Broken Computers, Birmingham visit and a Community Party

News this week. Firstly my work computer has been sick all week. This clearly does not mean that my home ones are sick. Indeed I have been using an old computer at work, which I feel happy playing around on as it was mine and I know what it is like. I could borrow another computer but then I feel restricted in what I can do, I cannot set it up to suit myself. The latest stage is that it is due to go back into the workshop, this time I have specified what is wrong with it. I just hope they can fix that otherwise it will have to be a new machine as the machine is not safe on the network in its current form and I cannot make it safe. It also will not do the work I want it to. They are on the third attempt to try and fix it.

Otherwise work wise I have been reading through papers on fibre and its ability to prevent colon cancer (well that is the point of interest from our perspective, however some were more interested in Type II diabetes). This are tough studies to be a participant in, if ever there was an argument for paying people to participate these are the studies. Some of the diets are pretty lousy, one was eating so much fruit and veg that even I was thinking no way! Hardly surprising that it only got a study size of ten people. Some however I could see working. For instance one sent people chocolate muffins to eat with their normal diet! I kid you not. The muffins were made with different amount of fibre in and some had very high amounts indeed. However the real problem was that fecal matter had to be collected during the study. I am reminded of Dr Johnson’s comment on a woman preaching: “Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all”.

Then on Wednesday I went to Birmingham for a supervision. The journey out went smoothly with me getting to Sheffield Station early enough to get a coffee before I caught the train. The journey on the whole went well. I am deciding Helen Cameron’s book “Resourcing Mission” is not the book I hoped it was. It is not fish, nor fowl nor good red herring as the saying goes. The themes it takes are largely sociological but the analysis of them is a mix of person contextual theology and sociology light. There is not a cohesive theme running from one to the next.  She use a typeology typical of organisational studies but rather than spend time showing how the behaviour is manifest in different institutions by examples she just delineates it, using examples only as introductory pieces. I don’t want to know that churches that are gathered organise money in way XYZ, I probably could say that with more clarity than she, I would be interested in how she argues from such churches behaviour to such conclusions. Finally it claims to be contextual theology, but “Lets do Theology” does this better. If she intends the chapters to be briefing tools then she has barely scratched the surface on what is needed and there is no “go further” section at the back.  Very different to my response to Hybrid Church in the City although I suspect that it would be better titled “Church in the Hybrid City” by Christopher Baker. There is a serious attempt to engage with sociology, followed by  a serious attempt to reflect theologically on these implications. The irony being that normally I find stuff coming from the direction Helen Cameron useful while I steer clear of stuff that comes from where Christopher Baker comes from.

I was in time for my supervision and my supervisor is now happy that what I have written on cafe church is a paper. I am surprised given how popular cafe church is that there is little written about it in the serious books. I now need to do a reading review of what I have read in the last year. I suspect this is two years really and more than just a list of books. I then spent some time on the computer searching for things on older people. One of the interesting papers that came out was that there appeared to be a correlation between people’s involvement in extra curricular activities as a teenager and their involvement in voluntary associations later. This would suggest to me that the government’s policy on teaching citizenship is wrong headed and what we need to be doing is rather than spending class room time on teaching them to be good citizens, rather be encouraging their involvement in extra curricular activity. I suspect particularly activities that they themselves have a role in organising. Its not our teachers who will build the civil society of the future, nor the parents, but the youth leaders. You want to change society for the better become a youth leader and I don’t just mean those with those titles, I mean guiders, scouter, youth team coaches, people who organise youth orchestra and allow youth volunteering in the community. They all add up to being a massive citizenship teaching organisation and all the better at it for giving the children fun while they are doing it..

I also ended up giving another student a quick tutorial on using computers for research. The thing is for a number of books I tend to read them at least partially on line. I ended up reading a paper in a book on Torrance Theology just by searching for it. Alright so the paper was called “Calvin and Cafe Church”. Unfortunately it was not really about cafe church.but all new forms of church (I think that wording is title neutral, what with “emerging” and “liquid” becoming so quickly sort of brand names). It is amazing how someone can not realise how much stuff there is on the computers these days to help a researcher.

Anyway after that we went upstairs to meet up with my supervisor. He decided that as he could get five of his PhD students together for a day he would take us out for a meal in the evening. We were joined by another PhD Student and a research fellow who works with my supervisor. He took us to Deep  , a Carribean Restaurant on the Bristol Road just around the corner from New Street Station. They had a buffet and I just ate what I felt like. I may have got some things wrong. I did not eat akee and salt fish because it looked like cold pasta salad which is not a favourite of mine. However I ate goat stew without any problem. The other thing was I think he was expecting some of us to order wine or beer, but none of us did. The reason we didn’t is I suspect largely due to circumstance. Quite a few of us had long journeys home like myself and others were in the final stages of writing their theses for submission. In other words we had reasons for staying sober. I suspect that the others were all driving. Anyway got safely home afterwards but was very tired so headed almost straight to bed.

Saturday there was a party held by I think the Broomhall Centre (formally known as the Broomspring Centre) for local people in Gell Street Park. As with all Broomhall events it was late in getting going. I was there around 1:30 and there was hardly anyone, Sarah at 2:00 pm found much the same (it started at 12:00 noon) but by closing time (4pm when I went back) the place was absolutely heaving with people and people were not dispersing. From the feel of it I suspect it is the indirect successor of the Broomhall Carnival.  The big things that brought people out were activities for children. There are some photos I took on Facebook which will be accessible to those who are recorded as my friends on Facebook.

Today I went to Herringthorpe for the morning service. It was the moderator Kevin Watson who was leading the main part of the service while Pauline took the communion. Prayers for Pauline and her husband Alex on Friday please as Alex is having major operations for bowel cancer at the Hallamshire. The service was on the love of God and the need to share that love with those around us. It was well prepared and he clearly used images as well as words so please don’t think with my next comment I am criticising him. He centred his image for the love of God on embrace which is not an image I find easy to handle. Normally I suspect it would be water off a ducks back but not this morning, maybe tiredness due to time of the month, maybe Stuart saying he was coming around the previous evening for a chat and not showing (he came around today instead). Maybe just the business of the last while catching up with me but I was at least at one point seriously considering if I would be better off out of the service. I didn’t and I suspect that I was sorted enough for no-one to notice at the end of worship at least no-one commented on the fact.

On fixing computers and pilgrim books

Monday was a bank holiday, I spent largely on Thesis, well once I had written up the worship of the previous day, and been down to Staples to buy a computer. I then put the essay into Excel, a line per sentence, then counted the letters in each sentence (I later found a method of checking the number of words) and sorted them onto words. I have since spent some time tightening up the language. The nice thing about doing this, is that it concentrates you brain on the specific meaning on that sentence and trying to write as succinctly as possible. So far I have edited during the week 29 sentences and saved over 30o odd words. I won't do as well with what remains as I started with the longer sentences. I then will order back into the essay form and see what it looks like. There is some issues still to be included so I probably need to save over 600 words.

Tuesday I got into work having realised just as I was dropping off on Monday that the courses I was teaching were not in my diary. Unfortunately I could not check the dates of courses at home. So first thing Tuesday checked. The good news was that the first two dates had not clashed. The bad news was the third clashed directly with my next supervision. This meant that I had to do cancel the course as the chances of me being able to rearrange my supervision were even smaller. Also I ended up without a working phone line at home. I would not have noticed this except I was home at lunch time. I went back into work and was able to establish fairly easily that there was a known outage covering most of South Yorkshire. It was the phone companies fault but as they had engineers working at it, I was not concerned. However I was a bit surprised how unhappy I was just knowing I was off line and yes my phone does receive email if I want it too (not to self, must clear out the inbox again)! I will have to work that one through

Wednesday, I started the day off on a low note again as I managed to loose my church keys. I could not find them before I went into work despite hurriedly in a panic looking in all the essential places. By lunch time I was fairly convinced that despite my not finding them earlier I had actually put them away in the right place. So I went and looked there again. I found them tucked in firmly to a clump of papers(I had had the papers out so they were well wedged) at the back of the right draw were the keys. I am actually learning not to do some things in a hurry regardless of the lack of time. If I do them in a hurry, I either do not do them well or I forget what I have done and that confuses life later. I also saw the doctors from the Jessop. They were disappointed in the results, but agreed that it looked as if the cells were changing over time.

Thursday I think the third of the four books on pilgrimage came. Ian Bradley's Pilgrimage: A Spiritual and Cultural Journey is a souvenir book, is sumptuous book published by Lion, lots of good photographs, and given it is by Ian I suspect that the prose will be well informed and readable. I certainly intend at some stage sitting down and reading through the first half that looks at the the history of Christian Pilgrimage, the second part of the book that looks at modern pilgrimages I will probably spend less time on. The second is Making a Pilgrimage by Sally Welch. This is a rather more practical book if you are puzzling over what Pilgrimage actually means today. It is written by someone who has obviously been on pilgrimages (its not just the stories she tells but the way she speaks of it echoes some of my more limited experience). There are some things  I would say that I suspect she would not and visa versa but the text is a good brief guide. However do not expect any history except very briefly in passing. This book is also published by Lion, but it is small enough and light enough to take with you, something I would not want to do with Ian's book.  Finally there is the dud of the three. The Spiritual Traveler: England, Scotland and Wales by Martin and Nigel Palmer. It  was the subtitle "The Guid to Sacred Sites and  Pilgrim Routes in Britain". Well it does not live up to that subtitle. Firstly it is not comprehensive even of Christian sites. For instance it has Lindisfarne on the Scottish pilgrim route but North East Britain from Whitby north is teeming with religious sites, you could do a pilgrimage easily for that area and not see them all. Indeed St Cuthberts way does seem to have become a modern pilgrim route. However my main gripe is that it claims to be an authoritative text to pilgrim routes. It isn't. As far as I can see it does not take one of the traditional pilgrim routes and write about it, although it may use some as part of larger routes. Rather it gives a list of routes that connect by motorised transport various religious sites. These are not pilgrim routes, they are suggested itineraries for would be car pilgrims. Don't get me wrong, I am not against using cars for pilgrimage, the problem is that there are historical pilgrim routes,  it was easy to find such routes of Heritage Paths Website which covers Scotland. Intriguingly on that website the 1930s map has Cailiness spelt as Killiness. So I was hoping for something that actually looked at the historical routes as well as gave modern options.  So as "A guide to Sacred Sites with suggested routes for pilgrimage" it is fine but it is not what it says on the tin.

Friday I was in work again, I have to give up two bank holidays a year so Monday was one of them. Therefore I was in work on Friday. I picked up from the Broomhall Breakfast  two up to date copies of getting help in Sheffield City Centre. I've recently come across two people begging in the area, I don't give money but will give food and such. I suspect at least one of them may find having it as a reference might be useful. I have to see if I see them again. The last time I was at the Tescos on West Street the man was not there, and I have not been past Waitrose yet. Also on Friday sussed what probably was causing the downness, as it is time of the month. Only unusual in that it was before the start rather than after. Maybe a sign I am managing things better.

Saturday I was busy. I decided at last to get rid of rather a lot of electrical junk that seemed to accumulate in my flat. It included the old printer, my old computer (neither of which has  worked for a couple of years), a heater and a lot of wires. I was not completely successful as I managed to leave a bag of wires that are dangerous so removed from the church before anyone gets ideas, and a calculator whose screen has gone. I did this by hiring a car for an hour and a half and taking the stuff to the tip. I suspect the cost of the car was about as much as I would have been charged if I had got the bin men to do it, and they would not have taken all the little bits. They have a barrier up I am pretty sure to stop people coming in with lorry loads but people were happy to direct me right around to where electrical stuff was dumped. I wonder what they made of it. Anyway got back and decided to install the new printer. I had decided that the reason the old printer was not working was because I had not managed to install properly the drivers over the internet having lost the disks. Never make such assumptions. After struggling with this one, I discovered the REAL reason. Nothing was wrong with the printer but the wire connecting it was damaged! So I changed the wire, I had no less than four wires from previous printers, and it installed perfectly. Well perfectly once I had sorted that it was relatively straight forward if not 100%. Then I went into town basically to shop at Marks and Spencers for some ready meals. Also it was a warm day and I was feeling uncomfortable in my clothes. I wanted a loose floaty top, none in Marks but I went onto Blacks and they had one in, in a reddy-purply-pink on sale for twelve pounds.

Today I went to Herringthorpe. My drawing during sermons is still creating interest. I finally got an explanation that seemed to satisfy people. I said I was having difficulty paying attention during sermons, then heard of somebody drawing during seminars and thought, if I draw the sermon I will have to listen to it. That seemed to satisfy in a way that other equally true explanations do not. I will have to give some thought to why that did. The service was good, surprisingly not on one of the later resurrection passages, but rather on Christian hope. The congregation I think stood up well but the Sunday School was very small and therefore the rows in front of me were largely empty. As far as I could see there were no little ones at all, junior school and four later senior school. It was interesting the number of senior children that came. I came home and had a bacon and marmalade sandwich and a bottle wine. Then slept for a couple of hours.