Week 30: Dealing with the tradition

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	54,562
Words typed this week:	2194
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	2194
Days I managed to write this week:	4

Despite having been to supervision this week writing wise it has been a pretty straightforward week. What I have had to do is to bring the theory and the description together and ask what does this say about the way tradition is experienced within the congregation. It is interesting that I found I think four separate things to say although the first three were how the tradition impinged on the congregation. The first was that a feeling of loss was exacerbated because of the tradition, the second was one of these daft situation where the tradition works against itself and the final one was where the tradition starts to interact with the local in an interesting way. The final was the need of the local tradition to sustain itself and the ways that congregations go about doing that. So I have made decent progress.

Unfortunately the chapter is too long and there are still bits missing, nothing major, but also quite a bit of repetition to be got rid of. Then there is the integration of the theory and the description. This can only happen at this stage, I need to have both written before I am able to link them. So next weekend which is a long one, I will be taking the chapter to bits and putting it back together again, hopefully with 5000 fewer words. Then it is off to the proof readers with it.

Supervision May, reporting from a hot humid Birmingham New Street

Well, I have had supervision today, as usual it was sunny  (mind you it is exam season so my supervision can’t claim sole credit) but the trains have been interesting this time. My train to New Street was fine and on time but the train before it had not arrived at Sheffield when it left and may have been cancelled in which case I pity the people due to get it as they were not redirected to the train I was on. Then there was problems with the train from the University to New Street, I got on an unannounced train and I don’t know which of the delayed trains it was. The trains back were equally mixed up, leaving New Street, they merged the 17:03 with 18:03. Fortunately we had a train manager who always has a good sense of humour (this is not the first train I have caught where he was the manager), he went around giving arrival and connection times to everyone, in the form 7:30. He then stopped to say he meant pm and he thought it might even be today.

Things are beginning to fall into place, I now know it basically takes two months to write a thesis data chapter when I am working properly. I submitted a very raw draft of my second data chapter. This is about two months after my previous chapter reached this point. Of course it would be nice if they took slightly less long. The last couple of weeks have been really tough intellectually, the pulling together of the theoretical ideas that fit within the chapter is hard work, often involving several false starts and quite a bit of going off in different directions. However when you get the right bits to give an analytic structure  it is very exciting, as suddenly you start to see the shape and outline of what is coming. I suspect that the feeling is something like rock climbing in that you feel the excitement of each hand hold obtained as you start to realise that you are making progress towards the cliff top. The other thing is it is only this last week as I finally began to pull the relationship to tradition that I realised that I was actually writing the lead into my next chapter.

When I realised my next supervision was not until July I broached with my supervisor about what my next stage would be. The answer is that I am likely to be able to go to writing up status either iin September or October but to do that I have at least two more chapters to write, the last placement chapter which is on worship and the tradition chapter. This means I may or may not pay some full fees this year. I am going to have to sort out how that works, and because of this I may well prefer to pay in instalments this year rather than straight out. However my supervisor agrees I will be fully submitted by this time next year.

The Edgebaston Campus was interesting with more students sitting on the grass than in the computer rooms, which was fine by me as I could get a machine and check out a lot of papers quite easily. Actually the computer rooms were sort of the right business for me. Enough students to make them look used (the Uni should take its photos of people working this week) but not overcrowded as they often are in main term times.

This month I have to redraft my current chapter (I will probably do this over the Jubilee weekend) and I am also attending the Reformed Spirituality conference at Westminster. I will also start drafting the following chapter which has its own challenges. I am going to struggle somewhat to balance it against the other chapters as I am aware that though I participated much in worship I also found that I was reluctant to make notes. I am going to have to start by trying to make notes on the things that are important.

Week 29 : Preliminary Draft of Community Chapter Produced

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	52,368
Words typed this week:	2670
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	2670
Days I managed to write this week:	4

Well progress has been made this week. Admittedly some of that only because I have a supervision next week. If thesis writing was hiking then this week has been scrambling over a bolder strewn rise. It has not been sticky like mud but there were just so many challenges to get over to make progress. The work has been tough but progress has been made. I am slowly getting the feel of this thesis and this last week there have been several "aha" moments when I have stumbled on something and realised that it was important for my thesis. On the other hand I have had to try and digest a couple more theorist who have applications for my thesis.

One of the real oddities of this thesis is that while I am working with fairly small local groups/organisations called "congregations" quite a bit of the stuff I am drawing on with respect to identity is normally used for groups such as nationality. This time I have been looking at the work of Fredrik Barth a Norwegian anthropologist who in looking at ethnicity changed the focus from the individuals to the actions that sustained the identity. So I have two Barths in my thesis, from different strands and I am using an anthropologist as a theorist rather than a methodologist. I think the thesis is the stronger for it. Actually the whole theory region I am using is mid-way between psychotherapy and theorists of Nationality and I seem to work with pretty broad brush across the whole range of those although there are a couple of sociologist in there who do not seem to have done too much work in either camp.

The one group that I seem to be light on is the theorists of sociology of Religion whether congregational studies or ethnography of religion. With the Congregational Studies people I know to some extent why it is. The area has a broad stream of rather simple approaches from organisational studies. The problem is that the simplicity of many of them makes me cautious. This is less so of UK ones than American. It is also not true that all organisations studies are simple, I have also been looking at the work of the Tavistock Consultancy who work psychotherapeutic models to understand how organisations work, in particular the early work of Eliot Jacques and  the nursing studies of Isabel Menzies-Lyth.

Oh well the papers went off for supervision today and this week I will need to try to write about the tradition. I expect I will spend the next bank holiday I will be doing a major redraft of this chapter.

Week 28: Slower again but I am writing the theory now.

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	49,698
Words typed this week:	1268
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	1268
Days I managed to write this week:	4

Right this weeks progress is poor, I am not going to pretend otherwise. However I am more pleased with it than it looks.  I have swapped from writing the descriptive, which I find relatively easy to write, to writing the theoretical. The problem with the theoretical is that I have to be precise. That means when I am writing it up I need to get the references right. I spent a good couple of hours today looking for various bits a pieces. I remembered that when I first started out I found a couple of papers on congregations as organisations. I wanted to have a look at them again. So I needed to find them. I am fairly organised and they were in the folder I thought they would be in but I had to find the folder first. Then I wanted to cite a Kindle edition. I have been checking the internet and been told to cite one I needed to find the doi or a url. Have you ever tried finding a doi for a Kindle book! Worse still it was one of those books that do not have page numbers. Most Kindle books now do but there are still some early ones that don't. So I had to cite chapter.

The other thing is that I have planned out my theory part for this chapter and am actually quite excited about writing it. That might be part of the problem with me writing anything of any length. The thing is that I am getting a grasp of where I am going, still have to work out the last major data chapter on worship, plenty of stuff there just got to work it out. I never really expected to have a chapter on Worship when I started, just as I never expected to have to report that despite appearances it looks as if church meeting is a functioning institution and perhaps we should not put so much effort into revitalising it as put effort into using it for what it is good at. I have also finished the section on welcoming and that was tricky. Not so much because the congregations weren't welcoming; they both were, but because for once I had talk about the individual. I have kept it short, but this person really was the focus of some major parts of the congregation's character and yet she'd absolutely hate having any limelight at all. Its not that she has done anything bad, she is on the whole a force for good.

Anyway this week I need to write the the rest of the theory, this is going to be read and write so pretty intense and then next weekend I need to write it up and pull together all the data parts of the chapter and get it off to my supervisor. It is not a finished chapter there is one major section missing but I suspect it will now be closer than my previous chapter was at this stage which will make writing the next chapter easier. So a pretty intense week and I am doing the sound next Sunday so can't miss church.

Week 27: Slower progress due to getting distracted finding a quote

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	48,412
Words typed this week:	2164
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	2164
Days I managed to write this week:	4

This week the increase has been slower. This was in part due to me being sidetracked yesterday. In last weeks writing I recalled a quote from Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein, there was only one problem, I thought I no longer had a copy. So I ordered a full copy. I then found I still had a friends copy on my shelf, (sorry Sue sometime I really must get around to returning it to you, it is in far too good a condition to be mine). The old copy which is the same as edition of the one I owned twenty years ago had only one abbreviated appendix. Yesterday before I started writing in this weeks I decided to see if I could find the quote. This was going to be interesting as I have not looked at Lord of the Rings in any edition for fifteen years. Now my assumption was that it would have come from the edition I owned so I ignored the appendices. However after several hours absorbed in trying to find it by cross checking against the index (I found I was reading far more than was strictly necessary) I decided I had to try another approach. So I went on the internet. That was not easy but eventually on an obscure site found the actual quote. My assumption about it being in my old copy was wrong. It was in an appendix my old copy clearly had not had. That means I must have noted it while briefly reading in a friends copy some twenty years ago. It is strange how my brain works! Something must have struck me about that quote even then. Having traced it, I decided that as it was a mood quote I should use a different one from Lord of the Rings instead.

Also this week a friend sent through notice of conference on Exploring Spirituality in the Reformed Tradition  which will give me chance to talk to think about that section of the thesis with others just before I start it. I should be tidying up the chapter on community and starting the one on Worship before I try and write the chapter on Reformed Piety. The problem is that we use "Spirituality" and I am really not sure it should not be "Spiritualities" given the diversity is inherent within the tradition.

So yesterday I ended up very short of time for writing which meant I only got in about five hundred words, so I have had to make up for that today. I actually had plenty to write as I had the ideas for the rest of the section I am working on, which is on what the congregations understand as being "welcoming" and "friendly". It is intriguing that both congregations have understandings that suit their approach to being church and what they understand as important. I think that many other people have an idea of "welcoming" and "friendly" means, and that if any church is going to actually look at something with "Welcome" in the title then it needs to look at what it means by that and what others mean like that.

So tomorrow I am hoping to get some serious reading done (although I need to tidy the house and get some money out as well) then the rest of the week I need to finish drafting the section on Welcome and start on the theory section for the beginning. I think I will tackle anxiety first, rather than boundaries.