AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Morning run (even better time) (my five-day rolling average hasn’t been this low since 5 June), hot breakfast, shower, Morning Prayer, home for another cup of coffee, back to church for Staff Meeting, home again for lunch, out for another home communion, back home for a break, then off to church for the evening’s Marriage Preparation class. Wheee!

Yesterday began with my run (continuing to return to previous form), coffee and fruit, Morning Prayer, public office hours at R&R, an appointment about a baptism, lunch, home communion (not our home but Fr Keith’s), home to ours, then a visit to Dalton Barracks (formerly RAF Abingdon) from which base our visitor’s great uncle flew his last mission in support of the Dambusters, according to his family lore.

Well, not entirely usual, as I’ll explain in a sentence or two. I did get up and run, at a decent pace, and thankfully it wasn’t too hot. Coffee, fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, public office hours at R&R and then an appointment at Costa. I’m home for lunch, and then will set off for a Home Communion.

After I get back, depending on how long our post-sacramental conversation goes, I’ll come home and spend the rest of the afternoon with our visitor (not ‘Our Visitor’, which would be an entirely different sort of event, but a visiting friend). Full day.

I got another good night’s sleep, blessedly. Since I didn’t wake up very early, I didn’t reckon I’d have time to run, have coffee, shower, dress, and get to church in good time, so I skipped the run again. I did then have coffee and fruit, showered, and grabbed a bit more coffee and walked to St Michael’s. After Mass, I rushed to St Nicolas’s for Holy Communion there. Home, cooled off, did some odds and ends, took a wee nap. We are watching Project Hail Mary. That’s a wrap.
Continue reading “Some Sunday”

The heat, the hours of standing, the persistent autophony, the audio hubbub, the accelerating exhaustion (along with the discomfort of having sweat through my clothes) wiped out the rest of my Friday, and I didn’t have much left energy left, even after a good night’s sleep the next day. I didn’t run; mostly, I worked out tomorrow’s sermon and let myself modulate back into an everyday state of energy and (dis-)comfort (heat-related). All okay.

I got a good night of sleep — almost seven hours — and ran a good time in my morning miles. Coffee, fruit, shower, dress (too fancy, because I wasn’t going back home before heading to Oxford), sweltered on my walk to (and opening up of) church, Morning Prayer, then caught the X3 to Oxford. The bus ride wasn’t too bad; the air wasn’t deadly still, and the bus made steady progress. Coffee at Love Coffee before looking in at Oriel, where I stayed for the rest of the morning because…

For the past ten days or two weeks, the Theology General Administrator’s office has been sending emails alerting theology staff and students that the new Schwartzman Humanities Centre would be closed to

all students, staff, and the general public

fro 9:00 yesterday evening to 2:00 this afternoon — without any explanation of why, but acknowledging that it involves security sweeps of the bulding. Ooooh… ? (Why is there no diacritical mark for modulating pitch to indicate a spooky secret? The three-quaver emotion is the closest I can think of, and it could just indicate ‘singing’, which in this case isn’t really the point.))

But those of us in the ambit of Oriel College have known, because we’ve been getting emails about an impending appearance of The Visitor. Yes, it sounds like a mysterious superhero, but in this case it refers to the British legal phenomenon of someone like the Chair of the Board of Trustees who exercises nominal charge over interpretations of the by-laws, appointments, committee memberships, and all that vitally important business. When The Visitor visits, it’s always a significant occasion, especially when The Visitor is, as in Oriel’s case, His Majesty the King.

So, being a good and faithful servant of the college, and supposing this to be likely the only time I’d be invited to such an event, I overdressed for the heat (underdressed slightly for the occasion, but even I have limits) and spent the late morning and early afternoon standing in direct sunlight to await the arrival of Charles the Third, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of his other Realms and Territories, King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith — and most importantly, Visitor of Oriel College.

He entered the college, walked comfortably (given the heat) to the chapel, where our estimable Head of Theology and our exceptional Chaplain, and a good number of our undergraduate and postgraduate theologians, had the opportunity to converse with the monarch out of the sun (the Chapel remains admirably cooler than the outside world). After a while, all of us still standing outside in the sun, His Majesty emerged and walked to the adjacent Hall, where a grand painting of his mother the late Queen hangs; then after a shorter delay (presumably cos he was not talking to our impressive young theologians) he came to the portico over which his name is prominently displayed in stone letters. The Provost, Lord Mendoza, gave a very short welcome, then the King did what is incumbent on royals: he wandered along the periphery of the crowd, and shook hands with roughly half of the attendees. This included one elder priest-theologian:

After the King shook my hand, he was made his way to the gate (they opened the full huge wooden gate for him, so there was no risk of his stumbling as he stepped through the door-in-a-gate exit we usually use, not that I know anyone who has ever tripped on that doorway). Oriel served us all a splendid lunch on Second Quad (I can’t say enough positive about the way Oriel attends to the special dietary needs of… well, of me and I assume other odd ducks), and after conversing for an hour and a half, I realised that my Eustachian tubes were in armed rebellion, the ambient noise added to the autophony from my own ears, and the effort I was exerting to handle gracefully my circumstantial deafness and social exhaustion, meant that I had long passed the limit of my neurodiverse capacities. I excused myself, caught the X2 to Abingdon, went straight to the shower, and have been (in the vernacular) vegging out for the rest of the day.

Ran to a very good time this morning, drank my coffee and ate my fruit. Showered, Morning Prayer, then odds and ends for most of the drowsy morning (I had an hour+ wakeful spell in the night, and I’m feeling it). I think I’ll have a cup of coffee after lunch…

Whoops, I had a quick lunch and dozed off. Time for that coffee now.

The time for my morning run tailed off a little, but it’s still all right. Then coffee and fruit, a shower, Morning Prayer, coffee and toast, and I spent the morning writing tomorrow’s homily for the midweek Holy Communion service. I believe I will take a restful, refreshing afternoon, possibly making a trip to Waitrose to stock up on some good raw materials for weekly meals (plus Margaret’s Magnums). With luck, I’ll approach tomorrow’s very full day from a refreshed start.

I ran my morning miles at a good clip, had some coffee and fruit, and am about to shower. Then I’ll have a second cup, then will dash off to St Michael’s for the 9:30, then to St Nic’s for the 11:15, then to St Helen’s for a wedding rehearsal. Then home, thanks be to heaven.

Ran my morning miles at a good pace — better than an old plateau, not at peak level but plenty good enough considering my recent suspension of efforts. Coffee and fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, coffee and toast, tackling email and then heading to town, for Mike to trim my beard for a special occasion at Oriel.

Then home to bang away at Sunday’s sermon and to continue battling off the swarms of emails, and — if successful in so doing — maybe have a wee rest.

My joints and limbs declined to run this morning, so I walked and jogged my miles. Once home, I had my morning coffee and fruit, showered, opened up the church for Morning Prayer, meandered to town for public office hours at R&R, answered some emails (painfully slowly, because I am That Way), came home, strolled to St Michael’s for Thursday Low Mass (followed by lunch, but I just brought a can of soda), then home again for the rest of the day to work on sermons and no doubt to send out and to answer more emails.

‘O, philosophers may sing / Of the troubles of a King,
But of pleasures there are many and of worries there are none;
And the culminating pleasure / That we treasure beyond measure
Is the gratifying feeling that our duty has been done!’

If so for a King, presumably much more so for a mere vicar…

Ran my miles, this morning and yesterday, which makes this the first time in two weeks that I’ve run three days in a row. Thank you, weather and obligations and other considerations! My time is still on the slow side, but the last two days I’ve run fifteen seconds faster each day, so I’m regaining some of the ground I lost due to the heat wave layoff.

Yesterday was interview day for the Team Vicar post at the parish; we’ll see how that all turned out in a few days, I hope. Today I’ll work on my homily for tomorrow’s communion service at St Helen’s; I have the midday communion Thursday at St Michael’s, too, but they don’t have a homily at that service. We have a Marriage Preparation session tomorrow night at the Parish Centre (come one, come all). The Rector is on holiday for the beginning of July, so this would be the time for me to stage a coup, but I’m too busy with other needful tasks, and I discovered my absolute incapacity for Machiavellian scheming in secondary school.

Oh, and I registered for SNTS yesterday! It will be held in Durham this year, and since that’s so nearby — and since I’ll miss BNTS because I’m officiating at a wedding — Margaret gave permission on the home front, and the Rector on the parish front, for me to attend. (Actually, Jen pointed out to me that it’s Continuing Ministry Development for me, which I had entirely forgotten about.) The website was persnickety about our credit cards, but I finally hit one that the site liked, and off I go.

Another day with neither walk nor run, though I might have run (walked) today and am planning to run tomorrow, assuming it doesn’t rain when I wake up. Coffee, some odds and ends, then the dogs and Margaret began waking up, so I made tea for Margaret and fed the dogs. Then coffee and hot breakfast for myself, and upstairs for reading and writing time (with Morning Prayer, of course). Today I should finish my ‘symbols’ notes and make a handout, and finish and give a first polish to my unambitious sermon for tomorrow. ‘Unambitious’ not because I ever want to give the gospel a day off, but because (a) weather and (b) a renewal of wedding vows that might lengthen the service, and (c) the observance of the feast of Ss Peter and Paul*, on which I preached last year at this time. I scrupulously haven’t looked at last year’s sermon, in the hope that if my imagination hasn’t changed rails at all, I will at least not use the same words as last year.

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* I have gently indicated my disapprobation of steering saints’ days onto Sundays, and have offered to say Masses on the saint’s day itself so that Sundays may have their integrity as Feasts of the Lord. That demurrer has been duly noted and the calendar has gone ahead as before.

Still no running (I mean, are you kidding?). Coffee, fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, coffee, toast, and now back to Sunday’s sermon and the Symbolism/Liturgy Faith Forum.

And sweltering. Can’t forget sweltering. In our new house, solar panels and aircon are two of the first new features.

I didn’t run this morning, or walk; it was already 20° when I was up and moving, and I decline to exercise an aging body in that heat. I did have my coffee and a cooked breakfast, then Morning Prayer, back home for some reading of 17th-century biblical hermeneutics, then back to church for a staff meeting, now back at home. I have to write one sermon for Sunday, and the Faith Forum on ‘Symbolism in the Liturgy’. I’m not entirely sure I believe in symbolism any more, but I’ll do my best to offer the congregations something plausible and perhaps even illuminating. So top jobs are writing things for Sunday, and looking ahead to other parish-related errands for the next couple of weeks while Jen the Rector is on holiday.

I know it’s just Tuesday afternoon, but with the heat and our weariness it feels like Friday morning. Yesterday morning I ran a good pace, especially considering the heat and humidity; then coffee and fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, and home for coffee and toast. From then to lunchtime we were writing/rewriting flat out, printing, and otherwise getting ready for our presentation.
The talk went well, as far as we can tell. It was a good-sized interfaith group; everyone understood that we spoke as Christian theologians rather than trying to steamroll all the different traditions into one Universal mash. Some people were excited, some were patient and positive, and I’m sure some were frustrated — at the very least, because of the heat (again). We had a round at the Lamb and Flag with one of the organisers, where we waved to Fergus Butler-Gallie and William Allen (a former student of ours). Then a conference dinner where we were seated entirely surrounded by Sikhs, under whose protection we were solemnly assured that we now fell (apparently even after the conference, so don’t threaten our well-being). We slumped home and fell asleep as fast as conditions permitted.

This morning I walked my miles, and even that was sweltering. Coffee, fruit, shower, Morning Prayer, coffee and toast, and a recuperative day (insofar as the heat will permit).