Month: October 2025

I was wrong about a lot of how yesterday would go, so I’m trying again today. I began with a walking run, as it were, to get my activity and mileage in without timing. Coffee and fruit, correspondence with one of my wonderful Orielenses who had questions about Daniel Boyarin, cleaned up, Morning Prayer and checked for phone messages (the church office has legacy answering machine that evidently requires checking in person), public office hours at R&R, work on All Souls Day homily, Monday’s ‘Preaching Matthew’ event for the College of Preachers, and if everything is going smoothly only then tackling the Culpably Overdue Essay. It’s still not yet November, so….

Two miles, an average time (on the slow side for average, but in bounds), coffee, fruit, kiss Margaret goodbye (she has a long day teaching at St Stephen’s House and attending Oxford’s Ethics seminar), clean up and dress, Morning Prayer, then I’m staffing the home front as the ladies will go (and return) for their grooming.Hoping to square the BCP section and to make a dent in the Bible section.

You might say, ‘But AKMA, you had a lie-in so you didn’t even begin your day with your two-mile run! What do you mean, “busy day”?’ And I take your point, it would have been even busier if I’d run. But I had Morning Prayer at 9, Communion at 10:30, and Staff Meeting at 11:30; and I’ll have two marriage consultations this evening. So it’s busy enough for me.

On the unalloyedly positive side: I can see the end of my Painfully Overdue Essay on the horizon. I have one more research-oriented section to write out, then a long-ish ‘consequences’ section, then the conclusion; neither of the two latter sections demand copious research and references, so once I finish the summary of the English Bible between the Reformation and the 19th century, I’m pretty much home free. And no, I will not accept an invitation to write this or that for you, at least not until I write out the book that’s been haunting my more occasional pieces for the last two (or more) decades. After that, I will research and write whatever catches my interest. For now, though, it’s Overdue Essay, then hermeneutics book, and only then: freedom.

Another average morning run, cup of coffee, fruit, showered, dressed, Morning Prayer, coffee and toast, email, leave for bus to the semi-rural pub where the Bishop will lunch with the deanery clergy; then home to work on tomorrow’s homily.

Got up, ran a very average two miles, coffee and fruit, showered, dressed, then public office hours at R&R with Margaret. I’ve been head down on the Last Essay, making incremental progress, with brief asides for things such as the homily for Wednesday’s Communion service and finding the source for a quotation Margaret found in the Anglican Communion Office website. I’m pretty all-in for the Church of England, but there are a number of areas where knocking a few heads together could produce simpler, more accessible, more sensible information design and usability (and we won’t even start on theology and liturgy [Common Worship web pages, I’m not looking at you cos I can’t find you], and especially don’t mention whatever happened to the Bible in the Life of the Church project [endorsement strapline: ‘The Bible in the Life of the Church Project is earth-shaking’, my emphasis]?).

But on the whole a pretty good day. Some progress, and I eventually did wrestle the source out of the Anglican Communion Office site.

I have two oddly-timed services today, the 10:30 Sung Eucharist and then the 5:30 Wholeness and Healing service; the ‘oddly’ comes in because we have a Faith Forum after the 10:30 with light lunch and a talk (Sr Lizzie Ruth from the Community of St Mary the Virgin at Wantage, on lectio divina), so there’s only a three-hour gap between getting home from church in the morning and leaving to prepare for the W&H service.

So I ran another good two miles’ time, had coffee and fruit, showered, dressed, printed the Collect and Preface for my plastic-bound Ordo, found the attendance record for the week’s Morning Prayer (which I always enter on Sundays because it doesn’t get done during the week), entered the record for other services I knew about, led the Mass, met and greeted for a short while, drifted to Faith Forum, listened to Sr Lizzie Ruth, scarpered home with Margaret for the break between services, and will in a little while wander over to church again. It’s very far from as busy a Sunday as plenty of clergy (I know I used to have three services more or less regularly in one parish, and clergy with multiple churches in their solo benefice must be worn to a ravelling), but I’ll be tired and happy to return home, dine, and unwind.

In my work on the Book of Common Prayer, I ran into a quotation that appears in many books and essays on the history of the BCP, but which is rarely cited as an absolute (as it were) source. Since it’s a matter of public record from the 17th century, I trust that it’s in the public domain. It can be viewed in its typeset and (what looks like) microfilmed glory at the Internet Archive. But since that’s not easily searchable and the OCR is unreliable (in some cases nonexistent), I’m putting a plain text/HTML version here. below the fold, so that someone who searches for the quotation may more easily find the source and context. For reasons of searching, I’ve even substituted plain ‘s’es for long-s-es, though it causes me physical pain to pass by a chance to use them. At least there aren’t any ragged ‘r’s. On the other hand, I have not modernised the spelling.
Continue reading “The Chester Petition”

I’ve gotten to the part of my essay where I discuss the two magnetic poles of early Anglican biblical interpretation: the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. I’m trying to keep the essay under control, so I won’t have space to go into great detail and cover everything, but it’s fun and satisfying to dig in to this section and to crawl closer to wrapping up the essay.

My morning run hit another average time in this chilly weather. Came home for a hot breakfast, deal with email, read a bit (so much to learn, always, and such an indulgence to learn from it), write a bit, watch another swage of Karen Pirie, and dine on Margaret’s exquisite cuisine.

Just a bookmark to remind me where to find the Historical Problem Space Framework for Game Analysis and Design, a way of thinking through game design with respect to history-like digital games.

A neighbour apparently observed me at the end of my morning run, then later greeted me on my way to church saying, ‘This morning you were running like Usain Bolt!’ Aye, maybe, if he had taken up smoking heavily and was recovering from muscle strains in both legs.

It was one of my better times since August, better than average, and without straining for speed. I had slept later than usual, so I swilled my coffee down in haste, grabbed some fruit, showered, Morning Prayer (and checked for messages, my Friday task) before coming home for another cup and toast.

Now I’m resuming work on my last essay, and will head to Oxford this afternoon for Mark Edwards’s talk on the people ‘who say that they are Jews and are not’, a topic that has always niggled at me, so having a scholar as outstanding as Mark tackle the phrase should make for a provocative afternoon.

At long last, we have a Team Rector, one who (conveniently) already knows her way around the parish. Although the rectory isn’t quite ready, so that she won’t be moving in just yet, she’s been instituted, inducted, and installed into the real, actual and corporeal possession of the parish churches of Abingdon St. Helen, Abingdon St. Michael & All Angels, and Abingdon St. Nicolas with all the rights and responsibilities belonging to them. God save the King, &c.

This morning dawned lovely and light and chilly, and I ran an exactly average two miles. Then I made coffee and a hot breakfast, showered and dressed, Morning Prayer, public office hours at R&R, and will be off to the weekly staff meeting in a few minutes. It’s still clear (though we’re warned of rain in the evening); nobody is tearing down 10 Downing Street, or assigning the Royal Air Force to bomb vessels in international waters or the British Army to shoot down civilians here at home; and there will be a steady hand at the parish rudder. ’Twould be pleasant if we were fully staffed, but in this day and age I take my blessings where I can.

This evening, the Parish of Abingdon-on-Thames will install its first new rector in about twenty years, the Revd Dr Jennifer Brown. I’ll be there in the background, probably not doing anything important, but supporting the goings-on as Mother Jen’s associate, and still the only other cleric licensed to the parish. I think my interval as the ranking, if not the sole, licensed priest has been conducted with restraint and gentleness. No vulgar-grandiloquent press conferences, no destruction of parish property to make room for pet projects (although really, there ought to be an office for the Associate), no unspeakable animated videos. And as of this evening, I relinquish even the tenuous claim on authority that the days since Fr Paul’s retirement have dropped in my lap.

To prepare for the excitement, I took my usual morning run (not raining today) at a slowish average pace. Then coffee, fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, and home again for coffee and toast. Might indulge in another cup of coffee; this second cup went by very rapidly.

While I was at church, I ran into one of our churchwardens with a priest from Christ Church who was scoping out churches for possible inclusion in the pilgrimage route focusing on the Shrine of St Frideswide. He alluded to the possibility of a shrine of St Æthelwold (which caught my attention, since St Ethelwold’s House draws on the saint’s identity and mission, but without a shrine or veneration. Maybe we could develop a shrine to complement the ministry of St Ethelwold’s House….

Grey, rainy day here at Differential Hermeneutics Central. I didn’t run in the chilly rain, so I began my day with a mug of coffee and fruit, then trundled in to Morning Prayer, then home for a second cup and some toast, and to see Margaret off to her travel to Nottingham to lead a session at the branch office of St Mellitus College tomorrow. Meanwhile I’ll keep busy with digital (mostly) paperwork and care for the ladies here. All told, I’m anticipating a quiet day at Enock House.

Oh, by the way: the weekend’s videos from the President of the US make clear the radical difference between him and every other one of his predecessors. He redefines the notion of ‘unfit for office’; as someone remarked on social media, if a shop clerk at Aldi’s had posted an animated video of themself dumping excrement on Aldi’s customers, they would no longer be ‘a shop clerk at Aldi’s’. One can only hope that the monumental scale of the ‘No Kings’ (no shade to HM the King, though I might be persuaded to sympathise with a ‘One Fewer Prince’ lobby) foreshadows a similar turn out at midterm elections, should the current occupant of the White House not try to suppress them. A few impeachments, a few expulsions should clarify the minds of his strategic supporters.

Today was a three-service-special: Sun g Mass at St Michael’s, Baptism in the afternoon at St Helen’s, and back to St Helen’s for Evensong. So I prepared for the day with a slow but reasonable two-mile run, coffee, fruit, shower, and off we go, first to St Mike’s. All went well, I strolled home and rested till about 2:30 when I headed off to St Helen’s. We had a lovely baptism (one parent, two young ’uns), picked up some groceries, hopped home for forty-five minutes or so, then back to St Helen’s for Evensong, which — after I announced the wrong Office Hymn (don’t know where I got that number). Now we’re watching Only Connect, and shortly will turn in.

Today feels good. I had a wee lie-in (went to bed late from watching the most recent series of The Bear and then trying to fix the display numbers on Margaret’s iPhone) (we both strongly dislike Liquid Glass), so I got plenty of sleep but a late start. On my run, my legs felt tight rather than elastic, so I didn’t press them; and my breathing felt shallow and laboured, so I took deep breaths and then picked up the pace a little since I typically slow down when I turn my attention to breathing. I got him figuring that I’d gone another slower time, as yesterday. But, no! It was another run at just about the pre-tax average, so things are settling back to usual. I feel fine; even my bruised arm doesn’t hurt much any more.

Then Margaret and I listened first to the ‘Take On Me’ episode of Song Exploder, then followed up with James Acaster’s appreciation of OutKast’s ‘Hey Ya!’. I have never been an intense fan of ‘Take On Me’, but it heightened my appreciation of the track as intricate pop music; and the hook has embedded itself in my aural consciousness as it ought (and I’ve come to respect the conjunction of the bridge with the song that surrounds it). I do like ‘Hey Ya!’, and James Acaster’s part in the podcast came mostly in enhancing my appreciation of him — but he called our attention to the fact (which he, a drummer, noticed right away) that OutKast drops from 4/4 to 2/4 at intervals during the song (Margaret and I argued about when, till we noticed that he does it often, including both times to which we were pointing).

Had a FaceTime chat with Josiah, Thomas, and Lydia this afternoon, where we learned about Grogu and his magic storage device, and the giraffe at the Indianapolis Zoo that apparently stuck its head into a tree but was not eating. And the very exciting orchard they visited with a long slide. Life is exhilarating for Harris-Adams in Indianapolis.

My morning run — it’s been a while since I could say that! — came in at a slower-than-average time, though as a progression from two walks sandwiched around a no-go day, it’s easily understood and welcome as a step toward my regular exercise regimen. Put out the bins, have a cup of coffee, fruit, clean up, and go to Morning Prayer. I may have public office hours, or may come back home before I catch the bus into Oxford for the New Testament Seminar (this week, David Downs’s paper on plural authorial voice in 1 Clement [so-called]). So back to a very ordinary Friday, whew.

Woke up this morning after a long night’s sleep (for me) and took the sensible step of walking my two miles (with intermittent jogs) before I returned home in time to bid Margaret farewell as she hurried to an early bus to get to her teaching at St Stephen’s House. Coffee, fruit, cleaning up, heading in to Morning Prayer (surprising Gwen, who had envisioned me in my bed of illness and suffering for a much longer interval), and (having discovered a problem before my shower) I arranged to deliver a power adapter and charging cable to Christ Church before a colleague ran out of battery power. Turned right around and came back to Abingdon, where I rested gently and awaited the return of the conquering heroic lecturer.

Margaret asked me how I felt, and it actually took me a second or two to realise that yesterday I had felt like death warmed over at this time. I was amazed to notice that, bruised left shoulder apart, I actually felt very fine, very fine indeed. Well done, vaccinations, and well done, immune system.

Spent most of the day lying down, sometimes dozing, feeling weak, hot spells, a couple spells of rigors, chills.

I slept poorly last night, as the swelling in my shoulders from my multi-vax day kicked in nastily, and — embarrassingly — I forgot that I had the cotton balls taped to my arms, so that not only was I lying on one or the other sore shoulder, but the cotton balls were intensifying the pressure on them. Rookie mistake, made as I advance to retirement. Under the circumstances, I opted not to try for a full-on run this morning, but made my two miles a walk-run, and that worked well. Coffee, fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, off right away to Fr Keith to bring him the sacrament, home for the day. My shoulder has ached grimly, and as the day went on I had chills for hours. I’m still 100% pro-vax, but at my advanced age I need some time to recuperate.