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From the Reverend Kate Bottley:

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I’m a great fan of pressing forward into the future but as Keeley demonstrated in the great TV series Ashes to Ashes, there’s something rather exciting about time travelling back into the past.Ìý So, when my old university invited me back the other week for a posh dinner and to deliver a rallying cry to the students, I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to reminisce.

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Super keen I arrived early and went for a mooch about. I wandered down familiar corridors, sat in my old seat in the college chapel and tried to find my old lecture room. I stopped short of knocking on my old hall of residence bedroom door, lest I terrify the poor fresher whose room it now is. No one wants an unexpected clergywoman bothering them on a wet Wednesday night.

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One of the things that had changed though, apart from the price of a pint in the student bar, is of course - me. Back then I was rugby playing, teacher in training listening to a lot of Brit pop and not doing much work, less wrinkled and more lithe.Ìý And as I got ready to pass my wisdom on to the current student body it got me thinking what would I tell my 18 year old self, if I could.Ìý Perhaps I could tell her about looking after her money, or her health or which lottery numbers to choose but more likely I shouldn’t tell her anything, not just because she probably wouldn’t listen, but because there’s something about working it out for yourself.

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In the gospel stories whenever Jesus meets people they change. But they don’t become less of who they were - they become more of who they were meant to be.Ìý I believe the greatest adventure in life is the discovery of ourselves and the greatest victory is the wisdom and confidence to embrace what we find when we get there. As the great American philosopher Dolly Parton once said ‘Find out who you are and then do it on purpose.’

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So while God might be the same yesterday, today and forever, I’m glad I’m not the same as I was in 1993.Ìý Heaven only knows who we all might be tomorrow.Ìý I, for one can’t wait to find out!

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