Indonesian Formal

[helenic]

As I've already mentioned, on Monday we held an "Indonesian" themed formal hall for charity. This was an endeavour of the Chapel Wardens, an ecumenical group of Christian volunteers who, since our new chaplain formed the group last term, have met weekly for lunch and to radically change the way religion operates in college - primarily in order to provide an alternative to CICCU. Keith, the new chaplain, is young, geeky, and an ex-natsci - the archetypal St Gargoyle's "kum ba yah" curate - but genuinely nice. This term has seen huge amounts of new innovations: a Tuesday meditative night prayer service, led by one of us each week in a different style (so far we've had Anglican, Catholic, Charismatic, Taize and Iona - the one I led); an ecumenical start of term emphatically-non-CICCU service, twice-termly Catholic mass followed by an evening meal; student participation in intercessions; inviting evensong guests to formal afterwards with the choir, and thence to port in the chaplain's room; a pancake party; and finally, the superhall for charity. One of our grad students, Susan, works with a scheme which helps rehabilitate gibbons into the wild after they have been rescued from being kept as pets, and one of the conversation areas they are released into is Mintin island in Indonesia. The people of Mintin village have always been helpful and supportive of the scheme, and before she came back to England last time Susan asked if there was anything she could do for them to express her appreciation. The village is almost entirely Christian, and they have been building their own church - but so far, due to lack of resources and funds, it does not have a roof, and they mentioned this to her. Susan worked out that because of the exchange rates they only needed about £80, so she decided to put it to us to come up with a fundraiser.

Hence the formal hall. We added £2 to the price of each ticket, Susan designed an Indonesian menu, we decorated the hall with garlands of paper flowers and images of jungle canopy projected in light onto the walls and ceiling, exchanged the candelabras for tealights in glass holders and bowls of floating candles surrounded by garlands, scattered petals on the tables, set up a speaker system to play low-key tribal music during the meal, and put on the tickets "dress: JUNGLE".

It was an incredible success. The costumes were fantastic - even the Fellows abandoned their suits and ties for outrageous tropical shirts - the food delicious (several people said that foodwise, it was the nicest formal they'd ever been to), Keith introduced the meal with an Indonesian grace, pronounced surprisingly fluently, and after Susan had said a few words explaining the purpose of it, her supervisor (who was sitting at high table) stood up and "said" a welcome speech in gibbon. This had been arranged without our knowledge, and it was unbelievably cool. I never knew somone could open their mouth that wide; each hoot grew louder and higher than the last, and when he bowed and sat down he was greeted to spontaneous applause. In fact later in the meal it even inspired a Chinese Whispers in gibbon to go round the hall, although I think it got lost somewhere along the way.

In the end, after funds from tickets and from a collection which was taken after the meal, we raised £209.48, which was wired to Indonesia this morning. Afterwards we retired to the bar for pool and disastrous karaoke, which was highly entertaining. Iain has a video somewhere of me drunkenly singing "A Whole New World", but I think it's pay-per-view (and I want a cut, ok?!)

Richard does the British Explorer look superbly


Iain in camo gear, complete with ivy - on the left is Ben, our ordinand, who even outdid Richard by cunning employment of a snake and a fake moustache


floating candles!


me doing the tribal warrior princess thing, complete with face paint, real fur bikini and sword


me with monkey in lap. The monkey was Iain's, and is here pictured in Ben's fake moustache and Iain's girly camo shirt.
That monkey got some action that evening, hell yeah.

these were all taken on Iain's camera, but I think some of them are by me - there are more to be found here.

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's wonderful!

Do you know Rachel Holdforth? She's a Chapel Warden at Jesus and she's in my classes.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

nope, I don't think so. Are all chapel wardens called Rachel? There are about nine of us, and three of them are called Rachel. It's very scary and confusing.

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

Oh, it sounds absolutely wonderful!

All of it: the alternative-to-CICCU-thing (I take it SCM has finally died a death in Cambridge then... *sniffs*), the gibbon project, the roof thank-you, the superformal.

I'm utterly impressed and excited by all of it.

Go all of you. :D

(and I'm also very pleased that this is the second day in a row you've posted gorgeous pictures of yourself. :) )

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what SCM stands for - there was the SAS, briefly, but I don't know what happened to it. It certainly doesn't seem to be very active but then, I'm not a member...

Yes, the whole gibbon thing is very heart-warming and exciting, especially the villager's involvement and general bosiness. I was so impressed by that professor speaking gibbon at high table too. It was all just so ... unstuffy, and real, you know? Like Cambridge finally acknowledging the existence of the outside world in public. We want to organise more college-wide charity things after the success of this - people seem generally willing to take part, it's really positive. Maybe we could do something to raise awareness about the asylum issue ...

I'm going to stop being an attention-whore with my photo posting now. I feel kind of guilty. I mean I'd never have got 70-something comments on my Dawn Treader entry if not for the photos, but that's something you need photos of. this was just gratuitous :)

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Don't know what SCM stands for - at Cambridge even! Wah! Not saying "Gosh the ignorance of the woman" here, or "Pah! Students these days! In my day...", just lamenting the seemingly total demise of the organisation.

It is (or was), the Student Christian Movement (http://www.movement.org.uk). Liberal-inclined, socially aware, theologically and philosophically inquisitive, sometimes sex-obsessed, sometimes totally infuriating in its wilder Cupittite wanderings, but always a great forum for discussion, getting Christians to think about their faith and apply it to the world.

Obviously such a more questioning approach to faith was never as popular as the more comfortable certainties offered by the CU, and always fairly small in numbers and financially struggling (though rather strong in the 70s apparently), I didn't know it had even packed up at Cambridge. I think it's vanished at Warwick too, where I was involved in running the group for three and a half years, and where the group for a while became one of the strongest pillars of the Movement nationally.

I shouldn't be pronouncing SCM's obituary though, it's still going, as the link above shows, that I just dug out and put in! Indeed, the site lists a Cambridge SCM, though when I went to their page it was no longer available. Ah, there's a "Christian Focus" group at Warwick, that's listed as an SCM contact, but no specific SCM group.

[nameandnature]

According to Oliver Barclay's "Whatever happened to the Jesus Lane lot?", much of what eventually ended up in the CICCU Doctrinal Basis was thrashed out at the point where CICCU (and so what was to become the UCCF) split from what was to become the SCM. Barclay's is a victor's history, of course, but he reckons that the crunch came when the party that was to be the SCM objected to saying the Nicene Creed at some meeting or other. It's an interesting read if you can find it in second hand bookshops.

Obviously such a more questioning approach to faith was never as popular as the more comfortable certainties offered by the CU

Also, the evangelical sort of Christianity is dedicated to reproducing itself, as I may have mentioned before. The liberal sort tends not to be. I'm not sure those certainties are so comfortable, but they at least provide something to get hold of and run with, which was something I liked as a CICCU person. Even from my ex-Christian perspective of thinking those certainties are probably wrong, more liberal forms of Christianity seem very hard to get your teeth into.

[kungfuchaos.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear God! get that picture of me off there! *censors picture*

pay-per-view? people pay for this sort of thing? why was i not informed?

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Only if you take off that picture of me looking like a minger on your entry :P

besides, I needed it to show off Ben's moustache.

I bet people want to hear my karaoke goodness. They'd LOVE it. haha. NEVER AGAIN.

[nightkitchen.livejournal.com]

you look Fabulous, Darling! the fur coats have already found use = excellent. I like yer skirt. am still highly envious of all these themed balls ... though I remembered yesterday that the Queen's University (where I earned my BAH) Science Formal is pretty cool, elaborate, themed, etc, etc.

I also want to thank you for your unexpected but very, very nice email ... I'll write back soon. :)

[libellum.livejournal.com]

well, this was the fur coat I appropriated for personal chopping-up - there are five more I have yet to find use for. Anyone else want a fur bikini? I'm sure I could rip off several more in a weekend ;) The skirt is just a couple of feet of undyed calico (I usually keep a few metres in a drawer because it's only about £3.20 a time and it always comes in useful for costuming) stitched sarong-style at the waist with a leather coat belt tyed around it. the entire costume took about an hour. Improvisation is the name of the game.

It's just the end of term - everything's happening at once. I mean Formal Hall happens every night anyway, we just hijacked one for our purposes. Are there regular events you could steal and make costume events? I just like excuses to dress up. I've certainly got a lot of icon mileage out of this week so far ...

as for email - you don't have to reply. Was just a comment-substitute :)

xxxx

[the-lady-lily.livejournal.com]

You all look absolutely lovely and I am terribly jealous.

I am also exceptionally impressed that you had the impetus to set up a CICCU-alternative. I suppose that not having a chapel at Newnham means there isn't really anywhere else for Christians to congregate, which means our lot tend to be a bit nicer and less militant (this year, anyway). It also means the others tend to keep a low profile, which is less good.

The monkey's cheerful expression disturbs me.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

You should have come! I was too busy stressing about organising it to remember to invite people :S

It's not a proper, official CICCU-alternative - we aren't a society and about three of the chapel wardens are CICCU. We just wanted to expand the range of Christian activities in college; make the chapel more of an ecumenical entity in its own right. There was Marcus' project, the SAS (I think Rachel Jenkins, one of the wardens, is actually a member of it) but I don't know if they get up to anything. (Catriona will know.) I can't believe you don't have a chapel at Newnham.

The monkey LOVED it.

[jezzifishie.livejournal.com]

Thanks for voting in my poll Helen!

I like your fur bikini, by the way :)

Lucy