The old hymn by George Rawson is one of my life long favourites, and the line above came to mind as I was beavering away on an essay today (now taking a break after it's taken 4 hours to get to the point of having 2k words on 'paper' albeit including an hour's planning and a bit of debugging software problems).

I have just finished a short section giving my working definitions for some of the terms in the essay - and deciding not to include a whole load more words that I will simply try to avoid using.

'English as she is spoken' within different academic disciplines coupled with multitudinous variation in everyday English leaves me very aware of the (BIG WORD WARNING) particularity, partiality and contingency of it all.  These were words I opted not to define, since I am probably the only person reading my essay who has even a vague clue about how scientists understand 'particularity', that the meaning of 'partiality' as either 'incompleteness' or 'biased towards'  would be evident from the context and that 'contingent' seems only to have one dictionary defintion!

Even so, the whole enterprise is crude (rough and ready, not rude or disrespectful) partial (incomplete and biased!) and confined (I may not have a word limit this time but the final version will).

Linguistics, semantics and semiotics (BELATED BIG WORD WARNING!) may be important research fields but they don't really help interdisciplinary communication very much.  Word games can be fun, and lots of effort goes into pun-laden witty titles for books, sermons and reports: trouble is that unless you speak the language and know the rules, it goes over your head.

The apostle Paul said he'd rather speak one word of plain speech than a whole lot of stuff in angelic languages (ace paraphrase don't you reckon?) - I wonder if academics and professionals need a 'go and do thou likewise' ?  Plain English crystal mark - I wish!

Still, if you have understood any of this it means (a) you understand the insider language of this blog and/or (b) you are incredibly intelligent.

Now 'let a new and better hope within our hearts be stirred: The Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth using words!' (Apologies to Rawson and others)

Every now and then I look at the 'detailed stats' that this blogging platform provides for me.  Not entirely sure why, but it is always facinating to find out which keyword searches have landed people here.

Those at appear fairly regularly include:

• 'kairos and chronos time'
• 'crowd mentality'
• 'rahab'
• 'northumbria community'
• specific lines from hymns/songs and/or song writers' names (especially 'our God is so big, so strong and so mighty' and 'Brian Wren' though not in the same search!)
• 'funeral' or 'wedding'

This month has seen 'Kez Lama' and 'Sean' with relatively high frequency, so be warned, someone is watching you!

It is pretty rare that I follow a Google search to a blog, and when I type in the search words listed above I never get referred here myself, so I'm not quite sure how it all works (or even if I want to).  I guess it is kind of gratfiying that people do read this stuff when they are looking for things on the web, that is afterall part of the motivation for posting it.  It's just interesting to compare what I might think is the more significant stuff on here with what the world at large thinks.

Today I spent around 7 hours on the road and managed to find two of the Little Chef outlets that had been closed on 3rd Janaury when the company was sold after going into administration (did you know this?  I didn't until I checked online tonight).  Whilst it wasn't the most amazing food outlet in creation, it was preferrable to MacDonalds, which I ended up at today and had a singularly foul cup of coffee.  Ah well.

I left home at around 6:30 a.m. and finally managed to park in Manchester (in the second car park I went to) at about 10:10 a.m. before running along Oxford Road (not a pretty sight (the location or my running)) to get to my meeting 15 minutes late.  Thankfully my kindly supervisors were understanding and gave me a cuppa before we got going on 'business.'  Late is not good for my stress levels, I don't 'do' late; it's a good job others are more laid back about it.  The homebound journey was far less horrendous, wasted 'stops' not withstanding.

It was a good, productive meeting, and I came away feeling that I do now have something adequately concrete to work on for the next 5 months.  For anyone who reads this and did the BA with me, I have managed to develop a three circle model for it, so honour is satisified (for those who taught us, one of our student secrets is not secret any more!).

It feels like getting to this point has been quite a long journey - metaphorically as well as literally - but I think that it has been worthwhile, despite the McCoffee and closed down cafes along the way.  Just a small matter of 12k words to  research and write by mid July...

Tomorrow night my little sister is leading her college's Holocaust Memorial service as part of the follow up to a course she did on Jewish-Christian relations.  The blurb she found online suggested that during the service 6 candles be lit to commemorate the 6 milliom Jews killed under the Nazi regime.  However, as part of her course she visited the Beth Shalom centre in Nottinghamshire where she discovered that in the 20th Century alone there are records to suggest that around 160 million people were killed in genocides - so her service will include the lighting of 160 candles.

I have a problem with the word 'Holocaust' used to describe what happened to Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, mentally ill and frail people: the word used properly means 'a whole burned offering', I cannot see genocide in that way.  I prefer the Jewish term 'Shoa' which means 'destruction' or 'catastrophe.'

However, a whole burned offering of 160 candles as an acknowledgement of the destruction of so many people is something that I do find helpful.

Although there are no commemorations here, and I have a leaning towards Yom Ha'Shoah over Holocaust Memorial, I will be remembering.

Recently while playing that joyous weekly game of 'choose the hymns' I came across a new song that I almost chose -then changed my mind when I discovered it contained the words ...

You were lifted on a tree, crying 'Father God, forgive them, Place their punishment on me.' 

I don't mean to be pedantic, well yes, actually I do, but from which gospel is this a quotation?  It certainly isn't in the canon to which I am accustomed.

It is a shame, the song says some good things, and I could, I suppose, simply correct the quotation and write 'altd' on the song sheets.  But I am saddened that there is such a seemingly cavalier attitude towards quoting scripture.  People get very hung up over interpretation of the Bible; it might be nice if we were clear what it said first.

I don't think I'm being 'an old literalist,' just trying to avoid eisegesis (reading 'in' what we think) when we are called to exegesis (reading 'out' what it says).  Misquoting (as distinct from paraphrasing) almost inevitably does the former.