2nd draft

I got my second draft done on time on 23rd May, before I went on holiday as I had planned. At 90,000 words without appendices it's still a bit long, but it's in. Unfortunately I was so chuffed by this acehivement I forgot to renew my library books before heading off to the rather damp south-west corner of the country that I got fined (!).

Now I have various other writing projects to complete whilst waiting for comments on my draft.
Hannah has also been hard at work on her exams, this time with the added feature of a recently dislocated shoulder. I'm putting her rainbow prayer here, as we had to change it for the prayer handbook which couldn't seem to cope with the colour fonts.

Lent 1 Old Testament: Genesis 9:16-17

Rainbow

Rainbow
cOvenant:
You
God
rememBer
all thIngs
liVing

Help us to be as colourful.
Help us to be as careful.


Hannah Warwicker

Getting back to it

I don't think I'm cut out to be a professional blogger because I keep forgetting to blog. On the other hand my PhD is making progress. I not sure I've really got the hang of blogging. For a start you need something distinctive to say. Whilst I have a lot to say I mostly just get on and say it. Blogging in front of a computer is not my natural form of communication, yet. Speech Therapist Theologicus, the name I made up to describe my joint vocation a decade ago, usually does it face to face, although I also appear in print in a number of more traditional formats. Blogging is big: there are more and more out there. But I've not really found the thing I want to blog about.

I could blog about Firth Park Road. I'm in my usual window seat, looking over the park as the trees come into leaf and the crows make sucessive attempts at nest building. Perhaps that would be eco-blogger or park-blogger. I voted Green yesterday, not because I've given up on socialism but because the Labour Party appears to have done, or has, at the very least, become very complascent about the support of ordinary people.



Green is the colour,

the colour of the grass

where the local people pass.

Green is the colour,

the colour of the leaves

where a nest crow weaves.

Green is the colour,

the colour of today,

as each voter had their say.

Green is the colour,

the colour that may last

if we get our act together, fast.

Quiet

It's very quiet in this new office. I've been the only one here for about two hours now. In some ways that's a good thing. Getting on with the PhD is the order of the day/week/month. So quiet is good and helpful. Of course, it's not really quiet because noise comes in from time to time, mostly traffic, the occasional emergency vechile. The grey sky line of the first part of the morning has given way to a pasty looking lighter grey as the sun makes an attempt to break through the clouds. From where I sit the most noitceable thing about Sheffield is building sites. There are cranes stretching up, practicing maneouvres. There are old brown-field sites looking for a new lease of life. There are half finished and half started buildings, some wrapped up in plastic. There are rows and rows of cones. This is the twenty-first century city: always changing. For all I know it has been the story of the city throughout the ages. Maybe prehistoric Sheffield was a building site. The different styles of architecture sit side by side. In some places the roof tops look like rows of teeth, the windows like blank eyes.

In the beginning was the building site.
It was rough and messy and waiting.
The sun came out
and made the puddles sparkle.
The dandelions began to push their way
through the rubble.

a

Easter snow

Easter has now come and gone again, and talk of fixing the date or the weather will abate for another year. Of course such casual conversation allows us a distraction from the real Easter stuff that puts Easter at the heart of the Christian faith.

For me Christian spirituality is earthy stuff. It happens from the ground up and it is about down-to-earth things. Yes, of course the skies, the heavens and the heights are quite marvelous in their own ways but I beleive in life before death and therefore most of what I pray and write concentrates on the ground.

Take Easter Saturday, when we interred my mum's ashes in the churchyard at Hatfield Broad Oak. It was a day of four seasons with every possible weather. We dug the hole for the ashes ourselves and placed them in ourselves, and covered them with earth ourselves. Not so remarkable you might think, except that the British way of death has become increasingly removed from the living. Our sincere thanks to the dozen or so people who stood in the snow laden wind and joined in.

Earth to earth

Cover the earth with a blanket of snow;
cover it, cover it all
so that the cut of the spade
and the turned turf
are invisible again.

After the snow wake the earth gently;
wake it, wake it up
so that each bud
each leaf and blade
emerges fresh and whole.

Inconvenient

As the week of weeks progresses we get into more difficult territory. All the movies and celebrities of our time will never really be able to convey the real horror, even with the lights out and a lot of beards. There are more authentic insights into the sense of hopelessness that was building up and overflowing then and continues now. See the photographs from any of the current war zones, the protests in Lhasa, the conditions in which whole communities live with rampant rates of HIV and AIDS. In some ways the horror is compounded by our ability in Britain to distance ourselves from most of this and to respond 'How awful' to the mildest forms of minor inconvenience like when the supermarket runs out of the product we wanted to buy. Just how awful is that?


How awful

Unable to cross the border into your own country,
unsure where to find clean water or medicine,
unlikely to be able to feed your family,
uncertain if you will be arrested for speaking out:
how much worse can it get?

Quite likely to loose your legs to a land mine,
have to carry your child to an under-equipped hospital
or get raped going to fetch water;
certain to be imprisoned illeagally for years and years:
reader be sure to understand.

Be sure to understand that all this and more
is happening today to someone like you,
with a life like yours,
in a country not far from here.

Will you wait until it happens to you
before you say anything?


[Mark 13:14-23]

The week

This is the week:
the week of cheers
that turn to mocking and jeers
and then to silence
that storms out of twisted streets
to stand at crossroads
in Lhasa, Harare and Rangoon;
the half-remembered week
where guttering flames
and a few lined faces
keep this vigil, still;
the week that takes us further
than any other
and always ends in tears.

just bloggin

I got this blog free when I signed up to write up my PhD. I don't think this is going to be a poem, in fact I'm not really sure what it's going to be. Indeed, I'm not really very sure about blogs.

Being a novice blogger I'm not sure what to put. Things like, 'I got here on the tram', or 'it's a nice day' all seem a bit naff. I did get here on a tram and it is quite a nice day. But to be honest I'm not sure I need a free blog - I just need to write up my PhD. I have yet to be convinced that having a free blog will help me do this.

Currently my PhD survival strategies are:

Classic FM

looking out of the window

hot chocolate with cream on

collecting lots of things that look as if they have a passing reference to my PhD subject

putting off writing my PhD

doing the washing

writing everything except a PhD

All of these have got my through 7 years of part time PhD registration and to the point of having a reasonable draft, which probably now needs completely rehashing. Having a free blog, whilst sitting comfortably in the above list, does not at first sight appear to be a strategy likely to get me any nearer completing the PhD than any of the others featured.



God did not post a blog,

he sent a bloke

who borrowed a moke

and made an entrance

to start a week

so holy

that we've not seen the like since.

As we plod on,

cross-wards

may we be carried by integrity

and commitment.



PS: Other frequently used PhD strategy (along with 90% of the population) is prayer.



PPS: 'Moke' , which I may have spelled wrong, is cockney for donkey.