The Beauty of St Paul’s and Old Academic Towns
I began writing this a week or so ago but decided to keep it in the present tense …
As I sit writing this I am at the house of an elderly ex-resident that we look after as a house. His flat was broken into on New Years day and the door has still not been fixed so we have been keeping vigils at his house overnight. Thankfully, he just lives across the park from us so it isn’t quite as inconveniencing as it could be. We are watching Man U play Liverpool and Chelsea play Cheltenham on the tele. I think that I could like soccer if I watched it more often.
Yesterday, I serendipitously ended up down at St. Paul’s cathedral just as they were beginning an evensong so I decided to check it out. Sitting underneath the massive dome, I was enveloped in the choral reverberations. It was a beautiful service in a breathtaking church. I think that I will have to go down there more often.
Things in the community have been going pretty well lately. We are starting to become more of a well-oiled machine as a house and I feel as if we are beginning to make progress in some of the issues that our residents are working through both personally and in their relationships with each other. One of the ways that I get self-worth is through completing a job well. I find much satisfaction in seeing a plan come to completion or having an end product that I made or made happen. I need this completion to feel like I am being effective and suspect that this will always be one of my frustrations with the world of social work.
I have also had more of a chance to get involved with folks who use our drop-in center on a regular basis. That has been nice but tough as well because there always seems to be power struggles between certain individuals who have become entrenched in their way of how they view the center should be run and what their roles are. My gut reaction is usually to say something like, “Well, if you don’t like it just leave then....you’re not indispensable you know.” That is just ignoring the issue I think though. The real issue comes in the fact that these folks see things in black and white and not in gray. Gray is tough to deal with….I don’t like gray, it is too ambiguous, too undefined.
Skipping ahead to right now, this very second:
I will be going on the tea run in about 6 hours so I should really go to bed soon I think.
I went up to Cambridge to see a friend this past week and then we travelled down to Oxford for a day. It was so nice to hang with a friend from home and both of the cities are beautiful so it was a really good couple of days.
I got the same feeling walking through the courtyards of King’s College that I always would get when walking through the yard at Harvard. I think it is a sense that important things are happening around you. People who are going to make a large impact on the world are studying just beyond those ancient walls. In the case of Oxford and Cambridge it was compounded by the history that the universities are steeped in. Oxford and Cambridge were founded in the 12 and 13th centuries respectively and have such a rich history of people who went on to shape the way the world thinks about itself. Think John Locke, Charles Darwin, and Erasmus.
More blabberings to come. Hopefully sooner rather than later. :) I am tired now and my bed situated next to a radiator and a window with a draft is calling me by name. You can't beat the combination of an overactive radiator and the sometimes bitterly cold wind slipping under my window frame. It's great.
Peace, Chris
As I sit writing this I am at the house of an elderly ex-resident that we look after as a house. His flat was broken into on New Years day and the door has still not been fixed so we have been keeping vigils at his house overnight. Thankfully, he just lives across the park from us so it isn’t quite as inconveniencing as it could be. We are watching Man U play Liverpool and Chelsea play Cheltenham on the tele. I think that I could like soccer if I watched it more often.
Yesterday, I serendipitously ended up down at St. Paul’s cathedral just as they were beginning an evensong so I decided to check it out. Sitting underneath the massive dome, I was enveloped in the choral reverberations. It was a beautiful service in a breathtaking church. I think that I will have to go down there more often.
Things in the community have been going pretty well lately. We are starting to become more of a well-oiled machine as a house and I feel as if we are beginning to make progress in some of the issues that our residents are working through both personally and in their relationships with each other. One of the ways that I get self-worth is through completing a job well. I find much satisfaction in seeing a plan come to completion or having an end product that I made or made happen. I need this completion to feel like I am being effective and suspect that this will always be one of my frustrations with the world of social work.
I have also had more of a chance to get involved with folks who use our drop-in center on a regular basis. That has been nice but tough as well because there always seems to be power struggles between certain individuals who have become entrenched in their way of how they view the center should be run and what their roles are. My gut reaction is usually to say something like, “Well, if you don’t like it just leave then....you’re not indispensable you know.” That is just ignoring the issue I think though. The real issue comes in the fact that these folks see things in black and white and not in gray. Gray is tough to deal with….I don’t like gray, it is too ambiguous, too undefined.
Skipping ahead to right now, this very second:
I will be going on the tea run in about 6 hours so I should really go to bed soon I think.
I went up to Cambridge to see a friend this past week and then we travelled down to Oxford for a day. It was so nice to hang with a friend from home and both of the cities are beautiful so it was a really good couple of days.
I got the same feeling walking through the courtyards of King’s College that I always would get when walking through the yard at Harvard. I think it is a sense that important things are happening around you. People who are going to make a large impact on the world are studying just beyond those ancient walls. In the case of Oxford and Cambridge it was compounded by the history that the universities are steeped in. Oxford and Cambridge were founded in the 12 and 13th centuries respectively and have such a rich history of people who went on to shape the way the world thinks about itself. Think John Locke, Charles Darwin, and Erasmus.
More blabberings to come. Hopefully sooner rather than later. :) I am tired now and my bed situated next to a radiator and a window with a draft is calling me by name. You can't beat the combination of an overactive radiator and the sometimes bitterly cold wind slipping under my window frame. It's great.
Peace, Chris
posted by Chris | 6:38 PM
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