AKMA’s Random Thoughts

More rain, less running. Coffee, fruit, and in a while I’ll dress and go in for Morning Prayer.

No run this morning — we’ve had on-and-off rain all night, so I opted not to risk it. Morning Prayer, public office hours at R&R, coffee, a croissant, and parish [digital] paperwork.

Very good run this morning, not nearly a ‘best’ but a ‘very-goodst’. Coffee, fruit, shower, Remembrance Sunday service, home, finish tonight’s homily, work on The Essay, go to church, home for dinner.

I had a bit of a lie-in this morning, took a stroll instead of running, hot breakfast, reading (finished Mark Goodacre’s John: The Fourth Synoptic Gospel about which more another time), cleaned up, did some grocery shopping, worked on both The Essay and tomorrow evening’s homily.

This morning’s run went agreeably enough, and would have been an autumn best apart from the two excellent days earlier this week. As a result, my five-day rolling average has dropped precipitously, making today’s run just a bit above average (which average itself is almost a half minute faster than it had been before this week).

Flora and Minke were successfully groomed. Margaret and our visitor Sam had good, productive days in Oxford. Sam’s was complicated by, first, having been unable to open the door of our guest bedroom (the snib wouldn’t budge, though eventually we disassembled the lock and worked the door outward) and second, by having been asked on a few hours’ notice to present a paper of his for the Ethics seminar.

I was not as productive, alas; I got some odds and ends done, some parish responsibilities, but no progress on The Essay, which my editor has asked that I finish by the end of the year. That’s a reasonable — nay, generous — deadline, though the intervening SBL meeting and Advent and Christmas will consume a lot of the time between now and then. I will be very glad to have wrapped that one up.

Coffee, fruit, shower, dressed; I’ll go to Morning Prayer, and later in the afternoon to the New Testament seminar, and in between will try to squeeze out a few words toward finishing The Essay.

New summer-autumn personal best time this morning, shaving a few seconds off Tuesday’s time. Coffee, fruit, I’ll clean up and dress and go to Morning Prayer — then a day of work mostly at home, as the ladies are going in for grooming later. So: homily, maybe some work on The Essay, and dog attention.

Yesterday, as I said, was Margaret’s birthday — and she got an impressive present from American voters. Thank you all very much.

We had dinner at Dorindos last night, and it was so good — we must go more often. I ate a giant burrito (after a delicious tortilla chips and guacamole starter) and helped finish some of the non-tomato parts of Margaret’s dinner; she had gluten-free vegetarian fajitas, then somehow found room for crème brulée for pudding.

And the election results provided so much win for the sorts of cause we care about. We’re ambivalent about voting (we see powerful theological arguments against exercising civic authority), but in this crisis, the peaceful path of submitting ballots makes more sense to us than does refusing to challenge fascist authoritarianism in the simplest, most direct way. So cheers to Mamdani, Sherrill, Spanberger, Sheffield, Californians, Hashmi, Johnson and Hubbard, and indeed to the whole electorate for a clean election (and its outcome).

My morning run today was almost a full minute slower than yesterday’s, possibly because I was carrying around an extra burrito’s worth of weight, or because my running shoes need replacing, or because my legs were resentful after yesterday’s personal (post-August) best. Then coffee and hot breakfast, clean-up and dress, Morning Prayer, home for another cup, back to the Cooperative for some miscellaneous groceries, Chapter Meeting, back to the Cooperative for something Margaret had forgotten to request, then home to spend the afternoon with the ladies.

Tonight Sam is staying here, then… Thursday.

This morning marks my sweetheart’s birthday, on which we might (one imagines) devise some indulgence to celebrate; but this year she has had the opportunity to devote more time to her teaching, and today her Moral Theology class meets, so we will wait till the evening to meet at a local Mexican restaurant (actually a good menu — we’ve been before, and it’s not just British localised Mexican-lite) with Abingdon friends.
She’s a remarkable teacher, deeply dedicated to painstakingly detailed preparation, and constantly strategising to engage students with a view toward their deepening their appreciation of the weighty ethical matters that will certainly bear on their ministry (and negotiating the tricky technological and administrative currents of part-time teaching in the twenty-first century). I do love and cherish her, and I think of her every time I meet with pre-wedding couples or lead them through their marriage vows.

The day began, though, with an excellent morning run, a new post-holiday personal best. It felt good all the way through, reminding me of the late Pirates’ announcer Bob Prince whose catchphrase after every victorious game, no matter how precarious, was ‘We had ’em all the way!’ Coffee and fruit, pleasant shower, Morning Prayer, stop back at home to help Margaret with the printer and the catch on the zipper of her boot, public office hours at R&R, and eventually home to finish my Ministry Development Report.

My morning miles went by in a very good average time this morning, though I must admit that external circumstances ‘incented’ [ugh] or ‘incentivised’ [only marginally better] me to keep the pace moving along: as I neared the end of my first mile, it began to rain, leaving me almost exactly equidistant between either route home. Home at last, I had my coffee and fruit, worked on my presentation for the Preaching Matthew’s Gospel session for College of Preachers, cleaned up and dressed, Morning Prayer, Hustled home to join the Zoom channel, discovered that I hadn’t used Zoom since the logic board replacement so that I needed to re-download and install it, got online, and had a jolly time talking with (mostly talking to) the assembled preachers. I’d rather do it in person, but I’m sure we drew more people than could have motored to wherever Preaches GHQ would be located.

After lunch I worked on answering emails and so on, then we had a video visit with Is and Thomas (serious discussion of Pokemon); I dined with my child bride, and held a wedding consultation at the Parish Centre. And so to bed.

Midnight has come and the great Christ Church bell
And many a lesser bell sound through the room;
And it is All Souls’ Night….

…
Because I have a marvellous thing to say,
A certain marvellous thing
None but the living mock,
Though not for sober ear;
It may be all that hear
Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.…

…
Such thought—such thought have I that hold it tight
Till meditation master all its parts,
Nothing can stay my glance
Until that glance run in the world’s despite
To where the damned have howled away their hearts,
And where the blessed dance…

— William Butler Yeats, ‘All Souls Night’