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Yesterday I dismounted the X3 at St Aldate’s and hastened toward Oriel, where in a half hour I would meet a guest for lunch. As I turned the corner into Blue Boar, I heard someone shouting after me: ‘Bro, Bro, Bro, I need…’ to which I half-turned and waved and called, ‘Sorry, I’m on my way to meet someone.’
‘No, bro, bro, bro, bro, no, hang on, wait a minute…’
‘I’m on my way to meet a guest.’
‘Bro, bro, bro, I need one [unintelligible]…’
I turned and shrugged. ‘I need to keep going…’
‘No, but bro, I need one picture. One picture, bro!’
I was a bit perplexed, but it seemed an innocuous enough request. When he caught up with me and was lining up a selfie (before he imposed on a passing pedestrian to take the photo) I realised that he wanted a photo with himself and an academic priest with longish grey hair and a beard, who was wearing all black, with an overcoat, umbrella, and Homburg.

If you know this gentleman, tell him he’s welcome.

When I write about spirituality, I will have to stress that I’m talking about one way, not the only way, and not to the exclusion of other ways. I may have criticisms of other ways, but I will try not to deprecate ways that benefit other people. My point, at every turn, will be to articulate how things go for me and for others whom I know (in continuity with other Christian, and possibly non-Christian, sources).

I’ll pay some attention to backstage rationales as well. I mean, not just what I commend, but also why, and how my approach — not a specific regimen, not a programme as such — engages other aspects of life as we know it.

I’ve been holding back from saying anything on this topic for a long time, partly to avoid stepping on toes, partly because I don’t have spirituality ‘expertise’, partly because it hasn’t seemed likely that anyone cares what I think. But this is a blog — nobody cares about my daily run, either (well Dave’s paying attention, bless him, even if he does give me a case of Olympus lust) — so I might as well write about it here. There is, after all, a mathematical chance that someone might be interested.

But above all, to reiterate: I am not your judge. I am not the judge of your spirituality (even if I may find it unconvincing or problematic on my own terms), and I will be doing all that I can to avoid a rhetoric of ‘This is what I think, and this is why; and that’s why your practice is stupid’. If I say, This has proved beneficial to me, and you say (or even just feel) But that is what I like!, then just ignore me. I’m not that important.

One way. Not every way. Not necessarily ‘better than your way’ or ‘their way’. One way.

No run this morning — steady rain.

One, I really must do something about FB and Twitter, and even BlueSky. My current plan involves taking an interval (initially a day or two, building to longer times) off, peering in, and taking another interval off as soon as practicable. Maybe one medium at a time, not lukewarm turkey on all of them at once. I have lots of precious connections with people via social media, but the distraction and related costs are just too great, and the cynicism of media-as-‘innocent provider’ too disingenuous. Wish me luck.

Two, I’m going to begin sketching some theological ideas here, ideas that I would categorise as ‘spirituality’ if spirituality were not supersaturated with woo and grift and anti-academicism. But the alternatives don’t quite get at what I’d be talking about; or worse still, they’d convey the ‘thgis isn’t spirituality, it’s a new and more authentic and right proper spiritual discourse’ hype flavour to them, and I’d hate that even more than being in the same category lump as the grifters and know-nothings. (Not you, I mean — you are without a doubt sincere and pious and concerned about historical and theological integrity.) I have some notions, and they’ve been spurring me to express them, and since I’m weaning myself from social media, here’s the place to do it.

So heads up — the blog may be more active, and more contemplative, than it‘s been for a while.

Following on from yesterday’s post, today my legs felt a bit stronger — not strong exactly, nor limber, but neither did they feel as heavy as yesterday — and I ran to a plausible, if not particularly exciting pace. Coffee and grapes, Morning Prayer, then to a café for working along with Margaret, then a church-related meeting, then home for lunch.

Having been running daily for years now, I always marvel at how unpredictable the experience will be. Yesterday I made the run at what is for me a decent pace, despite my legs feeling as heavy, leaden, as they ever have; today they were a bit livelier, but my pace was a bit slower. And I expect that they’ll never recover the springiness that I can observe in others and recall from younger days. Ah, well, two more miles in the book.

I’ll start my hot breakfast soon, then get ready for church. I’m both celebrating and preaching this morning, so I will be knackered when we get home for lunch.

Ran my two miles, despite 3° temps and complaining muscles. Coffee and fruit, cleaned up, off to Morning Prayer and a collegial meeting with Prof. Barton before I traipse up to Ox for the last New Testament Seminar of term. Last of term, ah!

Thursday of Eighth, so there are two days left of full term. I have two tutes today, some marking and reports to write, and I have some make-up tutes to arrange, but beginning Friday I will not be receiving any more essays to mark, and everything I do will move me forward to an all-clear academic desktop. My ecclesiastical desktop, of course, self-renews every week — I’m preaching this week again — but the lighter academic load will make relieve significant pressure on my time.

Two miles this morning, at a good pace despite muscle stiffness, in 3° fog. Coffee and fruit, Morning prayer, then off to Oxford for teaching.

Ran my two miles in 2° (did I report yesterday’s run? Same deal), coffee and fruit, Morning Prayer, off to the bus stop to just barely miss the X3, eventually got to Oxford to lead tutorials with my four lovely first-years, back to Abingdon, afternoon appointment, and various email errands till dinnertime.

The mornings have been lighter and lighter, thank heaven, though the zero and subzero temperatures have been disappointing. Two more miles this morning, anyway.

David Weinberger reports his extended interaction with ChatGPT which pivots on the topic of cultural situatedness. He elicits from his LLM interlocutor the acknowledgement that it operates on cultural assumptions (about food and ethics) that belong to the global North and West, but the moment that strikes me arrives toward the end, when it looks as though ChatGPT begins to repeat back to David the analysis that he had provided earlier in the conversation — that, in other words, ChatGPT seems to have assimilated David’s perspective into its database of responses. I find that both eerie and reassuring (in that the so-called AI seems still to be mostly just an extremely high-powered chatbot).

Speaking of AI, Mark Liberman wonders what accounts for a blogger at Medium suggesting that a particular idea — that Nickelback is a mediocre hack-rock act — has ‘boroughed’ into our consciousness. I note that the author seems to havve misspelled the name of the infamous WWII German dictator in the very first sentence, which seems to reflect poorly at least on their editing skills, if not their spelling overall. I wonder, though —is there some positive value in making obvious careless errors in such writing, as a measure of human authorship, over against AI writing that would never misspell Aldof Heltir….

It wasn’t raining this morning, so — why not run my two miles even though it was -1° out on 2 March? I made adequate time. I had spent yesterday working on two sermons (two different congregations, two different sorts of ethos). I was knocked out, then; and it knocked me out again delivering them. Struggled unsuccessfully to stay awake this afternoon — but I really need to catch up on marking. We’ll see what develops.

Steady rain this morning, so I doubt that I’ll go for my morning run. At any other point in my life, I would just roll my eyes and marvel at the rainiest spell in memory; now that I live in a low-lying house between two rising rivers, my feelings about a protracted rainy spell run more toward the trepidatious or even disastrous. Margaret takes a more confident outlook, but then, I spend more time walking along and across our rivers.