As I sit on the train, fighting the urge to catch up on some much needed sleep, I find myself reflecting on the weekend I’ve just erm … how can I put it? … survived … Three of us set off on Friday afternoon to Newman House, the Catholic Chaplaincy at Birmingham University to take part in an ecumenical conference. This is an annual event (though I’m not sure how old) organised jointly by the Catholic Students’ Council, Methsocs and the Student Christian Movement, organisations which provide national support networks for students groups in individual universities, providing resource materials and running regional and national events.

When we arrived we found lots of people we’d never met before who all seemed to know each other, some of whom were ‘conference junkies’ — people who spend their lives going from conference to conference, and hence met lots of like-minded people. At this point we were having serious doubts about the weekend. Things got even better when we were served up lentil soup, which I must confess was not something I might eat out of choice … Then I was told I was on washing up that night … no problem — it’s fair to expect to help out at events such as this, but scrubbing carbonised lentil soup from a huge saucepan is not how I’d choose to spend a Friday evening. Then those wonderful things called ice breakers (everyone groans, including me, which anyone who knows me will tell you is right out of character). Cynical as I am, they did the trick and we all started mixing up. There was a short time of devotional prayers before the chaplaincy bar was opened. From then on the evening went as one might imagine …

The theme of the weekend was “Living on a Prayer” and there were six workshops exploring prayer through different media: Faith in Action; Ignatian Spirituality; Hymn Writing; Music as a form of Prayer; Meditation and the Power of Silence; and Art. Of these we were each able to do two. The one that I enjoyed the most was the hymn writing led by Andrew Pratt, author of among other things the children’s song book, “Big Blue Planet”. He gave us the tools to enable us to write hymns and make them meaningful and useable to not only ourselves but others. On Saturday evening mass was held, which for me was very special as I don’t often take the opportunity to go to a Roman Catholic mass. It might be seen that this was not necessarily helpful for ecumenism by its highlighting of differences, but in my opinion, feeling able to be honest about our differences and acknowledging their validity is much more in the ecumenical spirit because of the mutual trust that it requires, than concentrating only on what unites us and glossing over whatever doesn’t fit this. Saturday evening held what every Saturday evening at a student Christian conference holds: a ceilidh! This, as usual consisted of a committed core of people determined not to miss a single dance and those that had to be dragged from the bar to make up numbers. For the first time I can remember there was a shortage of women which resulted in Julian, the National Methsocs Coordinator coming out with an unfortunate comment along the lines of: “One of us will have to be a woman … that’ll be me then!”

Sunday morning was a combination of preparing worship, and for some of us trying to stay awake having not had a particularly early night … For the worship we split into groups to prepare different parts of it, and then all came together for what can only be described as a really funky service (I could try and describe differently, but this article’s getting a bit long already … ) Though I have to mention singing “The Servant King” in Swedish. In a final evaluation session we were asked to sum up what the conference had meant for us personally in one word, and although not an easy task, for me it had to be fellowship. The number of people I met from different places and situations, ranging from four Swedish students with the SCM to a student at Mirfield College, not to mention the Welsh contingent (who admittedly were somewhat less vociferous after the results of a certain sporting fixture was known) really made the weekend for me. So … “are you coming again next year … ?”

Angela Squier