Ordination Trek
Two miles, coffee and fruit, then off to drop the dogs with their overnight sitters, then to Exeter for an ordination.
Month: June 2024
Preparations
Two miles (including a morning stop-off at the office, since I forgot to check the phone message machine on which we still rely), coffee, and will make a hot breakfast in a few minutes.
Yesterday we devoted much of our time to working toward making the spare rooms viable for visitors beginning next week: moving books hither and yon, taking boxes out for recycling, making sure that we have the right toys and food for the right visitors….
Variable Cloudiness
Two miles at a decent pace, fruit and coffee, shower, Morning Prayer, some work, a trip to Waitrose, lunch, some housework… and it’s Friday, why should I have to do more?
Lapse and Renewal
Didn’t do much writing yesterday, though I had plenty of other things to accomplish. Today I ran (15° and breezy and distinctly humid), coffee and fruit for breakfast, cleaned up, Morning Prayer, came in to town for my second cup at Throwing Buns, and hence to the library (cos it started a very fine rain while we were sat outdoors). I’ll try to extract another page or so today…
Different Day
Two hot miles, hot coffee, hot breakfast, hot shower, then to Morning Prayer (usual temperature), Wednesday Mass, and home (weary) for the afternoon. Rest, then back to the Parish Centre for marriage prep.
Pagecount
Two miles this morning, in the second consecutive day warm enough to run without my hoodie. I was making pretty good time till something in my right Achilles tendon tweaked, just a little, but I didn’t force the issue and limped, then walked plainly home. It hasn’t bothered me since, so I suppose I didn’t damage anything. Fruit and coffee, shower, Morning Prayer, then home for a second mug and to begin my working day.
Both yesterday and today — and after having spent more time reading than has been usual — I’ve found the magic aquifer from which issues fluent writing, and I’ve made a significant start (with momentum) for an overdue essay. Take increased reading (for stirring up ideas and remembering how people who write put sentences and paragraphs together), add some sermon composition (for practice in writing short, occasional prose pieces) and my typing fingers, my writing hands have limbered up and resumed the activity that once came so readily to them. If I can just preserve that impetus for another eight pages or so, I’ll be in great shape, and will be free to push on toward the second overdue essay I’m trying to clear this summer. If I can manage that, it’s clear sailing to start composing my book manuscript, the last book I plan on writing and the one I feel the need to get into print before I die or succumb to dotage.
But for the moment, even just my current good start thrills me and reminds me that there’s something worthwhile that I can contribute. It sparks joy, as I believe we’ve been taught to say.
Past John
At the end of this post, I’ll add the sermon I preached for a dear former student of mine’s First Mass, on St John’s Day — that’s the rationale for the title.
Otherwise, a pleasant enough start to the day: two miles in the warmest early-morning temperatures of the year, fruit and coffee, cleaning up, Morning Prayer, further coffee and a pain au raisin with Margaret at R&R, where several friends stopped by to chat. Did some shopping, came home to the ladies in time for lunch, and now settling down to do some actual scholarly reading and (heven permitting) writing (!). But first I will post the sermon in question.
Three Nativities
Got up, grudgingly, to run my miles and have a fruit and coffee breakfast. Said the Morning Office at home, fine-tuned today’s sermon a bit, cleaned up, and meandered down to St Helen’s for the first Mass in a couple of months, I think. After checking through the liturgical pattern at my home base (after serving for a couple of months, if not more, at the different St Nic’s and the very different St Michael and All Angels), I presided and preached, and came home to two fretful dogs. They were bereft, cos Margaret went to Oxford to Mary Mags this morning. All well.
(Oh, the three nativities are those of Jesus, Mary, and John the Baptist, the three births observed in our liturgical calendar. Otherwise we observe the saint’s entry into the Church Triumphant, or the translation of their relics, or another ritually significant date.)
Grinding Out
Two miles, coffee and (at home) Morning Prayer, and hard at work grinding and polishing tomorrow’s sermon. It’s raining, which threatens the Abingdon Passion Play, but there’s three hours till the first showing, and a long day ahead before the late show, for the sky and grounds to dry out.
Conflict
I’m a long-time fan of Kant’s The Conflict of the Faculties, which I’m now revisiting for an essay, and I find the standard English translation/edition extremely irritating. Mary Gregor translated it in 1979 in an adequate German/English version (I’d tweak it here or there; I’m particularly frustrated that Gregor renders ein Schriftgelehrt as ‘one versed in Scripture’, missing the Luther Bible’s use of the word for the scribes, Jesus’s antithetical interlocutors), but the typesetting and proofreading are lamentable. Worse still, it has been reprinted and also incorporated into the University of Cambridge Press volume Kant and Rational Religion, which appears to have OCR-ed the previous text and proofed the result carelessly, so that problems in the original are carried over and intensified in the reprints. I tweeted a couple of examples on the Former Bird site, and may move the tweet over to BlueSky too.)
Isn’t it time for a fresh translation? And if one must simply make the Gregor translation an immortal standard, might not a reputable press clean up the typos when they reprint it?
More Ten Commandments
Two miles, fruit and coffee, now it’s time for me to clean up and get ready for Morning Prayer; then time to work on Sunday’s sermon.
Since interest in right-wing US politicians are once again indulging their fixation on imposing their imagined Ten Commandments on schoolchildren — I mean, honestly — (no, ‘honesty’ has nothing to do with it) — I’ll just drop this link to my essay on the unabashed idolatry that constitutes a central element of US political life (especially, though not exclusively, among Republicans).
Memory Confirmed!
Two miles, fruit and coffee, clean-up and Morning Prayer, and public-facing coffee ministry at The Missing Bean as I work toward Sunday’s sermon.
In answer to yesterday’s question, two of my four correspondents remembered the incident — which I’m counting as sufficient evidence to assert it as truth. From now on, ‘caught between two thoughts’ is an documented phrase referring to a condition of inattention (whether general inattention or lack of attention to what runs out to be the most important ting). (Edit: Sad Correction. The un-search-able phrase was ‘caught him between two thoughts’; alas, ‘caught between two thoughts’ yields abundant results. I’ll just go sit in the corner and sulk.)