Right lets see, this week has been eventful but largely pleasant. Monday the big thing was that I was in work. That may seem odd but if I am going to get a migraine then the usual time is shortly after time of the month, for this month I worked out that that was the last possible date for it to happen.
Also over the weekend I posted the following blog post in response to something on Facebook. It was one of those occasions when I felt compelled to respond to something due to who I was in contact with on Facebook. I function so often as if I don’t have mental health distress, that I suspect that people hearing about it, may consider me lying. I certainly in my public behaviour don’t fit the stereotypes and as my health has been improving recently I do so less and less. This as a rule makes me less and less willing to talk about it. The last thing I want people to think is that because I can cope with what I can cope with that other people with mental health distress should as well. However it comes differently when someone is feeling isolated due to mental health problems. It is however always nerve wracking when you reveal something like this and I wondered what would be the outcome. However that piece did all I wanted it to do.
In work this last week I have been working to do the final analysis of Butyrate paper so that it could be put into a presubmission draft. Hopefully by the end of this week the main author will have got it into a form where it can be submitted.
On Thursday I went down to Birmingham for a supervision for my PhD. My supervisor moved it forward to 12:30p.m. as he wanted to get home to be with the dogs as his partner was away or that was partially a front. I suspect that with last times supervision being rushed due to management issues at the University he decide that this was not going to be a single hour supervision. It is one of the very few times I have ever had claustrophobia at the end of a supervision, but as that is my usual response to when big things happen. The supervision resulted in a major realignment of my doctorate, the reasons for this is good, it plays to my strengths in thinking theoretical, it builds on a long term sociological debate in a positive way. Sociology for a long while has been divided between those who are big theorists who see everything as determined by society; on the other hand are those who see everything as determined by the freedom of the individual. My study now becomes a look at the way a particular grand narrative (Reformed tradition) is played out within two specific instances(congregations) and I suspect to show both form and variability, or if you prefer a renegotiation of the Reformed tradition in two different locations. The snag is of course although I am thoroughly Reformed, much of my knowledge of the tradition is tacit, this is not surprising, much of the tradition is spread tacitly. However I need to turn it into explicit knowledge. What is more as the part of the tradition I am interested in is the pragmatic part rather than the doctrinal, it is perhaps better to refer to this as Reformed Spirituality rather than doctrine. Snag, Reformed tradition is activist as such has a suspicion of spirituality which is often associated with more meditative/contemplative traditions. So it is not pick up half a dozen books and read, but a careful working through of Reformed classic, descriptive portrayals (both fictional and factual), reading prayers and sermons by particular leaders asking all the time “What does it say here about being Reformed?”
Friday I went to the woman’s night at Herringthorpe. It was a Wii night which nearly always embarrasses me as somewhere in the last twenty years I seem to have picked up some coordination that I lacked when younger, or other people have drastically lost theirs because I actually seem to do above average on them. A third possibility is the Wii was designed by geeks who set it for geek level coordination and everyone else is too coordinated.
Last two days have had a cough with a sore throat, which has kept me in, partly in an attempt not to spread it but also so as to keep the infection as short as possible. It may at last be on the withdrawal stage as I seem to be coughing less and I don’t think my throat is as sore. Surprisingly when compared with recent colds it has not landed me in bed for most of the day as well as the night. So I have been using it to get on the reading on the Reformed tradition. So far I have read “Letting God be God” by David Cornick and am reading “Living the Christian Life: A Guide to Reformed Spirituality” by Robert H Ramey Jr and Ben Campbell Johnson and “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson which is supposedly a letter written by an elderly Congregational minister in 1957 to his young son which tells his life story.
Also over the weekend I posted the following blog post in response to something on Facebook. It was one of those occasions when I felt compelled to respond to something due to who I was in contact with on Facebook. I function so often as if I don’t have mental health distress, that I suspect that people hearing about it, may consider me lying. I certainly in my public behaviour don’t fit the stereotypes and as my health has been improving recently I do so less and less. This as a rule makes me less and less willing to talk about it. The last thing I want people to think is that because I can cope with what I can cope with that other people with mental health distress should as well. However it comes differently when someone is feeling isolated due to mental health problems. It is however always nerve wracking when you reveal something like this and I wondered what would be the outcome. However that piece did all I wanted it to do.
In work this last week I have been working to do the final analysis of Butyrate paper so that it could be put into a presubmission draft. Hopefully by the end of this week the main author will have got it into a form where it can be submitted.
On Thursday I went down to Birmingham for a supervision for my PhD. My supervisor moved it forward to 12:30p.m. as he wanted to get home to be with the dogs as his partner was away or that was partially a front. I suspect that with last times supervision being rushed due to management issues at the University he decide that this was not going to be a single hour supervision. It is one of the very few times I have ever had claustrophobia at the end of a supervision, but as that is my usual response to when big things happen. The supervision resulted in a major realignment of my doctorate, the reasons for this is good, it plays to my strengths in thinking theoretical, it builds on a long term sociological debate in a positive way. Sociology for a long while has been divided between those who are big theorists who see everything as determined by society; on the other hand are those who see everything as determined by the freedom of the individual. My study now becomes a look at the way a particular grand narrative (Reformed tradition) is played out within two specific instances(congregations) and I suspect to show both form and variability, or if you prefer a renegotiation of the Reformed tradition in two different locations. The snag is of course although I am thoroughly Reformed, much of my knowledge of the tradition is tacit, this is not surprising, much of the tradition is spread tacitly. However I need to turn it into explicit knowledge. What is more as the part of the tradition I am interested in is the pragmatic part rather than the doctrinal, it is perhaps better to refer to this as Reformed Spirituality rather than doctrine. Snag, Reformed tradition is activist as such has a suspicion of spirituality which is often associated with more meditative/contemplative traditions. So it is not pick up half a dozen books and read, but a careful working through of Reformed classic, descriptive portrayals (both fictional and factual), reading prayers and sermons by particular leaders asking all the time “What does it say here about being Reformed?”
Friday I went to the woman’s night at Herringthorpe. It was a Wii night which nearly always embarrasses me as somewhere in the last twenty years I seem to have picked up some coordination that I lacked when younger, or other people have drastically lost theirs because I actually seem to do above average on them. A third possibility is the Wii was designed by geeks who set it for geek level coordination and everyone else is too coordinated.
Last two days have had a cough with a sore throat, which has kept me in, partly in an attempt not to spread it but also so as to keep the infection as short as possible. It may at last be on the withdrawal stage as I seem to be coughing less and I don’t think my throat is as sore. Surprisingly when compared with recent colds it has not landed me in bed for most of the day as well as the night. So I have been using it to get on the reading on the Reformed tradition. So far I have read “Letting God be God” by David Cornick and am reading “Living the Christian Life: A Guide to Reformed Spirituality” by Robert H Ramey Jr and Ben Campbell Johnson and “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson which is supposedly a letter written by an elderly Congregational minister in 1957 to his young son which tells his life story.
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