Supervision August: Another chapter in “draft” and another three to write

Notice outside the main library, no I did not go in,
but I liked the textured and weathered look of it

I know it is only the last day of July but this supervision was early to take into consideration the holidays and my next supervision is early September.

Right I took my documents to my supervisor this time, amongst them was a think piece. I do not usually do think pieces at the moment, but I was struggling with the fact that while I was writing lots of description, I was not finding it easy to integrate the theory with it. This struggle was particularly intense with the last chapter where the theorists were very few and far between. When you say you are having problems finding anyone to your supervisor and his reply to paraphrase is “Apart from me there isn’t really anyone” then this is not surprising. I have found a useful writer on ritual, I can use ritual not directly but I can talk of form, and form in worship is very closely related to ritual. What is contained within the form is not always the same even when the form looks the same. So you get within worship even that that is not hugely ritualistic a binary stars system where form and understanding circle around each other without being exactly the same.

Anyway I decided to instead start drafting an overview of the theory of my thesis. That started to get my supervisor excited, so now we have split the data chapters from the theory chapters and there are three of each. The three theory chapters mark an outward trajectory that goes from Tradition, through Belonging and on out to Flows within Identity. Anyone know a popular book on fluid dynamics that a way out of practice mathematician would understand? So where I thought I had one chapter to finish and another on Tradition to write I now have that chapter signed off (the change actually means that apart from a drawing together of threads that chapter is fully written). I also have a major selection job to do as I need to reduce my chapters down but I know now how to and writing my theory gives me the tools to cut it down effectively. Actually I pretty confident that I can write the chapter on tradition pretty quickly, maybe by next supervision, the chapter on belonging may well take longer though I think that is pretty straightforward to, which means the big challenge is the chapter on flow. This will need to bring together the various strands of the thesis and create an understanding what the whole thesis is.

Yes I am happy with this, a lot more happy than I was with the previous structure as it allows the descriptive analysis to appear in its own right although more selected rather than letting the theoretical discourse shape the whole thing.

Otherwise two unusual things happened today, it actually rained on me while I was in Birmingham, this is a big rarity, even on wet days I seem to dodge the showers and the wet days have been the minority. The other is even more surprising, I as usual booked a seat on the train but only yesterday and not only did I get a seat but a table seat and facing the direction of travel. For once the 5:00 pm train does not have every seat foll on leaving Birmingham (usually very few standing but all seats full).

Week 39: An argument outline written

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	64,103
Words typed this week:	3017
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	0
Days I managed to write this week:	3

Right this week has been like getting blood out  of a stone. I started out thinking that I would write the theory part of my chapter on worship. The problem is finding people to work with. On the other topics I have found people who have allowed me to think with the subject area although I might have had to search hard to find them, certainly I did with location and it was not until I realised that social geographers was a different way of looking at it that I found anything. However sociology of worship/liturgy/ritual is even harder. Firstly there seem to be very few specialists. Most people are either historians or professional liturgist first and then happen to write something with a sociological or psychological twist. I asked my supervisor last supervision and he indicated that it was just him and Kieran Flanagan at Bristol who is strongly Roman Catholic. Now one of the things the ethnographer in me notes when working in the field of sociology of Religion is their is a strong cultural divide in the understanding of Religion from those within a Roman Catholic milieux and those whose background is more Protestant in the way faith is conceived. This does not seem to have anything to do with belief of the individual.  I think I have found one or two other voices but it is taking time and I am finding far more comment on whether it can be done than people actually trying to do it.

I eventually broke the log jam I was having in getting anything written this morning by using Pomodoro Technique. I have used this in the past and found it useful but tend to want to work more freely. Great when the words are flowing but not when they are difficult to find. I find that telling myself I have only to concentrate for fifteen minutes more (or however long to the end of the Pomodoro) is often enough to stop me from getting distracted. I really must use it more often not just when I am facing deadlines.

This week I have a supervision and need desperately to get on with that section on theory of worship done. I might however try this week to write something on the relationship of what I have seen in worship and how that relates to the Reformed Tradition.

Week 38: What do you call services that aren't main services?

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	64,103
Words typed this week:	2967
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	2967
Days I managed to write this week:	4

Right I seem to be making progress though if I am honest despite the impressive word count I still feel I am wading through mud. One of the things is that sometimes the vocabulary does not seem to exist. For instance what is the generic term for regular services that are not the main worship service or what is the term for those that happen maybe once a year. I do not mean the precise services, those usually have at least emic terms for them such as "evening worship" or "Maundy Thursday communion" or "youth service", I mean the big over-arching terms, I don't really have a clue. So I have been busy with a thesaurus and called the first Auxiliary services and the second Occasional and yes I am aware that the second is used for marriages and such as well. The thing is there seems to me to also be two sorts of auxiliary services. One sort is aimed at the people who I call the keenies when I am not doing thesis (before someone thinks its an abusive term, I acknowledge that I myself fall into that category) and the committed when doing the thesis. The sort of people who on a wet November day with a dreadful cold will still be there to open up the church and turn on the lights. They are the backbone of most congregations and they often appreciate extra time to think and develop their faith. The other sort is a service that is designed to appeal to people at the margins of the congregation. The aim being to draw them into a safe environment where they can get to know people and explore the faith before having to brave the main worship service. Guess what I haven't got names for them yet and this is before I ever get near the theory.

I am beginning to sort out the theory, beginning being the operative word and as next week I am supposed to be writing it, I am wondering if I am going to have to sort my way through Althusser and Lacan in order to create some sort of an understanding of what is happening in worship rather than go to the theorists on worship, well I suppose it is a good idea to quote your supervisor at some point in the service, I think I have a couple of relevant papers from the tradition and maybe I can blend in with it some of the ethnography of ritual. Hmm it really sounds bitty and disjointed and what I am beginning to focus on is the difference between "I-identity" and "We-identity", then there is the division between passive identity and active identity which works very tangentially to this. Whereas I suspect a lot of surface passivity in identity in main worship services, most of the congregation at least during worship seem quite happy to fulfil the slot provided for them. When it comes to these other services there seems to be a far closer active creation of the slot particularly in the Occassional services.

Week 37: Catchup week which means heavy writing

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	61,136
Words typed this week:	3579
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	3579
Days I managed to write this week:	4

This week has been catch-up week.  Last week I did not get a word written but I did do a lot of careful qualitative analysis. That can really only be written at the computer and I also needed to finish the detailed work. Well I did this week. It was not as interesting as I thought, but it gave me some results and I am on firmer ground. Something I guessed at in earlier writing has come to be on firmer ground. However this week I was writing properly again, well descriptive writing and I found that once I was not on the stuff that needs careful analysis my brain flows as it always has done. However the week was heavy and ended up bribing myself to finish the formal writing last night so as to have today fairly clear. 

I also saw my minister this week for a long chat, most of it irrelevant to thesis but am realising that the answer to putting in the theory into the description may be at least in draft form be done in the form of side notes like post it notes. Then I can work in more and more depth until it comes clear what is going on. This was her suggestion.

This week I have to write about services that are not the main worship service. There are two sorts the occasional, such as the Christmas Carol Service and the regular, in both congregations these were evening services which had a very different feel to the main morning ones.  So this week I better be reading my supervisors book. Well there is him and one or two Roman Catholic specialists and Roman Catholic sociologist of Religion are very different from Protestant ones. Where we see diversity and confusion they see unity and order. It really is quite interesting how a traditions culture affects those who study it, even in traditions which are not essentially part of the culture.

The thing is to find the connections that spin out from worship to wider sociological concerns. When I have them then I can write the theory section with relative ease.

Week 36: Not a word writ formally down

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	57,557
Words typed this week:	0
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	0
Days I managed to write this week:	2

Not much progress this week, actually there is two days, but there has been some serious analysis needing doing before I can write and I am afraid I have not been getting around to that, until today. The problem being that it is boring tedious routine stuff that always takes longer than you expect. Well it is more than that I had spent quite a bit of time thinking what I needed to do and drafting some of the words.

The thing is I have got onto the hymns, now in Reformed worship singing has been the most active (not necessarily most engaged) part of worship for the congregation, the rest of the time they are basically sitting quiet except for the Lord's prayer. Now I know you can be engaged quite potently with worship even when silent but your tend to be in what appears to be a passive role. The only time you actually seem to externally participate in worship as member of the congregation is when you sing hymns. Responses within the English Reformed tradition went out in seventeenth century and only started returning at the end of twentieth. They are still innovative and new as far as we are concerned just as much as guitars are.

As to taking communion regularly, well the normal view of congregations is proper preparation means in frequent communion, or really monthly is as frequently as most tolerate. John Calvin suggested that the least frequent acceptable was monthly until proper preparation could be made for the whole community to take it weekly. Unfortunately, as have all frequent communion Reformers since, he was overruled by the people (or more accurately the Burgher in his case) and had to do with quarterly, the frequency of Zwingli in Berne.

As to open prayer and such, that was discarded quite early with the view that the Holy Spirit really inspired the minister who had the time to spend on prayer and bible study that the normal church member did not. Not sure I agree with that one but that still seemed to be the view that developed.

So you have the hymns and the hymns are chosen in the first place by those leading worship. However I suspect that for a person to be comfy in a congregation they need to be singing words that fit with who they understand themselves to be. Obviously not every song, but the majority of songs and therefore the underlying tenor of the songs is going to be in tune with this.

Mind you as this takes such detailed analysis I am going to try writing about the sacraments next week and hopefully finish this analysis at the weekend.

July's Supervision - Another Chapter in Main Draft

Showroom Cinema from the station on my return to Sheffield

Somehow the way storm and light were playing over the Showroom seemed to me rather evocative of today hence this picture. Well the community chapter can now go into draft status which means I am free to get on with the one on worship. There are problems with it, and the major one is that I need to find a way of connecting description with theory. I have the theory, I have the description and I even have the theoretical understanding of what it going on in the description but I am not managing to get the final part down on the page. Some of this I know is due to scale, I sort of know how to use description to balance an argument in an article of 3,000 words, but when it comes to across a chapter of say 15000 words I am struggling, let alone across a thesis of 70-80,000 words.

I am beginning to have some idea of how to cord that might run usefully through the thesis and connect it, and it comes back to the tradition intriguingly and stray comments at the Exploring Reformed Spiritualities conference. David Cornick commented that the Reformed tradition was a very “we” tradition in passing. I happen to agree with him, at least with respect to the URC take on the Reformed tradition but something troubled me about his need to assert it.

Sitting back I was aware that I experience rather a lot of credulousness when I express this view in ecumenical setting. The normal response is the Reformed tradition is anything but a “we” tradition. So self perception and external perception differ. The answer, as my fellow “we”-Reformer will have guessed, is the group that normally is seen as Reformed and loudly proclaim themselves as that, often being very sure that they are the one true interpreter of the tradition. 

These often have a very evangelical and very “I” take on the Reformed tradition. Often this includes an emphasis on the conversion experience, personal morality rather than social and the individual interpreting the Bible in a personal and surface manner. They are loud, they are arrogant and they get up our noses more than any other sort of Christian as they hotly question our Reformed credentials. At times it is hardly surprising we want to return the compliment. However in actuality they get under our skin part because they are Reformed, in some sense we understand what they are saying in ways we do not understand what others are saying, your highly ritualistic Anglo-Catholic where everything is by the book seems to us ridiculous in a way these never do.

My conclusion is that we have to take seriously this “I”-Reformed Spirituality and see if we can actually work out why the “I” reading of the tradition is so very different from the “we” one. The other challenge is that it is too simple to see one congregation as “I” and one as “we” rather they are balancing the two strands which are actually very twisted together in English Reformed Dissenting tradition, there is nothing pure about us. Thus both congregations are finding different ways to understand who they are in relationship to the tradition and creating their own balance between the “I” and the “we”.

Apart from that I have largely dodged the showers and found that one of the shops on campus sold liquorice toffee, so bought a small amount. Next challenge is to get a rough draft of worship chapter and to read up on sociology of worship, now can I find my supervisors book?

Week 35: Making good progress during the week

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	57,557
Words typed this week:	3,732
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	3,732
Days I managed to write this week:	4

Yes there has been a big increase this week and yes it feels good. That is not to say it is all good, part of that increase was doing the final changes to what I hope is a main draft of my community chapter. There was something missing and I needed to get it in but I ran out of time and did not manage to find what to remove from the chapter to get it down to its proper size so it is still a thousand plus words too big, the proof editing added about half of those words as it became clear I had to explain something.

However there was also 2641 words written on the worship chapter and the words were flowing on that. This is partly because this is my third time through this part of my thesis and partly because I am on familiar ground in that I am discussing some pretty detailed discourse work along with some statistics. Its a style of analysis that comes almost naturally to me, while the more fuzzy aspect of ethnographic analysis I struggle with writing up. Don't get me wrong I enjoy ethnography very much indeed, I could not have done this thesis if I had not but I am also a trained quantitative researcher (albeit one who believes all research is basically discursive) and I keep asking myself about my evidence, can I really build what I am building on the data I have collected.  Are my representations of others accurate, so much easier when the exact words are in the public domain. In other words I have been analysing hymns again and thoroughly enjoying it.

The final thing is I have realised there is a specific way to describe the Reformed tradition that I can use that allows both my congregations to in their own local tradition be emphasising different parts of it. These parts largely do not tie in with the Congregational/Presbyterian divide so many are fond of.