On a Sunny Spring Sunday

Right this chattering will have to be highlights I am afraid as I don’t think you want to read one that is extraordinarily long. I don’t think too much happened the week before last. In the sense I was busy, probably very busy but that is just how life is with work and thesis. I can recall recovering from a cold and being very tired with that, but that is about it.  Oh and writers group failed to find someone else to go to the users service so I said I would represent them.


The weekend was however rather busier. Saturday was the Induction of John Cook to St Andrew’s Chesterfield. I decided to get the train, it takes longer but I am freer to choose my return time, with the car I have to estimate when I am returning so as to book it for the right amount of time. When I have been to an event several times I can estimate how long it will take but with inductions, particularly when you are seeing people you have not seen for a couple of years it is not easy. As we often do with URC events, my father and I did a check beforehand on whether anyone he particularly knows would be there. On this occasion we drew a blank. Unfortunately we both forgot that the synod moderator is normally at inductions and for East Midlands he happens to be one of my father’s students and someone I have  low key friendship with through attending GEAR conferences years ago. I therefore did the classic of having the synod moderator come up and talk to me and me not recognising him.. I at least in part put it down to my brain working overtime to remember all the names from St Andrew’s Chesterfield. The day was warm, the church was packed, but someone should have given the minister giving the charge a time limit. What he said was fine, about us all being cracked pots and that it is through the cracks that God’s light shines, but he took about half and hour to say that and really nothing else. Also I am beginning to wonder whether I have spotted a new trend in ministerial dress for minister, with a coloured shirt and white tie!
 

Anyway it was an enjoyable afternoon where amongst other things I discovered that there is a high rate of comorbidity between being a transport enthusiast and an church organist. Patrick and Helen had guests from the John Cook’s previous church and as the husband was  a fellow transport enthusiast. The other thing I mentioned to Helen that I was fictionalising the churches in my study, I then had to point out to her that it is rather hard to fictionalise effectively who the church secretary is, at least as far as the congregation is concerned. If someone does not know the church is St Andrew’s Chesterfield, and I have tried to disguise that, then they may well not think it is her, but if they do, I am afraid there is little I can do to keep the cover.

Sunday was the users service. I ended up  reading Wild Geese by Mary Oliver on behalf of the writers group, I think this was largely due to how late it was before I or Sarah knew I was representing the writers group. Had we known earlier I am sure I would have written some thing specific for the service. However the highlight was the Egyptian Orthodox church that meets in our building came and sang. They tended to be a young families and there must thus have been a dozen children in the Sunday School. It was Sheila's  Birthday and she had brought chocolate cake. It was noticeable that although Egyptian Orthodox had brought bread and coke as they were fasting (their fast for lent means avoiding all animal products, so they found that they could actually eat quite a bit of the salads), they wisely turned a blind eye to the children eating birthday cake.  What was not so good is for the second time when I have been at church the number of people doing the count has been seriously less than needed. In this case Marion  was doing it on her own.

I have agreed to be on the group looking at the committee structure at St Andrew’s Sheffield. I thought the group was going to be largely similar to the committee that produced the neighbourhood initiative. What I discovered was that the group consists of Ian, James, John, Derek and me. Those who know those people will realise not only am I the only female, I must be about twenty years younger than them all as well. It is an intriguing power dynamic. What is interesting is I produced a couple of diagrams of the present committee structure and proposed committee structure. Now the proposed was just me going off the initial document, the present one was me working from memories of Barry’s diagram and very bitty (having not been an active participant in the church for four years) understanding of the actual structure. I listed three informal groups/teams/committees that had tasks. Even when I did that I was aware of others, but Ian thought I had listed them all. I also think we are going to have to declare a end line on past battles. There is a tendency to argue over the battles of at least ten years ago again. We need to learn from history but we also need to move on. I was also the only one to realise that the futures on the other side of the document had implications for the committee structures. Particularly we should make it easy to separate out tasks which we could share with other people and tasks that we must keep under the congregation’s control. That sometimes runs right through the heart of a committee.

This weekend I have been busy with thesis, the main task I have been struggling with is writing the theoretical part of my first data chapter. It is partially done now and the chapter is off to proofreaders. One of the problems is that some of the things I definitely think of in spatial things are in fact more likely to be addressed in the chapter on worship, but then where do I put the theory on space, with the other bits of space or do I leave it in the worship chapter. Maybe the sensible thing is to move that section into the space chapter. However I am learning how I write, that is I write first the bits and pieces that are fictionalised scenes, I then write the analytic detailed description around them and only after that do I actually try and make analytic sense of what is going on. Anyway it was packed up and sent to my proof readers last night.

 That meant I should have been all clear for church today, but woke up with a proper grouch on, eventually decided that it was probably due to cramp and pain killers and back to bed were the best option. So that was what I did and I only surfaced again at 11:00 a.m. which is too late for church. Even at this distance I would have been five minutes late and still in my pyjamas so it was a no-brainer. So I spent the day pootling instead. A bit of time taking photographs of some tete-a-tete daffodils I bought last weekend so as to use the macro filter on my camera again. However I obviously was not really up to much as I got distracted into playing Mahjong Solitaire  over and over again. I normally can play it once and stop.