Week 52 and 53: Slow but steady progress

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	89,204
Words typed these weeks:	2802
Words lost these weeks:	0
Total increase:	2802
Days I managed to write this fortnight:	6

Yes I know I should have reported last week and didn't. Apologies, I thought there were about two hundred words more to add that needed adding on the Monday and then I did not get around to doing it and the rest of the week took over. In fact I still have those notes to add. Progress has been slow, getting time to work on it has been difficult but I think I have crossed the mid chapter crisis successfully. Indeed Friday when I only added about a thousand words was the day when I did a lot of thinking about how I structured the chapter and made quite a few adjustments to what I had already written. This means that in some ways I have a structure for the rest of the chapter that should make filling the gap rather easy. The trick was to change the structure of what I wrote last week so that the next section seemed to reflect it and create a path to work through. I think I have managed the change from some fairly technical scientific understanding into creating a space where I can explore that understanding

This coming week which is hectic work wise I have to write another 3,000 words to get to the end of the chapter. There is quite a bit that I can draw on to create these words I just have to be careful how I treat it. I am beginning to realise that the question my supervisor set me half way through my thesis is actually answered by it, until I got to reviewing the structure of this chapter I felt I had missed it, but actually in the last section of the last chapter it will be there. So hard work but in all truth the end at least as far as the argument goes is in sight.

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.