Well, hopefully that's it!  I have just written the two abstracts (academic and lay) needed for my MPhil submission and sent the final draft to my supervisors.  Tomorrow I will send my 'notification of submission' to the university and then it's just a case of waiting until the permitted date to 'publish and be damned'.

I am clearly amused and impressed by small things these days and, as they used to say in the first company I worked for, 'never mind the quality, feel the width'.  I am secretly pleased that my bibliography runs to six pages (single spaced) as that looks long enough for a submission at this level.  I am also secretly pleased to have nearly 400 footnotes (mostly references)- that makes it seem far cleverer than it is.  And of course I am blatantly happy that I have several diagrams running throughout the submission, demonstrating that you can take the girl out of engineering, but you can't take engineering out of the girl.

Quite pleased that the university is now sufficiently 'green' to allow double sided submission.

Mildly miffed that I'll now submit too late to graduate with my friend who is awaiting her PhD viva just now, but glad that it'll soon be completed anyway.

At 43k words of main text and footnotes (53k overall) it is the size of a modest paperback - I just hope the powers that be are happy with it.

Yesterday's IBRA notes were around the far too familiar story of Zaccheus but here were a couple of useful pointers between the two sets of notes.

Zaccheus was a wealthy man yet he accepted Jesus' self invitation to his home and allowed this rag-tag crew to dine in his rather posh abode.  The questions was posed, how willing would we be to allow slightly grubby itinerants into our houses?

Zaccheus gave away vast quantities of money, at least on this one occasion.  The question was posed, how willing would those of us who have money be to give it away?  How much are we investing for a more comfortable future for ourselves (beyond prudent pension provision) in a world where many are in need?  tricky question to ask in the wealthy West End of Glasgow where most people are pretty comfortably off.

There is nothing to suggest that Zaccheus either stopped being a chief tax-collector or moved to a smaller, more modest house, let along left everything to follow Jesus, but he certainly learned to see his material wealth in a very different way.

An interesting tale to set alongside that of the woman in the Temple who gave 'all she had to live on'.  Presumably Zaccheus was still giving from his plenty?  Maybe he could serve as a 'type' (for those into such language) for middle class professionals today?

Yesterday I was pretty hacked off (as I'm sure you noticed) about the delay in my treatement, caused by an administrative error.  No use crying over spilled milk though, and today I am focussing forward again.

A little first today - the first time I went outside without a hat since last September!  It was nice to feel the air around my head, even if my hair is not yet long enough for the wind to blow through it.

I have also booked a couple of holidays and a conference during the summer, so time near Oban, on Arran and in Oxford all lined up - should be fun.

So, lots to look forward too once this last phase is finally over.

I type this at a point when I should have been an hour away from going for my final checks ahead of starting radiotherapy tomorrow.  An hour ago I had a phone call to say that due to an administrative glitch the necessary papers had not not been signed and the whole thing will be shifted 'downstream' by a week.

I know in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter but it is "flipppin' annoying" and I'd cheerfully thump those repsonsible (in love, of course).

So, a bit of tracking downstream to where the stones have been re-laid.

I'm just glad, given it was only two hours notice of the change, that I live locally and had not already set out to get to the hospital.

Sorry, this is a bit of a rant!  I ought to be glad this is the first thing that's gone awry, and I am really, it's just that when you can see the finish line it's frustrating to have it moved.

... can you fit into one living room?  Evidently the answer yesterday was 19, as our 'First Monday' group squeezed into my living room for a presentation and discussion on Mennonite theology.

The speaker is one of the Gatherers who retains her Canadian Mennonite identity.  Given the debated and debateable anabaptist influence on the original Baptists (Smyth and Helwys went to Amsterdam and had contact with anabaptist fellowships) it was interesting to hear about one strand of anabaptists in a Western, and more speicfically North American, context.

There was, as I'd expcected, much in common, from believer Baptism to separation of the church and state.  The biggest difference, I think, is that for Mennonites active persecution continued into the twentieth century, which means that this is a tradition living out that legacy - for Baptists, at least in the West, such experiences are 'old history' and so don't actively shape our daily lives.

I was struck by the fact that there are what might be termed 'cultural Mennonites' - those whose forebears were active in faith but who, whilst so labelling themselves, no longer attend church or live specifically in accord with Mennonite teaching.  At the same time there are what might be termed 'incomers' - people with no Mennonite background who are seekers after Christ.  The long term impact of this for Mennonites will be interestng to observe - and I can't help wondering how open they might be to learning from the experiences of other Reformation (Protestant or Radical) traditions who have already travelled this path.

I was fascinated by the Mennonite canon-within-a-canon for scripture: first the sermon on the mount, then the gospels, then the rest of the New Testament, then the Old Testament.  If I had the time it would be interesting to compare and contrast this with such Baptist oddities as the scriptures central to the Six Principle Baptists and dear old (?!) Spuregeon on the downgrade, or even, for that matter the ancient views of Marcionism.  I wonder, for all our claims, what is really the canon-within-a-canon that Baptists are inclined to use?

A very interesting and thought provoking evening.