Slowly getting my focus back

This will be short but I have spent most of the weekend sorting out what needed to be done next and beginning to do it. I had been slowly loosing the focus over the weeks before as other demands encroached on my time. I am not clear next, this week has an elders and there is a communion next Sunday.

I have also been very tired this weekend, more than I have been recently. This may be good news as I had not been sleeping too well for the last couple of weeks due to the stress I felt under. This may mean that I have started to sense an easing in it. However I need more time on my thesis and I am finding it hard to find it. Every one is very ready for me to take time in theory but in practice the reality is different. I can take study days at work but I have to be able to complete my work and there is no let up in that.

So this weekend I was basically getting my head around the edits that needed doing to my introduction. They are interesting, not on the whole huge things but quite often requiring some reading and thinking about. I must admit I cut out one comment as it was just not worth the effort I would need to do to justify it. I thought when I put it in that it was accepted knowledge. After all most congregations I have ever been in a lot of the lay leadership has been in their sixties and seventies. It is a rare congregation where it is spread more widely although thinking on it Christ Church Parrswood did have quite a few who were younger though church secretary was Bernard and he was in his sixties. The church treasurer was two people in my time, one in his eighties  and one in his forties. I also know I am not alone in this knowledge, Rev Mike Jackson of Park URC Reading also commented on it when I was there. However there is no literature out there that says this is the case.

Anyway I have got the introduction to the introduction written, in the end I took the very straight forward approach of telling my examiners what this thesis was about. I have also done quite a bit on the vision process. Some tidying of the last section. So this week I really need to read enough of a couple more Congregational Studies books to make a complete literature review. I am trying to trace any thesis (masters or doctoral) that has been done within British Reformed or Non-Conformist Churches that is a study of congregation(s) and uses ethnographic method. So far I have found a geographer at Edinburgh University who has done some research on Free Church of Scotland that is Ethnographic (actually I may need to reference that work in a later chapter as well). I also have found a Presbyterian Lecturer in New Zealand who puts his interest as Congregational Studies and knows enough as to list the URC. The major problem is finding a forgotten thesis.

All but the abstract drafted but little actual progress

Alien from post it notes in window
of Computer Science at Birmingham

A bit later than usual, a mix of catching the earlier train home because I am not quite sure where to find a place to write with the building work at New Street and needing to do something when I go in.

The last two weeks on my blog I have failed to write up about thesis work. That was not because I was not doing some, when I got the chance I did. It was that rather the work has been unfocused and I know when I am unfocused that I am usually not producing what I need to produce. Now do not get me wrong, my supervisor actually felt what I wrote was not bad, it just was not what I should have been writing. Indeed he felt that I probably should include the central bit of my draft conclusion in another chapter. It just was not conclusion. He has now told me what to put in a conclusion, not what are my findings but what are the tasks I need to do.

At May’s supervision my challenge for the month was to get the methodology into shape and to get to second draft the introduction and conclusion. I think I did the methodology but the introduction and conclusion were still only in first draft. This has added a month onto my time it will take to finish my thesis.

However there was good reason why I was unfocused, and that was that I was distracted. In April I was so absorbed in my thesis I felt as if I was never without working on it in the back of my brain, May I got by because there were plenty of bank holidays and those allowed me to spend enough time on my thesis for it to absorb me. However June has been a lesson in being over committed. What really happened if I am honest is I did not let go of my last chapter and work out what I had to write for the conclusion.  Therefore because I was not focused on what I needed to write for my conclusion I just continued to writing the last chapter.

I find that I can not just sit down and start writing, I need to spend a while mulling the ideas around, and generally not producing very much. After a while I seem to enter into the writing and then I find that I can actually produce good work pretty quickly. I need to think through what I am writing and if I do not then I do not produce what is required. This last month I tried to do without that time and I FAILED to produce so basically I am back where I was at the start of June with what I need to do.

The good news is that we worked out a submission date for my thesis. I can therefore start to make plans around how things fit together. I may even book holiday for while it is being read by my examiners. Also my supervisor does not expect substantive revisions of my thesis. It really is about getting thing sorted. The one thing that must not be allowed to happen is for me to enter a state where I am endlessly writing up. That will not do me or anyone else any good.

So despite Birmingham being dry and even having time to sit in the sun, it was my toughest supervision to date.

Methodology Finally Redrafted Despite a Wedding

The last glass of champagne at 

the wedding

The last champaign glass left on the table once all the other stuff had been cleared from the after wedding celebration. No it was not mine. It was a church member's daughter. I was not even going to go until a week ago, then I realised that for the sound desk to play background music I probably needed to be there. I then discovered they were bringing a CD.This is problematic, despite the fact my church is old fashioned, we can really only play sound from things with a head phone socket! CDs do not have head phone sockets. We are not too fussed on the sort of socket although it is set for 3.5mm. It also came apparent to me that the church crew were chronically understaffed: one able bodied, one over eighty who is slowing down and another with only one leg. For evacuation in cases of fire you need three door stewards! Actually I cared about the person getting married and the crew to know that I should do something about it. The only problem was that I was supposed to be writing thesis. Indeed I was drawn in four directions as there an Anti-Facist demonstration and also a church plant sale. However those were not serious contenders with thesis. I know where at present my priorities lie but the wedding....

Anyway I did both the rehearsal on Friday evening and the Wedding yesterday which included clearing up afterwards I actually had about four hours in total for study over Friday and Saturday. There was no point in me trying to work immediately on coming in from wedding as I was just overloaded and tired. Even after a couple of hours in bed and some proper food I was still decidedly distracted indeed I felt pretty migrainy. So I decided that I had to say I was not making publicity meeting at church today. Sent the email, only to find it was cancelled. Nice of people to tell me.

So that meant that I would have the full day working on thesis and what was even better my brain was clearing and I was at last able to make some sort of sense of the section on writing as analysis. Having got that sorted, I was able to quite quickly deal with ethics, reflexivity and review. The result is the Methodology at just over 10K words (a drop from 19K) has gone off to my supervisor.

A Wet May Supervision

A Wet View from the Train

I am sitting in the new part of Birmingham New Street Station having just got myself a bottle of water and packet of crisps from Costa. The changes had had me confused all day. This morning I could not even find WH Smiths but the women’s loos were free. The other thing was Waterstones was still open at the University. So I bought a notebook there rather than at WH Smiths.

For once the weather has been wet. Fortunately I walked to Sheffield Station during a let up in the showers and the distance in Birmingham is not far. Just from the University Station to the Arts Building. I know Birmingham Department of Philosophy, Theology and Religion is not in the Arts Building but my supervisors office is and as a result I have not been there since it moved to the Edgebaston Campus.

Well I think I now have all my substantive chapters in second draft. My supervisor actually said he was pleased with the way my thesis was shaping up. However it is clear that I need to work harder at engaging with the literature than I am. I think however some of that is clear because I have not written my introduction and conclusion. Ruth and James I think that means I will be sending you three chapters soon, plus two bits from another chapter which are major reworkings but only of those section.

Equally I am going to have to trace one or two of the books that are Roman Catholic Congregational Studies. I just need to be able to check out their take on tradition. If it is as I expect, then they are actually talking about something different when it comes to tradition than I am in the Reformed sense. What becomes interesting is if that, I have my conclusion, albeit very much in the verbal form at present. I may well need to do a writing brainstorm in order to get it down but it is there. However it does mean my thesis is Foucauldian, in that he is the main thinker that I have interacted with. I am not a disciple, but his ideas do become useful and intriguingly I must admit I have a Foucauldian attitude to Foucault and my discourse with him is pretty wide ranging and eclectic. However where I see Foucault as providing an over arching technology for knowledge systems, I tend instead to see what I am providing is the ability to generate tools that can be useful in the analysis of such systems.

Next month’s challenges is to redraft the introduction, cut by over 50% the methodology and draft the conclusion. That should keep me busy. I may even need to avail myself of the offer of extra time for thesis from work, the only problem is that I am busy, busy at work and finding it difficult to fit things in at present. There also is more I need to do at home.

All Substantive Chapters in Second Draft

Print out of Research Methodology with notebook used for
keeping track of editing process

Well this weekend is the first milestone in the finishing straight, in that I have sent my supervisor copies of what I hope are second drafts of all substantive chapter with the sending in of my worship chapter yet again. I think this time it will do in that I have as in my community and location chapter brought the theory into much closer contact with the actual description. This tends to make me a much clearer my theoretical thinking. It does however mean that any pretence of my PhD having a literature review has gone.

I suppose I should say that there are reasons for this and none of them is a unwillingness to do literature review, I have tried first to do a full one and then when clear that would not work to do three smaller ones. There are two major reasons for using this approach.

Firstly there is not a cohesive literature on which to draw. I can think of at least four different literatures I have drawn upon. Firstly the small set of writers who actually work in Congregational Studies when appropriate, then wider group of social anthropologists and ethnographers, then some social theorist, then wider areas such as social geographers, theorists of cultural identity and theory of worship and finally add in a wide variety of books that have an origin within the Reformed Tradition and then add some mathematical text books. My reading is extensive, wide ranging but not cohesive.

Secondly I use literature in a very different way to how it is used in most literature reviews.  In most literature reviews it is used to set up the question, and to critically review others solutions. The question found me long before I had read any literature and as far as I can tell I am working in an area very few have bothered to study. I can think of two other attempts in existence: one is twenty years old and the other is much more internally focussed than I am. For me the prime point of literature is as thinking tools. I tend never to ascribe whole heartedly to a view of a thinker but I am interested in the way I can use their ideas to further understand the situation. Therefore bringing them into close contact with the actual description makes sense. There is perhaps a mini-literature review in the introduction but the majority of my literature is combined in with the text.

I have two tasks going on at present. On the one hand and what I concentrated on today was starting to cut my methodology chapter by 50%. It stands at around 19,000 words, it has a max of 10,000 and I need to add quite a bit about writing as analysis. There are some easy bits to cut. I did nowhere near the amount of time I could have done on the auto-ethnography of the tradition. As a result I think I can largely cut that section. Equally quite a bit of my introductory part is pure indulgence and needs to go. I can cut back quite a bit of my description of ethnography as a tradition, it looks like my examiners will both be familiar with it. The other task is to read through all six substantive chapters and write brief overviews of what is in each. I think there is a development through them but until I actually do that reading I do not know.

Well I think Worship Chapter may at last coming together

coffee pot

This week I have been working on the draft of the chapter on Worship. This has been one of the difficult chapters to get into focus. It was already in second draft but there was a feeling of it being unsatisfactory and the style of my writing has changed in my data chapters where I discuss the congregations since I put it into draft. I therefore have pulled it out.

First challenge was to pull it to pieces and reshape around the narrative of a single event in this case a quite remarkable baptism service that happened towards the end of my time at my second placement. This balances the community chapter which centres around a remarkable church meeting that happened at my first congregation. The initial data chapter uses scenes from both congregations.

However when I use a single narrative the structure of the chapter changes. For instance in the original I had ministers role and congregations role in creating the worship. Now I have the role of hymns and the other parts of the service and in both cases I look at the ways tradition, congregation and minister combine to create the final act of worship. It is quite something to explore the dynamics of worship creation within the Reformed tradition. It is so different from those in others where there is a Rite to followed. For us the rite has become a grammar rather than a play. It tells you the way things fit together but does not determine what is actually said.  What is said is rather a matter of prayer, the character of the congregation, the gospel and the tradition. In worship the tradition pulls against the individuality of the community.

Oh and the coffee pot, well that is my mid way through a writing session treat at them moment. It will change with time, in January I was not drinking coffee at all, then I started making myself a single cup of Millicano to keep me awake when I was loosing concentration. However as I am coming to this stage I am finding that actually spending the ten to twenty minutes that it takes to make coffee this way is a good break. It is as much about the ritual as it is about the coffee. It is one pot a day otherwise its tea or water.

Another Chapter in Second Draft off to my Supervisor

Cherry Blossom

This weekend has been a bank holiday, so of course I stuck the extra day into my writing schedule. The weather has been glorious and with the sunshine the cherry blossom is out in profusion.  Also the Peregrines eggs have hatched in Sheffield and between writing I have watched bits of that. The other advantage of this day was that it meant that I did not feel badly going out for dinner yesterday as I still had today to write. It is funny how writing grows to fill the time you have for it! I was really getting through it on Friday, it slowed on Saturday and today if anything has been slower.

Actually this chapter has been interesting to write. There were three different threads that I have been interweaving in the chapter. On the one level there was the story of a particular Church meeting; the next one that I had to tackle was the actual ways identity was created within the congregation. I think I mainly kept that in but I might have missed something on welcome which might need to go into the last section. There is space for it and yes I know that putting welcome at the end is not quite the right place for it. The final bit was I had to weave together the argument that congregation as community involved both institutional, discursive and emotional systems. Just to make this interesting also to include the way that the whole situation interacts with the tradition so I suppose I am wrong and it is four threads I am plaiting with.

I was struggling with writing this morning, another blog posted on the URC site a link to his latest blog in which he asked whether the URC was depressed.  An interesting question, so many got upset about the analogy and felt it was insulting to mental illness. Now I am quite open about the fact I have (had) depression at a mild to moderate level. I also had the smiling sort. I am not insulted, basically because fairly early on in the journey I had to think what I was experiencing in my local congregation.  The best explanation I can think of is that the communal discourse reflected very strongly many aspects depressive thinking. Now I know depressive thinking is odd, it can be switched on and off and changing mood does seem to do that. However it is also true that changing the thinking can change the mood. That is how CBT works. I have discussed this with a variety of people this and nearly always they see what I am getting at, indeed on at least one occasion I someone asking precisely about this.

The problem however was I was writing the emotional part of the chapter and of course the emotional part of the chapter connects with the blog post. So I was jumping between the two and not really making much sense of either. In the end I had to be disciplined over Facebook and just concentrate on writing.

There is one problem I have not got the right title for the chapter yet. Maybe my supervisor will suggest it!