Formative experience

As Clare needed the car today, and I rose in good time, I walked across frosty Llandaff Fields to College with sun peeping through the clouds and making the world sparkle.  There was even enough time to take a couple of pictures.

  

Only really hardy dog-walkers are out and about by a quarter past seven on a winter's morning.

An email from an early rising friend far away filled me with good cheer, but sadly, a trimmed down 1984 Eucharist left me crestfallen and wondering how students lacking a proper grasp of traditional liturgical form are going to survive when they are in parishes where people know how to pray using this rite and will be confused and disappointed when they no longer know how to 'follow the book' as they've done for decades. 

Confuse people and it becomes that much harder to move them on and introduce them to experiences that may serve them better. Now this doesn't much sound like the young revolutionary me, who was always keen to experiment and did lots of it down the years. But anything achieved was based on recognition of what people valued and honouring traditional ways of doing things as the foundation on which to prepare for change. I have enough experience in diverse forms of worship not to be confused that much when people tinker with familiar things, but it sure does annoy me, when it serves no good purpose.

So, after a cloudy start, I did a fruitful morning's work, I headed for the bus and went into the CBS office for a couple hours tackling thornier issues in another corner of the world I inhabit. I got back to College in time to hear old friend Peter Cox preach at Evensong. Then I walked home in time for supper before going to Penarth for Tai Chi. 

It's quite a comforting contrast to undertake a discipline that never tires of revisiting different sections of the movements within the form being taught and going over them in detail with a view to perfecting technique whilst training mind and body to adopt a right attitude to the whole in pursuit of well being, harmony and inner peace. We're taught the value of the components and how they could be used to get out of trouble in self defence. Conflict/combat always an improvisatory situation, but what we are shown is the stable foundation on which to rely in all times and conditions, and from which to work creatively. I don't think we're quite so disciplined in making sure that all our students have a common grounding and experience, as part of their spiritual leadership formation.