Ruminations about hermeneutics, theology, theory, politics, ecclesiastical life… and exercise.
I noticed that someone arrived at my ‘What’s So Hard About Exegesis?’ post last week, and as I thought about the topic and my very wordy post, it occurred to me that a shorter answer to the question might be ‘Students come to exegesis want to know “how” in terms of method, whereas the crucial ‘how’ is a matter of manner — not ‘Step One, Step Two, Step Three’ but ‘In what sort of spirit, what frame of mind, should one undertake exegesis?’.
My morning run was unpleasant (I mean, ‘more than usual’), feeling sluggish with hard breathing. Still, the pace was in keeping with my late-2025 plateau. I had worked up to a slightly faster pace in late October/early November, but this is roughly as good as my pace has been all along. So that’s sorted, after Christmas holidays, ankle injury, and Chicago wedding.
Then home for coffee and fruit, shower, and Morning Prayer. Tonight’s the Theology Dinner at Oriel; then. tomorrow night is the observance of Oriel’s 700th anniversary at St Paul’s (I’ll be seated, perhaps processing?, with Oriel clergy, but they have wisely prevented me from saying anything. Then Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, at which I had thought I was timetabled to preach, but last night the Rector emailed me to note that I was just there to assist, not to preach, so I have a significant slice of work off my desk. Then Friday I begin my four weeks of tutoring first-years, which makes a month’s uptick in my workload, but that’ll be fine.
Last night we ran across a review of a collection of essays to which Margaret made a contribution, which review expressed a very high regard for her essay in the volume. The book’s title is The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Animal Ethics; her essay is ‘The Difference Bodily Resurrection Makes: Caring for Animals While Hoping for Heaven’.
The book reviewer, Charles Taliaferro (in Religious Studies Review 47, 2021), says ‘The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Animal Ethics with 35 original chapters and a masterful introduction is a terrific contribution to a vital dimension of religious and environmental ethics’, so you know the whole volume warrants attention. But he reserves particular praise for Margaret’s chapter:
The last chapter in the book, “The Difference Bodily Resurrection Makes” by Margaret Adams [sic] is brilliant, and a great essay to end the book. If you have ever wondered if dogs will go to heaven, this chapter is for you. I will not do a spoiler; you will simply need to buy the book. But I will add that this chapter admirably links theology, philosophy, and religion to practical ethical practices here and now.
Margaret wouldn’t want me to call attention to it on the socials, but I reckon there are few enough people visiting this joint that I can brag about her here.
I had another short night last night, so after the 8:00 I’ll hope to take a supplementary nap. I’d been awake a good while before running time this morning; the weather report solemnly assured me that some precipitation would be falling, but I saw only an isolated snowflake or two. The 2° temperature accompanied by a gusty breeze chilled me, but not as harshly as I initially feared. My pace didn’t equal yesterday’s, but that still came in more than a minute faster than last Sunday.
Run, coffee and fruit, Morning Prayer, shower, early Mass, then home to rest — to sleep, perchance to dream. I’d benefit from a recharge.
[Early Mass went fine. Homily below. I’ve gotten an hour of nap already, and am aiming for more this afternoon.]
Continue reading “Early Start Early Nap”
An interrupted night of sleep, but it all added up to a good duration. As a result, though, I got a late start and felt distinctly as though I was running through gelatine. As yet another example of the unpredictable relation between what I perceive (on one hand) and… errhh… reality (on the other), I ran to my best pace of the year. So that’s a good thing.
We had a merry lunchtime birthday party, after which we returned and had an afternoon rest; then I banged together a homily for the 8:00, and shortly we will settle down to watch crime drama for the evening. Another thrill-packed day chez Akma.
I got a good night’s sleep last night — 7 hours, much better than my recent nights — and was moving slowly when I did wake up, so that I’m only now ready to run, at a time when I’m usually cooling down and making coffee. I’ll take a day off, shift to the coffee and fruit just now, then get ready for Morning Prayer.
Clear skies before daybreak, so I ran my miles, and this time again felt that the whole operation was going more smoothly. As it turns out, it was — my best pace since before my ankle turn. Maybe the plateau isn’t so flat after all. Coffee, fruit, shower, decaf, Morning Prayer, coffee, toast, and now I’ll see about conquering either Sunday’s sermon or the last paragraph(s) that the editors requested for The Last Essay.
I had expected rain this morning, but nothing was falling when I woke up, so I tackled the miles once again. No great progress today; just another day at my current plateau. No hot breakfast (even though it’s Wednesday) because it didn’t fit with the way my morning routine took shape. Coffee, fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, an interval, then Chapter Meeting and Preaching Workshop.
My pace picked up by a half minute this morning. While I often observe that it’s hard to predict whether I’m running more rapidly than usual (or less), this morning it felt very clear to me that my run was different from yesterday’s. Coffee, fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, bus to Oxford, coffee, tutorial, lunch, then home.
I’m listening to the chilled-out playlist at my home café in Oxford, and realising that the tune that’s on now is the already pretty chill David Byrne (X-Press 2) single ‘Lazy’.
If it doesn’t segue to a peppier song soon, I may be so chilled I’m comatose.
Oh no, now it’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side’. I’m too chilled to give that an exclamation mark.
Clear morning, and it hasn’t rained since sometime last night, so the circumstances for my run were pretty favourable. Still, I’m stuck at my current post-ankle plateau, more than a minute slower than I’d been running before the injury. Ah, well — I’m just doing it.
Dave likes ice cream. I used to enjoy ice cream myself; I still do, on the rare occasions I allow myself a scoop; I’m more susceptible to the temptations of salty snacks, though. Dave has given me some wistful memories of generous bowls of delicious ice cream, though, which I hadn’t really brought to mind for a long time.
Was I confused, or did I hear that Bad Bunny listened to a presidential press conference and said, ‘Nobody understands a word this guy is saying’?
I can’t really explain why I thought it was. The Diocese sent ’round an email reminding us about safeguarding and the importance of DBS checks, but there was nothing in there about Safeguarding Sunday.
On the other hand, it doesn’t matter that much; the mistaken presupposition that it was Safeguarding Sunday provided a jumping-off point, not by any means the essence of the sermon (which I include below). The readings were about the environment, so that at least underwrite my approach.
We had a splendid Baptism this afternoon at St Michael’s: sturdy baby boy, beautiful mum, forthright participation by the congregation. Lovely service, lovely lad, another lamb in the flock.
I did dodge any of today’s predicted rainfall this morning, for a pace that was a bit faster than recent, but not a patch on my fair-weather, regular-exercise, pre-injury pace. No matter; the point of the exercise lies in doing it, not in speed (or for that matter, grace, which for me would be a lost cause). Coffee, fruit, last-minute revisions to this morning’s homily, shower, dress, and in a few minutes off to St Michael and All Angels. Then back home for lunch, then back to St Michael’s for a baptism, then home for the day.
Really! Rain again this morning, so I didn’t run. Indeed, having had a night of intermittent sleep, I went directly to coffee and hot breakfast, and to clearing email. Being prevented from running exasperates me particularly because I don’t enjoy it, because I do it for my general health; if I were just going to evolve into a potato, I’d rather it not happen just because the weather is bad. But that’s probably just my idiosyncrasy.
Speaking of hot breakfast, a while ago we had a visitor who cooked something in our cast iron pan, then washed it with hot water and detergent, perhaps even with steel wool (I wasn’t there, which — given my inability to conceal my immediate responses, is very much just as well). This disrupted the finish of the pan, and I turned to Jeff Ward (the blogger, not one of the very numerous other bearers of Jeff’s honourable name) (as is increasingly the case, of course, I couldn’t remember the name of Jeff’s blog so as to make the link, so I went to wood s lot (where I knew, correctly, that I would find him) and felt a wave of sadness that Mark is no longer doing the glorious work of finding and sharing noteworthy posts from around Blogaria — but it was good to click a few of Mark’s blogroll links and to learn that some of the stalwarts are still a-blogging, and remember the abandoned blogs of many who aren’t), as I say, I turned to Jeff, a man who appreciates tools and treating them with respect, and he gave me helpful advice toward nursing the finish of the pan back to its customary functional well-being. That was about six years ago, and the pan has been fine steadily, once it attained its useful finish. Last Wednesday, though, I must have oiled it unevenly (or perhaps a contaminant seasoning intruded on the ecology of the pan surface) and the pan started sticking again, for the first time in years. Ah, well, back to the remediation process.
I have to cook up a sermon for tomorrow, and I need to sort the readers’ version of the St Matthew Passion before Lent even begins, and I may have some other tasks I’ve forgotten — but I have my tutes arranged and room-assigned for the second half of the term, and Fourth Week hasn’t even begun, so there’s that.
I heard on the BBC yesterday morning that there are locations in Britain on which it had rained every day of 2026 (presumably including frozen precip as ‘rain’). The weather here has not been so extremely inclement, but it did rain again this morning during my running time, so I stayed warm and dry indoors. Coffee, fruit, cleaned up, Morning Prayer, checked for phone messages at the Parish Centre (yes, we have a messaging set-up that requires in-person attention), home for coffee and toast. I’ve been conducting some hard-drive hygiene with a view to adding the editors’ requested paragraphs to The Last Essay.
Later I expect I’ll go in to Oxford for the New Testament Seminar, then home and back to Parish Centre again to check for afternoon messages, then home for the day. Not a lot of excitement, but at least I’m not in the Epstein Files. (I typed that before I looked — nope, not in them (not that I can think why I might be). Oxford is, mostly in reference to Ghislaine Maxwell’s undergraduate degree. Oriel isn’t. Margaret isn’t. I think we have no potential scandals on the horizon.)
I expected to take this morning off exercise, because I noticed last night that this morning held a 60% probability of precipitation. When I got out of bed, I checked the back garden (ground wet but not raining), so prepared for a run. Once I got outside and had run for about a quarter mile, I realised why the probability of precip was so high: it wasn’t raining, it was snowing. The snow didn’t accumulate, didn’t even last on the ground, but I definitely saw snowflakes in the beam of my headlight.
That said, the wind affected my pace considerably. Though I felt more limber, I ran against headwinds for a considerable part of the course, and came in at a slower pace than yesterday. Coffee, fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, and back to Enock House for coffee and toast.
I did run this morning, slowly, with some protests (mostly from my calves) — but the weather permitted, I was at home, and I’m eager to burn away some of the avoirdupois that accumulates when I am on holiday. My pace was in line with my post-injury times, though that’s still far off my better paces when I’m in shape and ready to go.
Coffee and hot breakfast, shower, Morning Prayer, midweek Mass, Chapter Meeting, then home for the afternoon. My homily this morning permits me to enthuse about the stories concerning the eben shetiyah, the Foundation Stone of the Temple, and to make a case for pious imagination as an inextricable complement to any historically demonstrable facts about the history of Israel or the career of Jesus of Nazareth (‘…but I say to you…’). Will post here after the service.
Back in the parish, after a long travel day. We’re glowing from the beautiful examples of love and mutual encouragement that the principals showed us all, in church and especially in the formation and reinforcement of friendships.
But right now, we’re exhausted, brain dead, hungry and sleepy. See you tomorrow.
No particular exercise today apart from lifting fork or cup to mouth. I had a minor, miniature breakfast to tide me over. Then we packed up and boarded the L (I lived in Chicagoland for ten years, and I never noticed that the CTA called its rail service by the single letter rather than ‘El’). Because of Chicago geography and the overall structure of the CTA, we rode all the way down to the Loop and then out again to the venue for a truly splendid (very vegetarian/vegan/gluten-free friendly) brunch, and a last chance to chat with other friends and relations of Nick and Noël, and then onto the L again to O’Hare. Will be interested to see what new films February brings to the seat-back screens.
We’ll be back in Abingdon tomorrow. Cheers to our godson and all involved in yesterday’s brilliant celebration.
Even if I had brought my trainers, I would not go running in the snow this morning. I could have done a workout in the gym, but nnot without trainers.
Coffee and abundant hot breakfast, including a waffle.
We had a glorious time last night at the rehearsal and dinner — seeing Lee for the first time in ages, and catching up with Nick (whom we saw more recently) and David (last November), meeting A-C Noël for the first time, and then seeing Teresa for the first time in even longer than Lee… What a great day this afternoon’s wedding will be!
Margaret and I are established in place to attend Nick’s wedding tomorrow (rehearsal dinner tonight), though we’re pretty spaced out from the travel (and travel-related) complications we’ve endured. Nothing terrible, just intermittent hiccoughs and disconnections and moments (intervals) of perplexity.
The weather’s as cold as we expected, and there’s snow lying (not as delightful to Margaret as fresh snow, but faute de mieux. We have a brief bank errand this morning, then will do some walking, come back for doing long-distance work a nap, and then pull ouselves together before dinner.