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Yesterday was the 39th anniversary* of my ordination as deacon (fr. Greek diakonos, a servant, a menial, sometimes a messenger) in the Diocese of Pittsburgh of the Episcopal Church, the US branch office of the Church of England. Since then, I’ve served in seven other dioceses, three provinces (US, Scotland, England), and I’ll skip over how many parishes and congregations. And as a teacher in theological institutions…

A ‘deacon’, in Anglican polity, is an order proper unto itself and an order that affords stepwise growth in ministry toward ordination to the priesthood. People get snappish about whether that’s the way things ought to be, or whether ordinands should be made priests directly on the end of their training. I respect the vocation of deacons who understand their calling to focus strictly on diaconal ministry; at the same time, I wouldn’t want us to ordain clergy to priestly orders who had never spent time as a deacon. In many respects, diaconal service comprises the greatest part of a priest’s ministry: pastoral care, visiting, bringing the sacrament to people who can’t get to church, proclaiming the faith, cooperating with the bishop, paperwork and committee meetings. Likewise, a teacher’s work partakes of the diaconal — a lot of pastoral care (conducting lectures and seminars with a view to the well-being and success, particularly, of weaker students or students whose situations and constitution make them less than fully receptive to learning, as well as consolation, counsel, guidance in one’s office). I hesitate to make big public pronouncements about my identity ‘as a deacon’ ’cos that tends to function as a kind of self-aggrandising humility; no, I’m a priest and a deacon, and the ‘priest’ part plays a more prominent public role most of the time, and I thank God for that calling.

But I am thankful for thirty-nine years of serving in diaconal ways, maybe even more thankful, since that service often flies under the radar. ‘Have a tissue, that’s why they’re sitting there.’ ‘May I try to explain it again?’ ‘I’m glad you have time for me this morning; thank you for the tea and biscuits.’ ‘Well, someone has to do it.’ And I give thanks for the colleagues, friends, students, congregants, care home residents, bishops, committees, and everyone else who received and supported my ministry. As always, I know keenly that I could have served more fully, more diligently, and I don’t presume on your forgiveness; I try to try harder, and sometimes I do better.

It appertaineth to the office of a Deacon, in the Church where he shall be appointed to serve, to assist the Priest in Divine Service, and specially when he ministereth the holy Communion, and to help him in the distribution thereof, and to read holy Scriptures and Homilies in the Church; and to instruct the youth in the Catechism; in the absence of the Priest to baptize infants; and to preach, if he be admitted thereto by the Bishop. And furthermore, it is his office, where provision is so made, to search for the sick, poor, and impotent people of the Parish, to intimate their estates, names, and places where they dwell, unto the Curate, that by his exhortation they may be relieved with the alms of the Parishioners, or others. Will you do this gladly and willingly?

I will so do, by the help of God.

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* A pretty awkward number, isn’t it? I mean, 3 x 13 is good, but really you can tell just by looking that it wants to rush ahead to forty.

Another rainy morning when I got up, so I didn’t run again. This morning has to focus on wrapping up tomorrow’s sermon; I’d like to squeeze in a run sometime, but it sounds as though this interval this morning will be the only rain-free point in the day.

Margaret’s spending another day at an ethics/political theology conference at Oxford, so I’m caring for the dogs. She’s having a great time; when academic minds spend time together, great things happen, and she hasn’t had as many opportunities to benefit from the atmospheric effects, the ecological rewards of Oxford life as would have been most encouraging for her — I’m glad she’s having some of that now.

Back on duty today, but no morning run (as it was raining). Coffee, fruit, very welcome hot shower, Morning Prayer, coffee and toast, sermon writing, reading, paper-editing. And I’m girding myself for travel again; being there will be lovely, but all the to-ing and fro-ing… ‘of making many visits there is no end, and much plane travel is a weariness of the flesh.’

Lots of time at prayer, a significant nap, some reading. Will update later — time for the Office of Readings and Lauds.

I have for a long time been proud of the fact that I haven’t broken the screen on any of my successive phones, for fifteen or more years — until this morning. Technically, I didn’t break it; my iPad, which fell onto the phone, broke the screen. But I won’t try to didge accountability, since I put the phone onto the iPad, and set the alalrm that made the phone vibrate and move, which led it to all off the bureau, which (in moving and vibrating) induced the tablet to slide off the table and fall onto the phone, corner pointed down, so as break the glass and strategically to disable the front camera (hence also FaceID).

No run this morning — I woke up early enough to squeeze one in, but I hadn’t planned to take one and it felt imprudent to change plans on the spot — but packing the last few items to prepare for the Sodality of Mary’s annual retreat. I hope to have time to nap between prayers and talks, perhaps even to sit and read without interruption (from outside or from internal failure to focus). I do appreciate train travel, so that’s a welcome diversion, and I’ll still have to be thinking about a Pentecost sermon. Good weather today, anyway.

Good, comfortable run this morning — the way it ought to be. Coffee and fruit, Morning Prayer at home, clean up, fine-tune the sermon over coffee and toast, then up to St Nic’s for Mattins. This afternoon I’ll pack for the retreat. (Whoops! — Thanks to blogging this, I realised that I should forward my rail details to Margaret — but I don’t see any, such that I suspect the online booking didn’t go through. Must check.)

Update: Good thjing I thought of this, because Southeastern Rail sent my ticket confirmation and itinerary to an entirely unpredictable email address, which only became clear after a long-ish phone conversation first with Great Western Rail, then Southeastern. All sorted, all’s well that ends well.

Then Margaret asked about my sermon, which I opened and sent to her, but which (I noticed) needed massive editing, which I wouldn’t have noticed had she not asked about it.

That kind of morning.

I took an easy stroll this morning, with intermittent efforts to pick up the pace stopped in short order by unwilling leg muscles — just weren’t going to run. Coffee and hot breakfast, working on tomorrow’s sermon, soup, a thorough grocery shop with Margaret, and that was that. We watched the gripping conclusion of the first season of Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake. Second series… maybe between my week’s retreat and our departure for a holiday with our descendants….

Something Alan Jacobs said the other day started my brain itching until I realised what was bothering me. He was responding to Ted Gioia’s panegyric on Oxford’s teaching (and examining) as a remedy for AIism; Ted said, ‘For a start, professors in the US would refuse to spend so much time face-to-face with students’, to which Alan replied ‘I know many professors who would strongly prefer to spend more face-to-face time with their students — if they could be delivered from the responsibilities of regular publishing’.

So as an American emigré to Great Britain, I not only see both sides, I have been both sides. Here are some things neither Alan nor Ted mentions.

(a) British publish-or-perish culture is every bit as intense as in the US; indeed, it’s publish-or-you-don’t-get-a-job-in-the-first-place. And with no US-style tenure, it’s keep on publishing. Of course, some professors leverage the urgency of their publishing to spend less time face-to-face with students (lectures rather than tutorials, for instance) though that sets them up for a heavy load of committee work and grant-seeking. Trust me, although I would have accepted a professorial post, it would not have been an Empyrean privilege. (If nothing else, those pay better.)

(b) Because we no longer have academic tenure (thank you, Margaret Thatcher), the pressure to publish never stops.

(c) I don’t know very many teachers in the humanities who want not to see students face to face. Now, I do know many whose spirits flag because of the particular students they do see face to face, but they flag because my colleagues can imagine working with more exciting, inspiring students, and would like to. I’m sure there are faculty for whom student-dodging is a way of life, but I suspect such figures get more attention than their numbers warrant simply because they make such easy targets for japery. Here at Oxford, most of the staff I know (including many professors) spend a lot of face time with students (albeit for some, that’s a lot more time to PG students than undergrads). Me, I can’t envision what my life will be like without students in it.

(d) To the extent that professors and other postholders can and do dodge students at Oxford, the students are covered at least as much by a cadre of part or full-time contingent staff who could easily be (many have been) full-time staff at another uni, as by allegedly under-qualified PG students. A lot depends on which college, what discipline, and whether an academic dean or senior tutor cares much about the topic (shock! horror! not all Oxford colleges give… much attention to who tutors theological topics for them, if they employ any theologians at all). Further: Oxford DPhil candidates are rarely so ‘under-qualified’ as that discourse implies, and especially not where a college cares about its theologians.

(e) Oxford’s system (and, I gather, Cambridge’s is similar) has grown in a particular way in particular circumstances, such that it would be extremely difficult to reproduce in an academic start-up. As Alan points out, the staffing model differs from other typical institutions, but (as neither mentions) the curriculum model is very different. Oxford undergraduates typically sit eight papers in their three years, and often have the same tutor for several of their papers; I took thirty-two classes over four years for my undergraduate degree, from many different faculty. I don’t have the time to work out comparisons, but the complexity of the errand by itself suggests the impossibility of generating such a moddel out of thin air. Probably the best chance would be at an internal ‘honours college’ such as the one where Alan teaches, or a theological college on the border of financial security, that might reconfigure its curriculum toward a pattern of lectures, essays, exams, and [internal] qualifications.

(f) Oh, by the way, sitting written exams is a straightforward a way of defeating illicit use of LLMs. Go, us! I recognise, Oxford recognises, that some people are disadvantaged by written exams, and we offer accommodations intended to attenuate those disadvantages. On the other hand, if somebody knows a mode of evaluation that disadvantages no one, please let me know. At the moment we are considering ways of extracting students from the trap of relying on LLMs instead of writing; written exams (and formative essays) provides a road-tested way of conducting assessment that renders LLMs useless.

I hadn’t expected today to be a good morning run, but once I limbered up (about a half mile in), I kept a good, steady pace and even ratcheted it up slightly as the run went on. I have no explanation for this.

Coffee, fruit, off to Morning Prayer and to check the message machine (yes, St Helen’s has an answering machine, one that you actually have to check in person; this is something I desperately want to change before I leave). Home to work on sermons, then in to Oxford for the NT seminar.

This morning my body was gently but firmly unwilling to run more than a few paces. I was tired (despite a solid seven hours’ sleep), muscles just a little sore but mostly stiff, joints stiff, etc.) and the pollen in the air was irritating my eyes and breathing. Thus I opted to walk my miles this morning, and registered a more pleasant stroll than the miserable slog I would have made if I tried to run. Coffee, fruit, quick check on tonight’s Ascension Day liturgy, and I’ll preside at St Michael’s midweek Ascenion Mass as well. Plus, I need to remember that i’m preaching Sunday…

I will be on retreat next week, and the week after we leave to spend some time with our descendants at Pippa’s and Dyer’s new digs in Sullivan. A change is as good a rest, but a resting change is better still.

I took an easy morning run today, slow and self-indulgent, as my legs were stiff and slow. Then home for coffee and hot breakfast, and — as I sat down to eat breakfast — I check for messages and email. And what a morning it was!

Last week, Lucy Bellwood’s Tumblr page led me to a corner of the internet got excited about ‘driving a car’ along roads by manipulating Google Maps, and had a particular frisson of interest about the radio station WBOR, such that the drivers decided to head to the station at Coles Tower, Bowdoin College. Now, almost fifty years ago I had a radio show on WBOR when it was little more than a room with a record library and a studio on the first floor (US: second floor) of the Moulton Union, and when I was a child (even longer ago) my family lived in a house on 9 South Street, which lot is now a car park. I’d have left a comment to that effect if Tumblr were that sort of operation, but since it’s not I sent a wee email to Lucy Bellwood to note the way this whimsical Net event intersected with my own past life. Well, this morning I opened my email and saw an answer from her with kind words about my persistent running and blogging (Hi, Lucy!).

After I received my email, I glanced at my messaging apps, and there my undergrad roommate Matt was asking about a colourful excursion we and some friends had undertaken back in the olden days. Every now and then Matt and I check in with one another about music, since he was a tremendous influence on my taste during that period in one’s life where enthusiasms and dislikes, once formed, easily become lifelong allegiances. Splendid to hear from Matt this morning, when Lucy and I corresponded about Bowdoin’s radio station.

And finally, I heard from our friend John, a lawyer who (bless him!) helped me out with the legal fallout of a moving violation (it was twilight, it had rained, the road rose and curved, and I didn’t see a crosswalk in which pedestrians had started to walk). He reminded me of the details I needed to know, and caught me up on recent developments with his wife and son. We miss them lots, and Margaret and I were thrilled to hear how they’re doing.

Amaing morning. The internet — it’s not all bad.