This morning was the pulpit swap - and I had a great time.

With strong Brethren roots, the morning began with a 'breaking of bread' service.  What struck me was that, apart from the man who began the service and the man who led the pre-communion prayer, every other speaker was a woman... once they stopped wearing hats the women had found their voices!  it was 'very' brethren in style with a contemporary feel.

Family Worship was well attended and carefully prepared.  Never before has the person who introduced me 'cyber stalked' (her words) me sufficiently to give a full CV/biography!  The joys of LinkedIn etc!  My John 4 'woman at the well' sermon seemed to be well received and certainly people were very attentive.

It was lovely to share fully in WPCU after a few years of not doing so... a great morning.

After an ebjoyable and productive  two and a half hour meeting this afternoon I am quite tired - and still have evening worship to go.   Day off tomorrow - phew!

Day 1 of my volunteer training course (really excellent, loads of ideas to take back to church for future use) and I was chatting to one of the other participants before it started.  Spotting my English accent she asked me, in a clearly East Midlands accent, where I came from origninally.  I replied that I grew up in Northampton, which prompted a further enquiry as to whereabouts... It only turned out we'd lived in the same fairly small village (she was born the year we moved away) and her older sister had been in the same class as my brother at school!  What are the chances...?  A very small world indeed.

Not expecting it to lead to any reunions or rekindling of old friendships but pleasantly curious all the same.

Not a resolution to do (or not do) something; resolution as in completion.

As my work on my conference paper nears completion with the fine-tuning of sharpening sentences, tweaking words and pruning extraneous stuff, it is clear to me that, for now anyway, thoughts of further serious research must be abandoned.  My once quick brain and strong concentration are now slow and limited, I must choose more carefully how to use them.  I am not saying 'never' to more research or writing, not even 'never' to a higher research degree (though realisitcally that seems very unlikely) but I am saying that this state of affairs is 'okay'.

In the early days, it really frustrated me that my concentration was poor - and it was very poor!  Now I accept that I have to work harder to read 'real' theology and that it has to be smaller amounts.  I continue to delight in new discoveries, to thrill at finding corroboration for things I think or believe, to wince at some of the challenges.  I just have to concede that three-hour stretches with complex books are not poosible, and that that is okay.

At one stage, as I tranformed my half done doctorate into an MPhil, I reassured myself with the thought that in a year ot two I could try again.  Having sweated my way through a 5000 word non-academic conference paper, I know that that is not goping to happen any time soon.  That, too is okay.

Way back when, I seem to recall learning about stages or phases of grieving - I think attributes is a better term since not everyone experiences all of them, never mind in the 'right' order.  Right at the end, after the denial, anger and other reactions/emotions comes resolution.  Have I been latently grieving my lost intellect? I don't know.  Neither anger nor denial have been part of my experience. Frustration and disappointment, certainly, and I can't say even now that 'it doesn't matter' because it does.  Bit it is okay.  I have found my sense of resolution - if that is all (and it isn't/won't be) my conference paper achieves, then it has been worth every ounce of slog (if slog can be measured in ounces!)

resolution, completion: 'okay' is good enough.

It has been said, probably far too often, that the medium is the message - whether that is true or what it actually means I am less sure.  Yesterday my "bestest minister friend in the world ever" sent me her comments from reading my draft conference paper.  She is incredibly clever, creative and kind, so what she said was extremely encouraging.  It got me thiking about this whole meidium and message thing, and how best to do the necessary edittig  or pruning to get my paper (or a version of it) down to a length that will fit the allotted time.

My title/theme is 'public faith and private pain'.  The way I have written my paper intersperses anecdote and reflection - recollections of actual experiences and thoughts thereon, thus, stylisitcally there is a clear  private/public or at least personal/public element to it.  My friend pointed out to me that in the very delivery of the paper the same private/personal and public tension is worked out (see, she is way cleverer than me!)

So somehow this particular-general, private-public, personal-reflective message is mediated in what I write, how I write it, that I share it and how/where I share it... somehow that makes my hard work justified and the oft-times clumsy prose more precious.

I suppose this should not really surprise me, it has the vaguest echoes of incarnational theology and/or Barth's word/Word/WORD schema (vary vaguest echoes!).  But perhaps I also need to keep it in my mind when my knees are (memtaphorically at least) knocking as I stand up before an audience of biblcal scholars, theologians and medical professionals.

So, now I have a draft of my conference paper and the tweaking has begun... words out, words in, sentences revised, deleted, added... it is no mean feat!  Even the abstract is a moving target - I sent a copy to someone earlier this morning and now it has changed slightly!

Today one of my longest established minsiter-theologian friends is going to give the first draft a once over.  That's quite scary.  I know she will be gentle and kind cos that's the kind of person she is, but I need some help to sharpen it up before it goes 'live' in NZ.  I've had a few offers of editorial reads - and I am not ignoring them, just want it to be a bit sharper first as it is probably the most personal thing I've ever written for public consumption (which of course exemplifies the entire thesis...).

Anyway, taking my courage in both hands, here is the current draft abstract:

As an ordained minister I have sat alongside many people with cancer – from someone hearing the news of her diagnosis to someone else whose journey with the disease had just been completed in his death.  In pastoral contexts, I have shared the bewilderment of families, refused to offer glib answers to tough questions, and modelled a response many tell me they have found helpful.  When I was diagnosed with cancer in August 2010 my response, undoubtedly shaped by my pastoral experience and practice, was that I wanted to be honest and open, free to name anger, fear, doubts or questions that arose along the way.  Whilst able in some measure to achieve this, again several people have told me they found my honesty and openness helpful, it rapidly became clear that "the minister is still the minister" and that the responsibility of caring for others affected my quest for authenticity.  In this paper I reflect on some of my own experiences in an endeavour to explore attributes of  'authenticity' for a religious professional living with cancer.