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Saturday 11 April 2009

"Come with me, for the conference is long"

... except that it wasn't, it was rather good actually - surprisingly good. After the nightmare that was the first candidates conference at St Andrews I had been gearing myself up for a long, dark teatime of the soul comprised of relentless, frenzied activity; little or no space at all; reflecting so much that I'd turned into a disco mirror ball.
But, not so. Gartmore, whilst busy, was fun and instructive and silly and serious. So, the week [and perhaps what I may have learned] in quotes:

  • I am an ooooold lady
  • Dog collars strangle you if you tell lies [Marjorie M, during worship]
  • Deeep, deeeeeep down, all men are shallow [Jane, after several glasses of wine]
  • ...developing a smelly hermeneutic [me, re. anointing of Jesus]
  • Institutionalism is a 'binding spirit' [Peter Neilsen]
  • All are created equal: in America this means all are special. In Scotland this means nobody's special. [Peter Neilsen]
  • kill me noooooooooooooow [as part of a flurry of note-passing during the only really dull session]
  • My, he's a big one. [Howard, kilted, stepping into a pulpit and singeing his hair on the light]
All of this to reflect on [possibly not too much on the notion of Howard preaching in a kilt!], in the midst of thinking through the implications of adding another year to my studies and getting my head around writing 25 000 words, on a topic yet to be decided, for mid-August. Hmmm, busy, busy yet all good - and underpinning the lot, as ever, God's goodness. So... yay, really.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well glad to see you are building upon the conference then!
Nelu

JohnO said...

Hey there!
Nice to see you in the blogosphere, and thanks for stopping by to comment.
I'd forgotten the dog collar story. That was definitely worthy of note.

Danny said...

Oh I remember the note passing during the dull sessions (usually at St Andrews for some reason)! I always wore sunglasses so no one could tell if I had my eyes shut! But that back fired on me during a very warm and dull session on team building. I dozed off then nearly died of shock when my friend next to me whispered something in my ear. Think my shriek woke up half the room!

Liked the dog collar story... that's why I don't wear one :-)