A None Writing, Thesis Week

No picture this week, Sorry but I forgot to take them earlier and I have new glasses and am getting used to them at present. The actual progress on writing has been slow this week. Indeed I have probably spent about four hours in total working on it and the word count is zilch. That is because the actual work I have done is on reviewing the chapter on Flows rather than writing anything. It is a much clearer chapter than the one on Belonging was which has the advantage I can see a lot of the junk. The big challenge is to chop down the initial bits which are decent but long winded and get to the core of the chapter quicker.

That said I have not been doing quite a bit of thesis related work. This week the URC held a conference (that was their word for it, a consultation may have been better) on worship called Opening the Gates to Heaven. It was a very typical URC event with worship leaders of all colours there, including trainers, ministers, and lay preachers. Then there was me! The only one who would probably claim that her interest in worship was from the perspective of someone in the pew and not that of an organiser. This contrasts very starkly with the Society for the Study of Liturgy  where the dominant group were the critics of liturgy. Yes the normal Reformed bias also showed. If we get our theology right then our worship will follow. The problem I have is that I suspect that our more ceremonial traditions have it right in that it is "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi"or that as we pray, so we believe and so live (which is a rough translation). The other thing is that I see not the words per se as determining the belief but the way the person sees themselves through the words. In other words unlike many who use that phrase that think it is enough to get the words right, I actually think it is important to understand how people understand the words. Well that took up two days this week. The conference was very packed full with sessions. I think we got through seven papers and two group sessions plus about five or six worship sessions and two story sessions. That was all fitted in with sleeping and eating into less than thirty hours with sleep and meals but it was two and half hours drive both ways to Northampton.

I was already a day down this weekend, I had taken it earlier in the week but then spent it getting specs. Well I need to be out of the flat and that meant that I could not really work and I needed to do some preparation for the meeting. Not that I did what I should have done, the effort of last weekend left me ill focused. Then I also needed to prepare for my supervision this Tuesday. That actually gave a focus as I needed to review the flows chapter for the supervision. Not that there will be any lack of stuff to talk about. I have sent three chapters this month!