York and Back Again: a student's tale

Since arriving back from Brittany I have done very little with my time. The first few weeks in September are no more than a blur of sleeping, watching films and complaining about how dull Kent is. I have of course started doing some reading for next term and I can only apologise for all of the Post-War European Cinema references I will make in the relatively near future. I'm very excited for year number two of uni!

Nothing could have stretched my excitement further than to go and stay in York for a week or so. I went up with Sam and we spent a nice few days enjoying the city, for York locals the Gourmet Burger Kitchen is very nice, Lendal Cellars is also very nice, Jorvik is smelly but always worth a visit, Yates's I would avoid. I've never been to a Yates's before, but we were looking for somewhere to watch some football. I had always assumed it was a bar, and a bar it was until about 10pm when all the chairs were cleared away and a pole came out, oh yes, you read right, a pole. I find this strange, that a place that is showing football games on multiple TVs also has a dancefloor. Colour me utterly baffled.

Supercool prize from the G2 Leaders' Social Media Quiz!

I stayed in York a couple of days after Sam for the G2 Leadership 24 hours. I probably mentioned sometime in the Spring that I started a bit of cell group (church jargon for a bunch of people from church getting together, having some food, chatting about the bible, praying, playing icebreakers etc.) leading, so was invited along to the 24 hours which included a curry, some training and Go Ape. It was a really awesome weekend. As a student in church it can become really easy to stick to student circles but it was super cool getting to know the leaders of the family and community cells.

Our Saturday Morning training was lead by a guy called Roger Bretherton, a psychotherapist and Christian, who took us through some of his thoughts on the beatitudes and some of the ideas he through up about two of them really struck me:

"God blesses those who mourn,
    for they will be comforted.
God blesses those who are humble,
    for they will inherit the whole earth." Matt 5:4-5 (NLT)

Roger talked about mourning and how that can mean mourning about a situation we come into contact with. We can mourn for our community or our planet when we see something that's not right with it. He said that mourning can lead to conviction to act and God meets us in this, providing the resources we need to act. It reminds me of one of my favourite lines from one of my favourite worship songs; "Break my heart for what breaks yours... for your kingdom's cause." (Hosanna, Hillsong United). Roger linked this desire to act against what we mourn about to being humble and gentle. What use is it to want to change things if we're judgemental and proud about it. The call to be humble challenges the nature of our mourning for the world.

After a really good and challenging morning, we set off for Go Ape, now I quite enjoy outdoorsy stuff and I've had a fair go on high ropes and zip wires in my time, but it turns out that Go Ape was just a bridge too far. For those of you who haven't Go Ape'd before, it's essentially lots of ropes and bridges rather high up in the trees. Half way along a fairly unstable tightrope I decided to break down and cry- go me! So clearly it wasn't my cup of tea and I won't be doing it any time soon but it was a fun experience... well it was fun once I'd taken my harness of and I was sat on a nice stable bench on the ground!

In the evening, all the student leaders got together to have some food and a chat about what the student work in G2 might look like this year. We had a really great prayer time with each other and I made a commitment to be bolder with my faith and to be bolder sharing it. So, in the end, the whole Go Ape experience turned out to be a pretty useful analogy.

I'm now back in Kent for a week now, and in all honesty, fairly bored. My little taste of York was a reminder of how much I love being at university. Next time we chat it will be on the other side of a six and a half hour car ride!

lovely new earrings from Etsy!

Also worth mentioning:
Whilst in York, I also reactivated my Netflix account and I set straight to work at becoming fairly addicted to Lost.
I've recently become fairly addicted to Etsy.com and plan on buying many many pretty rings in the coming months. Hazel's sister sells some really pretty jewellery so I splashed out on a cute little pair of earrings, if you fancy a look a some beaded beauties head over here.
Yesterday I finally posted Chapter 4 of the Sound of Rain. If you've not heard about/read Rain before, it's a teen fiction coming-of-age story that I'm posting chapter by chapter on another blog, you can read the new chapter, and all the previous chapters here.

Stay awesome! x