It’s been a little while since I last blogged. Over a year even! And what a year. While I dusted off my site and took a look around, brushing the cobwebs off of my Tumblr account, it was quite moving to think back to ‘year ago me’, surviving ME, writing writing writing at the PhD, living my normal Durham life amongst my familiar Durham people. This is the bittersweet beauty of writing, known to anyone who has stumbled across teenage diaries kept in boxes in back at parents’ houses in their childhood bedrooms.
So here I am, writing for the first time in Cambridge in this new life that suddenly sprung up from a job application in the summer. A new city, a new job, writing cross legged on a new bed (same old beloved quilts for familiarity), and still learning.
My role as Youth Ministry Tutor at Ridley is still (though I recognise I am very much still in the honeymoon period of it) the job I’d dreamed of. In my own training I was so fortunate to have the (holy) trinity of amazing tutors: Sally Nash, Jo Whitehead and Paul Nash. They modelled to me wisdom, creativity of communication, encouragement, holistic formation and a love of learning. Instilled in me over my years at MCYM was a value of lifelong learning. A year after I left the course, I began to put pen to laptop screen, and ‘Becca is Learning’ was birthed. I’d finished with studying (at that point) and had my then dream job of being a Youth Pastor at Carpenters in Chorleywood. I had graduated, I had written my first book, but was so aware that I was still learning.
When I moved onto Durham to continue formal postgrad learning, the title of my blog had seemed prophetic to this academic vocation. Alongside this however, an even deeper learning occurred as I learnt about chronic illness, life on hold, being cared for (so well, so deeply) and living in community. I will never be given letters to my name for those lessons (apart from maybe M.E.) but I am changed forever.
And from there of course (while still writing the PhD) I am also now a teacher. Formally. And I’m struck by how beautiful it is to still be learning. Now I am learning how a college works. I am learning from incredible and inspiring colleagues who teach and minister so excellently. I am learning pre-lecture nerves and how actually I may even have learnt more than I realised over the last seven year season. I am learning how to make powerpoint presentations more beautiful, and what I really think about the content of a youth ministry training course, now that I may input my own convictions about this work. I am learning the beauty of being humbled, inspired and challenged by students. I am learning new rhythms of before work bedtimes, sustaining myself through teaching weeks, and what wet weather gear I need to survive on a bike in November.
Last week I introduced our first year students to Paulo Freire, an academic who thought and wrote so beautifully about how important it is to always be a learner. He doesn’t know, but he has become a dear friend and guide to me in youth ministry. I find myself more equipped for this job than I’d realised and for that I am grateful, but I am also grateful that I have arrived in this new place and there is still more to learn: about myself, about youth ministry, and about a God who continues to surprise and intrigue me into further adventure and deeper becoming.
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