Lets see if I can recall what has been happening. The first thing must be the Reformed Spirituality Conference at Cambridge. The room at Westminster was fine, the gathering select but I expected that when it had both “Spirituality” and “Reformed” on the flyer. You have to be both sympathetic towards spirituality and towards Reformed Christianity to go. That is a small subset of christians who are both interested in the Reformed tradition and in spirituality. There are different ways of constructing the subset and I come with one that I suspect has its roots in Iona that is one that alters the meaning of spirituality to fit in with the meaning Reformed, then look for how that works rather than those who try to create a “Reformed flavoured” spirituality. That said I don’t think I realised how “at home” I am with many of the things other see as distinctive of a spirituality, but that is down to my character, I am an introvert and I have a strong tendency to enjoy regular practices and low stimulus situations. I do not like entire regularity but routine is the basis on which I build the resources to respond to the chaos of life.
The conference was held at the same time as the last couple of the May balls. The result of which was that at about 10:00 a.m. at night for the first two nights magnificent firework displays happened. Fine, if as I was the second night, coming back from the pub, but I had fallen asleep fairly exhausted the night before only to be woken by what sounded like a symphony orchestra backing a firework display and if I was more of a musician I would be able to tell you what the orchestra were playing. After the second night you could actually see the students returning home as I got up for breakfast.
Yes that was me going to the pub, it seemed the natural thing to do with this group and normally it isn’t. I almost went the first night but was too tired/withdrawn to cope with it so went to bed. There were three students from Westminster at the conference so we ended up at a rather better class of pub than is usual for escape committees from Westminster. It also happened during a brief interlude in the wet weather so one evening we spent the evening sitting out in the pub garden. There were plenty of other people there but it was nice to be sitting outside for a change this summer.
One slight thing was I was surprised at my irritation at people who keep creating the same two or three labyrinths. The most common one tends to be Classical Labyrinth because there is a set way to draw it. The second type because it is famous is the Chartres, but the Labyrinth society has many more labyrinths, however even that is limited. There are technically an infinite number of labyrinths based on the Classical pattern that you can draw quite easily, there is a spiral pattern which is also quite easy and actually the simplest of the Chartres style but also infinite, then there is the Chartres style which rely on transit lines and divides, there are again technically an infinity of them. This leaves us with the question why do we just stick to two of them. My response was to draw one that as far as I know has never been drawn before. It belongs to the classical family as they are the simplest to draw when you have only basic tools i.e. a pencil and a piece of paper. Sometimes I am going to have to write up how to create a classical style labyrinth as it comes to me at least with a nice set of images. I do spiral ones but rarely do Chartres style or others as I need a good clear space to do those time wise.
The weather broke on the last day and started raining which made the journey back harder to cope with especially as the last train was packed with commuters all the way. I also think I was pretty exhausted but I had a departmental meeting at work the next day so I basically just headed to bed. That evening was the Broomhill Festival dinner. I was asked I think to make up numbers as several people who were thought to be coming could not make it. I was happy to go, and they coped admirably with the fact that I was lactose intolerant despite the fact they had not been forewarned. I had told Derek who was doing the booking but I do not think he understood what I was saying, Jean Dickson also meant to remind him and I also managed to leave my lactase tablets at home. However I was very tired and I think that largely wiped out Saturday with the result I was having to write on Sunday Afternoon last week despite doing the sound at St Andrews in the morning. Sheila had found that she could not do the table elders bit so James at the last minute had to stand in.
Monday it was back to writers group and taking a piece of writing from the spirituality event. I have a second and I need to sort them both. I can’t recall anything else dramatic happening this week, work was busy and such but nothing major going on.
The weekend has had two themes running through it, thesis writing and communion service. I needed to submit my latest chapter to my supervisor this weekend and I also was table elder 2 at St Andrews. This means I officially am supporting table elder 1. I had dinner with the Dicksons on Friday and we arranged to meet at 5 p.m. on Saturday as contact centre was on. I need to get my head around the process of preparing because it and tidying up afterwards takes a considerable amount of work by two people and I am quite sure it should not. I made one simplification today partly because Lesley Green was taking it and that was to move the elders meeting to the committee room rather than going upstairs to the Elders room (Elders do not meet normally in the Elders room these days anyway and more and more elders are finding the stairs tricky, Lesley is older than most of them and I suspect would do also). The only problem was, because it was Lesley, James did a thorough run through so the choir had difficulty getting hold of their books. Next change is to buy new pins for the table cloth. I know what I want and I know they will be easier to handle. We were worried over the size as Margaret had organised a trip over this weekend and therefore there were likely to be fewer members but we ended up with 43 taking communion which is the usual number.
No comments:
Post a Comment