I think I am going to have to write a highlights, but despite things being busy, (when aren’t they) I am not sure how many highlights I actually have.
Right on Friday 10th I went as I normally do to the Broomhall Breakfast. It seemed very light staffed, Mary was cooking, Jean was behind the hatch and Sarah was taking orders. Fortunately at that stage it also was fairly few clients. So I had my breakfast and then realised that Sarah might like hers so offered to take over orders. When I did that, Mary decided that, as it was quiet, she might as well have her breakfast, only for over ten people to walk through the door. This resulted in Jean cooking a couple of eggs just so the backlog did not get too bad. I have since volunteered to be around on a Friday until September time, so I now have to be up and ready to go by 7:30 a.m. in the morning on a Friday.
That evening I went out for a meal with James and Jean Dickson. Rather than cooking this time they decided to take me to the Bistrot Pierre on Ecclesall Road. The reason for doing so is that it does a gluten free menu and as their grandson is both a celiac and milk intolerant, they wanted to try it out before they took him. Their grandchildren are moving to Sheffield in a few weeks time. It was airy with glass all the way around, a good number of dinners and the food was good. They do a set of light main courses which were about the right amount for us to eat and they also do 500ml (2/3 of the normal bottle size) of wine which is very nice if only two are drinking , James was driving so didn’t. We came back to my place to have coffee and I found the bag of decaffeinated beans I had bought so we were fine.
That weekend I was writing, well I was analysing hymns. It is interesting, I think if I am right the hypothesis that the reason hymns are sung often is because they are “our hymns” does not seem to hold. Congregation’s do not sing hymns for the same reason football supporters chant at crowds, at least they don’t during normal worship. I suspect the hymns were being used for two different purposes in the two congregations. However what I am not yet clear on is what the hymnody of the tradition looks like. Do I go through Rejoice and Sing and pick out those with a definite “Reformed” background? Do I analyse “When I survey”, “We limit not the truth of God” “The Lord’s my Shepherd” and “Ye gates lift up ye heads” and use them as examples? If so what in the Churches of Christ one? Do I not bother but look to themes that come out of the tradition generally.
Tuesday saw me giving an NVivo course. This was full subscribed and well attended. I however am getting fed up with it being a talking head during it. I give a lot of information out but I am pretty sure most of it washes over people. They seemed appreciative but still I wonder. I was able to show someone at the end a quick way to get on with her coding but so hard to deal with a widely disparate group.
Thursday my new computer was set up and working in work. I actually found that having a faster machine makes a huge difference, it works at the problems I set it about the sort of speed my brain works at the commentary. So I don’t go off and think about something else while the computer is working and then have to pick up the pieces again. This means I work through things more efficiently. I got two large data sets ready for analysis by someone else during the week.
Friday I did the breakfast then did an interview for my PhD. It went well and I think I have only another three to do. This should be interesting as things are definitely now getting to the writing up stage.
I took twenty-four hours largely out from doing stuff from Saturday afternoon when I sent off my supervision papers and this afternoon when I went to evening service at Herringthorpe. A friend from my writers group had leant me “Into Great Silence” (that review is in depth good and worth reading to the end) It says there it last 2.5 hours in fact it is slightly longer than that. It is slow, slow enough for me to watch it and even in my own home I was drawn into it. It is beautifully shot and the repetition becomes slightly mesmerising. I thought that at the start the monks would blend into each other but they don’t. No two of them sit at prayer the same, their hands and heads are held differently. However when you see the older ones there is a real sense of laughter just trapped behind the eyes while the younger ones look more stern. It was three hours well spent and if I have the chance to watch it in a cinema I will take it.
Showing posts with label hymns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hymns. Show all posts
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
The week leading to presentation at Herringthorpe
This week has been dominated by the fact that I was giving an initial report to church meeting at Herringthorpe today. In some senses even when I write now of other things that was still going on in the background.
Monday my writers group started again. This is good news as in some ways this has become one of my safety valves, a place where I go not to talk about thesis but to discuss other things and for which I have to be creative in a different way. Actually the big discipline that comes with this is that I have to actually stop and look at something rather than presume I know what I see. They also are a group with which it is pleasant to hang out with. It has become another non-negotiable of my life. In work I repeated an analysis I had done about three times already, finally sorting out what I wanted to do. The funny thing was that the results came out for what the original topic of interest was.
Tuesday was a fairly busy day in work. We had a team meeting with the head of department at ten O’clock where she talked about Lean process management. It is something that vaguely interests me. It Looks at redesigning processes so as to make them more efficient by removing stuff that does not provide value to the customer. What is important is to realise that backup/fallback procedures do provide value.
Wednesday I decided to work at home as I desperately needed to get the report into slides. I had actually finished preparing the handout first as I found working in Publisher easier for ordering ideas than working in Powerpoint. Actually the putting together of the slides was relatively easy. You just had to design the slide to portray the idea. I kept the slides visual and short.
Thursday in the morning I spent time dealing with a bright student who really needed to be told to do a qualitative approach at least to start with. Once they have the coding sorted then hopefully we can export to SPSS. Then on the afternoon did a run through of my presentation with my boss in work so I know that I had made it understandable to people with no background in the social sciences. I deliberately tried not to do anything that evening
Friday was my day off. In the morning I had coffee with Sarah, I had a strange feeling that neither of us really wanted to get up from it and do other things. For Sarah it was probably a good chance to sit down after the business of Broomhall Breakfast, with me it was partly coming back to thesis although I was actually noting what hymns the churches had used while I was there. From fairly early on while I was at Herringthorpe I have kept a note of the hymns that were actually used as there was a dispute over their use. St Andrews Chesterfield printed theirs on their weekly newsletter. So I have this information for both churches. It was a matter of abstracting it and then categorising it. I had to develop a coding categorisation, because of the congregations I have used a four part code characterisation. I picked any material pre 1840 as traditional; this is set as the start of Queen Victoria’s reign. Then for material between 1840 and 1960 I called it hymnody, this was to reflect the high number of hymns written between those times and in use. Later material was not classed on a time basis rather I distinguished what I call Modern Liturgical including many modern hymns but it is broader than that, which is material written for use in formal worship since 1960 and Charismatic which is material coming out of writers identified with the charismatic renewal. If I was studying this in-depth I would want to subdivide all four categories. For instance I have metrical psalms put in with translations of ancient hymns with the hymns of Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley. In the next I have Revivalist hymns aside high Anglican ones and so on.
On the evening I made a big mess. I managed to book a Tesco’s delivery for just the time I was at the Dicksons. Not just that but I also managed to get into my head the wrong time so it was only when it did not arrive by seven that I checked the times. In the end Tesco’s very kindly agreed to redeliver today and James came to pick me up. Very thankful for people’s considerateness over what was completely my mess up! The evening was enjoyable as ever.
Saturday was just more work on the hymns followed by setting up the sound system at St Andrews so that a guitar could be played through it, I hoped it worked ok as though the technical solution was in place, it also required the operator to balance the levels of the voices and the guitar! Something no operator had done previously. On the morning a quick run to the shops. The rest of the day was thesis both working on the hymns and today’s presentation. Unfortunately by this point I realised that nerves were taking over and needed some controlling
Today presentation day! Actually things went pretty smoothly only I had put too much in. I turned up at the church only to find that it was parade and the car park was full. God must have heard my heart cry because a car promptly pulled out of a parking space! Not usual ten minutes before worship in the church carpark! I got asked on entry to the church whether I was rehearsing my presentation, no I replied thanking God for providing a parking space. The idea of having to move the car in the time between worship and church meeting just felt too much! I got through three quarters maybe more of the presentation. The moderator commented that on there being not enough time to do this sort of presentation in church meetings. I don’t think people understood that I was hanging around to calm down afterwards, I have been so intently involved in doing this presentation and so focused on presenting it well, that I was quite sure that I would technically not be in a good state to be driving on the roads immediately afterwards. Anyway came in had a bacon sandwich and a glass of wine and went to bed for an hour and a half.
Monday my writers group started again. This is good news as in some ways this has become one of my safety valves, a place where I go not to talk about thesis but to discuss other things and for which I have to be creative in a different way. Actually the big discipline that comes with this is that I have to actually stop and look at something rather than presume I know what I see. They also are a group with which it is pleasant to hang out with. It has become another non-negotiable of my life. In work I repeated an analysis I had done about three times already, finally sorting out what I wanted to do. The funny thing was that the results came out for what the original topic of interest was.
Tuesday was a fairly busy day in work. We had a team meeting with the head of department at ten O’clock where she talked about Lean process management. It is something that vaguely interests me. It Looks at redesigning processes so as to make them more efficient by removing stuff that does not provide value to the customer. What is important is to realise that backup/fallback procedures do provide value.
Wednesday I decided to work at home as I desperately needed to get the report into slides. I had actually finished preparing the handout first as I found working in Publisher easier for ordering ideas than working in Powerpoint. Actually the putting together of the slides was relatively easy. You just had to design the slide to portray the idea. I kept the slides visual and short.
Thursday in the morning I spent time dealing with a bright student who really needed to be told to do a qualitative approach at least to start with. Once they have the coding sorted then hopefully we can export to SPSS. Then on the afternoon did a run through of my presentation with my boss in work so I know that I had made it understandable to people with no background in the social sciences. I deliberately tried not to do anything that evening
Friday was my day off. In the morning I had coffee with Sarah, I had a strange feeling that neither of us really wanted to get up from it and do other things. For Sarah it was probably a good chance to sit down after the business of Broomhall Breakfast, with me it was partly coming back to thesis although I was actually noting what hymns the churches had used while I was there. From fairly early on while I was at Herringthorpe I have kept a note of the hymns that were actually used as there was a dispute over their use. St Andrews Chesterfield printed theirs on their weekly newsletter. So I have this information for both churches. It was a matter of abstracting it and then categorising it. I had to develop a coding categorisation, because of the congregations I have used a four part code characterisation. I picked any material pre 1840 as traditional; this is set as the start of Queen Victoria’s reign. Then for material between 1840 and 1960 I called it hymnody, this was to reflect the high number of hymns written between those times and in use. Later material was not classed on a time basis rather I distinguished what I call Modern Liturgical including many modern hymns but it is broader than that, which is material written for use in formal worship since 1960 and Charismatic which is material coming out of writers identified with the charismatic renewal. If I was studying this in-depth I would want to subdivide all four categories. For instance I have metrical psalms put in with translations of ancient hymns with the hymns of Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley. In the next I have Revivalist hymns aside high Anglican ones and so on.
On the evening I made a big mess. I managed to book a Tesco’s delivery for just the time I was at the Dicksons. Not just that but I also managed to get into my head the wrong time so it was only when it did not arrive by seven that I checked the times. In the end Tesco’s very kindly agreed to redeliver today and James came to pick me up. Very thankful for people’s considerateness over what was completely my mess up! The evening was enjoyable as ever.
Saturday was just more work on the hymns followed by setting up the sound system at St Andrews so that a guitar could be played through it, I hoped it worked ok as though the technical solution was in place, it also required the operator to balance the levels of the voices and the guitar! Something no operator had done previously. On the morning a quick run to the shops. The rest of the day was thesis both working on the hymns and today’s presentation. Unfortunately by this point I realised that nerves were taking over and needed some controlling
Today presentation day! Actually things went pretty smoothly only I had put too much in. I turned up at the church only to find that it was parade and the car park was full. God must have heard my heart cry because a car promptly pulled out of a parking space! Not usual ten minutes before worship in the church carpark! I got asked on entry to the church whether I was rehearsing my presentation, no I replied thanking God for providing a parking space. The idea of having to move the car in the time between worship and church meeting just felt too much! I got through three quarters maybe more of the presentation. The moderator commented that on there being not enough time to do this sort of presentation in church meetings. I don’t think people understood that I was hanging around to calm down afterwards, I have been so intently involved in doing this presentation and so focused on presenting it well, that I was quite sure that I would technically not be in a good state to be driving on the roads immediately afterwards. Anyway came in had a bacon sandwich and a glass of wine and went to bed for an hour and a half.
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