Day 29 Part 2 - Glastonbury

(continued from part one)

I arrived at The Abbey House, the retreat centre for the Diocese of Bath and Wells. It was a place to which I wanted to return as soon as I planned my walk. My only previous visit was for the three-day selection panel which led to me being recommended for ordination training.

It's over a decade since I was here but stepping into the various rooms I can recall the conversations that took place. The large room was where we were first briefed and where we sat a strange multiple-choice intelligence test. In another I remember a casual conversation with exhausted fellow candidates awaiting one-to-one interviews. I'm typing these notes in one of the interview rooms and I'm pretty sure that I was sat right here answering pastoral ministry questions.

I've already been in the large drawing room where we underwent one of the strangest experiences of the selection conference. We sat as a group of about eight, around a table on which there were sheets of typed paper.

These told us about a fictional parish which we were going to discuss, under the scrutiny of the selectors, who sat with writing pads in their laps around the edge of the room. Our pieces of paper were different; each describing a particular issue affecting the parish in question. We had ten minutes each in which to outline the issue and chair a discussion.

It was a gruelling experience. The young man who went first set about explaining his particular topic. The more he talked, the more nervous he got. I could see that in between his increasingly confused sentences he was taking shorter and shorter snatches of breath.

The tension built and we all got nervous for him. It would have been kind to interject with a comment but he scarcely left time between his frantic explanations. Eventually, as we shot each other anxious glances, he burst into the face of the woman who was sitting next to him, "So what do you think?"

She squealed. The selectors all started scribbling. We knew he'd blown it.

Revisiting today has brought all that back to me. It's reminded me how very small I felt in the processes of the Church of England. Now, as Warden of Readers, I'm organising the selection of candidates for ministry in our diocese and, for their sakes, I never want to forget how nerve-wracking the whole experience can be.

I've just popped into Glastonbury itself to buy a sandwich for dinner. The town has as many loopy shops selling spells, crystals, and mystic nonsense as it always has. The characters on the street look much as they did all those years ago and the smells of patchouli and cannabis still drift up the main street.

This must be the fourth or fifth time I've visited and oddly enough the second time on 'pilgrimage'. The previous occasion was a rather bizarre day in which I accompanied parishioners and clergy from my placement church in Bristol to the annual Glastonbury Pilgrimage for catholic parishes in the Church of England.

I had tried to lay aside my evangelical reservations and smiled at the thurifers' competitive incense-swinging in procession along the main street. The service in the grounds of the Abbey was... tolerable.

I sat on a bench eating a sandwich and banana dinner, then joined the congregation at St John the Baptist for an Ascension Day service. Holy Communion at last.