How does that make you *feel*?

So I have made it to the end of my 'Counselling skills for pastoral care' course. It's been fun, harrowing, hard work and rewarding. We had the 'concluding residential' last week at college - 5 intense days running from breakfast right through to around 10pm. Not just sitting through seminars - we got to practise on each other. There was about 16 of us on the course, split into two groups, and in these groups we took it in turns to either speak or listen. No role play allowed - we had to do real stuff, then analyse each others' listening skills. As you can imagine this was pretty exhausting - not only having to 'perform', but just listening to others' stuff - lots of depth. It was helpful, I do feel much more equipped now to use some of these skills I've been skirting round in theory for the last 6 months, and concrete them a bit. Had a good tutorial, my tutor was very positive and encouraging and gave me a good mark so I like her. :) She reckoned I could go on to do the next stage (a 'proper' counselling certificaty-qualificationy thingy) but that involves a lot of money and a lot of erm health, so maybe not for me at present, but I can certainly use what I have learned in our parish ministry, which was really what it was all about. I'm looking forward to getting stuck in now - we only have a couple of months left here which is rather scarey too.

On yer bike...

A short post to note Tabitha's accomplishments riding her new bike today. A haiku to salute the achievement:

First time Dad let go.
There were no stabilisers.
But there was the snow.

TimC