Right this last week has been busy. This is always the case when I have a teaching week. The nice thing was that due to the way I had paced myself the week before and the fact that I had spent quite some time checking that things were sorted before hand.
Monday was relatively quiet, in that the morning was fairly routine although I ended up showing a person NVivo. I have found that when I start showing people what that computer program does, particularly those on the more literary-qualitative based research they are delighted. I am then honest with them and say that such programs come at a cost and the cost here is not the software but the hardware that you need. I am for instance using the software for my Reformed Spirituality part of my thesis and am linking it to the relevant books on Google or elsewhere but also quoting bits and coding the bits I am quoting. Thus I hope that I will have the ability to produce quite a nuaunced explanation of what is actually going on. By the way can anyone give me a brief explanation of how piety differs from spirituality? This is a very light way of doing this. There was no writers group in the evening.
Tuesday was the first of the taught courses. I was in work finishing off slides. This time I have taken responsibility for updating the course material. This is not hard work as it is not like many courses where it would mean I had to keep up with the latest reading. Rather all that it means is that I have to check that the latest software runs as I said it did two years ago. This is easy because I actually open the software and use it practically every day. The other thing that has changed is that responsibility for looking after the room and making sure it is ready for courses has been given to one person. This meant that I was able to ask for a check of things and to make sure things were working before I went up. So the course went well and I even had the energy to go to Bible Study afterwards although it was obvious during that that I was tired.
Wednesday was a sunny day, indeed it has remained sunny right up to today. The afternoon I spent on a study of cognitive performance by participants in a race. It was interesting. I have sat down and I think there is probably something there, but it is tricky to get it out. The main problem being that it is a relatively small data set and therefore many things are strongly correlated.
Thursday was the second course day, in someways simpler, but wish I would remember to get in as early as I did on the first. Admittedly I got distracted at lunch time. I pointed out on Ship of Fools that discernment of the Word of God is communal in Reformed theology and somebody wanted me to back up my assertion. Well I have gained much of my understanding by talking with people who are Reformed rather than from reading the texts. So I had a moment of doubt. However that evening I had assembled in less than an hour a number of statement that clearly indicated that an individual on their own was not sufficient an interpreter of the Word. These included quotes directly from Calvin’s Institutes (his section on the Church as our mother is useful) and the Westminster Confession. I could have looked further and I undoubtedly would have found more. I of course know that they placed centrally the teaching role of the cleric within the congregation but still it is interesting to see how easy it was.
Friday and Saturday were research days. I got through quite a bit of reading despite the ease with which I get distracted. I managed to read the crucial chapter in Max Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”. I am not interested in his economic argument but about how he discerned or understood the “Protestant Ethic”. It is interesting, partly because he does focus on what I think is going to be my argument about what Reformed Spirituality actually is. However I suspect he made a mistake and chose to focus on the English speaking Reformed tradition with particular relationship to America. That he is not well read in this shows at times, he quotes the Savoy Declaration and not about church government. He also quotes the Westminster Confession. They are both Reformed documents but you don’t normally quote from both if you have read them thoroughly. The Savoy Declaration is for large parts lifted verbatim from the Westminster Confession. He also wants to hang everything on predestinarianism, I suspect in this case if I have to hang it on one of the pegs of TULIP I would hang it on Perseverance of the Saints (intriguingly in the TULIP summary of the Synod of Dort there is no P for Predestinarianism). The haunting question is “How do you know if you are saved?”. I also finished Howard L Rice’s book on Reformed Spirituality and reviewed it on Amazon. Next books up are “Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed” by Philip Benedict, Michel Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison” and Jonathon Edwards “The Religious Affections”. Ideally all should be read by next weekend, this will not happen.
Friday night I went to the Dickson’s for a really pleasant meal.They were just back from Norfolk on one of Margaret Fall’s trips. Their major grumble was that they spent too much time on the bus getting brief limited glimpses of many things when they would have preferred to have seen fewer places but had longer to explore them. It was also nice to get there in the light. I got asked about when I was coming back and they were surprised to find out that it is as soon as October.
Today Herringthorpe had the Watoto Children’s Choir and you can hear snippets of them. They are lively and explosive in their performance. I turned up at 10:10 and the car park was already full, people who are late to such services are going to struggle to find parking! I better start checking out the side roads and yes I think the congregation size has grown over the time I have been there. I also got my parking permit for the church and it is now in my bag in case I need it. It only functions for one car unfortunately so here is hoping that if I need to go during the day that that car is available. I must admit I came away early, I had enjoyed myself but I had also over done it.
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