, share and participate in the festival. This helps us to make present the invisible and give a form and identity to something ethereal. When we remember, it isn't a delayed reaction trying to re-live something that's long gone...it's a timely response that brings alive in a new way something which is already there. Many years ago, someone told us to break bread and remember - do you?

Prologue

Every story has a beginning. Sometimes if you are lucky enough, before the beginning you may even find some background setting the scene. And so.....

Born in 1980, I enjoyed that essential and undervalued thing; a loving family. Without major drama I made my way up through the ranks of primary school, grammar school and then university. By the year 2002 I had graduated with an MPharm degree and a vague sense that the rest of my life may be found in community pharmacy and yet perhaps not. After 4 years of trial and the odd error along the way, that undercurrent of surely there's more than this was enough to inspire me to jack it in and start afresh.

In 2008 therefore, the plan was to work for several months in Sydney in the approach to WYD08. This I did, in the registrations department - a job that consisted of working in a callcentre and usually cursing a rather poorly-designed software system that was meant to keep pilgrims organised and content. The week of World Youth Day itself was awe-inspiring. Severe exhaustion, hunger and stress on the front line of issuing tickets and pilgrim packs to endless queues of international believers was testing. Yet the rewards and blessings were as endless as the queues.

During the Saturday night vigil, I knelt in a racetrack with 140,000 other people by candlelight and joined the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI in adoration of the blessed sacrament. Something clicked there and then, this was beautiful - this is what life's about, leading others to Christ and joining with them in celebration of who we are, thanks to God.

Over the next few weeks while camper-vanning around various tourist trails of Australia I said little but thought plenty. The choice was made. No, not a choice, a response. I did not choose, I was chosen. I simply heard, thought and reacted in hope and trust. That reaction is the beginning of a journey, the planting of a seed. This blog will hopefully capture some of what that seed and others will experience as time passes by in the seedplot, the seminary, the vineyard of today's church. To be continued...