Here I am, once again, posting a Blog on College Quiet Day. Actually I think it's quite a good thing to do because it's reflective.
So we've just had half-term weekend - Friday 1pm to Monday 3.30pm for me, as my weekend was bookended by a lecture in Oxford and a placement meeting. Still, it was enough time to get to the Westcountry and back. Driving down the M5 an extraodinary thought bestruck me, and it is as follows: I am getting a little bit homesick.
Now before you come rushing up to Oxford with a box of Kleenex, worry ye not, I'm not talking the full-on-bawling-in-the-middle-of-the-night-wish-i-could-come-home kind of homesickness. I'll be just fine in Oxford for now. But as the land flattened out and the willow trees began to appear, the place names on the signs becoming familiar, and I realised I was in my favourite place.
The reason this is such a great revelation for me is that, ever since I chose Exeter as my University (Exeter being but a mere 44 miles from the house in which I had lived all my life) and then, in 2009, taking the plunge and buying a house in Devon, I always wondered if I wasn't being particularly adventurous. I mean, living in the same part of the UK all your life, why would you want to do that when there's a world out there, or at least other bits of the UK to explore? But, actually, I don't feel that way any more. So my revelation of the week is thus - if I live in the Westcountry for the rest of my life I really don't mind, as it seems to be where I belong. Fortunately, Paul agrees.
Over the last few days I've finally bit the bullet and turned my Resurrection essay from a pile of notes into what is starting to resemble an actual essay.
It's been a while since I wrote an essay. I believe May 2008 was the last time I handed one in. Actually it's quite a weird feeling doing it again. I'm sticking to the same technique which I like to describe using the metaphor of baking. When I say 'like to describe' I've only just thought of this metaphor, so let's go with it and see what happens.
I take a long time shopping for ingredients and measuring them out - that is, finding the books and reading them. This essay has been really challenging as I've had to read quite widely - I'm trying to marry up three doctrines of the resurrection body from very different eras with feminist and disabled identity concerns - so that's five different elements to start off with. But it's a bit like ingredients really - the eggs are a different texture to the flour, the milk to the sugar, but I hope they'll all come together in the end. Then I write an essay plan, like a recipe, and number my notes according to where I think they'll fit in the essay. Then I chuck it all down on paper, really quickly and messily, don't worry about the word count yet, and see what happens.
What do you mean that's a terrible metaphor and your technique is essentially the same as anyone else's technique? You try and write an interesting post on writing an essay!
Well anyway, my essay's at 9,000 words now, which seeing it's meant to be 7,000 is a bit much. But I'm leaving it to bake for a couple of weeks then I'll go back with a fresh eye and see what can be taken away. All in all I'm pretty pleased. I'm not kidding myself that I'll get a first - this is Oxford, this is Masters level, and I have quite a lot else on my mind. But a 2:1 would be just lovely.
In other news, at my mid-week placement this week, a teenager approached me and asked if I was pregnant. This came as a great surprise as I was, up until this point, pretty sure I wasn't showing. But as I hadn't told a soul at my placement yet, she couldn't have worked it out any other way, and she justified the observation by telling me that I am the "same shape" as her Mother was when she was pregnant. Fair logic, I suppose.
So it's baggy jumpers for me from now on. Actually, this whole pregnancy this is getting a bit weird. Although I don't think it's really noticeable yet, I am definitely aware that I am expanding and feel a bit heavier. I've now reached 15 weeks - in 3 weeks or so I might start to feel it kicking.
Friday is half-term which is great because we get to return to the Westcountry for a couple of days. We're going baby-clothes shopping with Mum on Saturday, and hopefully going to St David's on Sunday and seeing Emma and Emily in the afternoon. Can't wait.
That's all my news really. Paul's at Spouse's bowling tonight so I'm off to Kate's for a cup of tea. Lovely stuff.
I'm looking out of my study window, snow is everywhere. Immediately below me a toddler and her parents are making a snowman. Beyond, in the sloping field, a small army of older children are sledging as they have been for the last 6 hours. This makes me quite happy, because ever since the dawn of time, before TV and computers, snow would have led to children doing exactly this; playing in it and sliding down hills very fast on it. And here I am indoors having made it to Asda and back for supplies and now very happy to sit at my computer in a warm dry pair of jogging bottoms and a hoodie. Gosh, I'm so boring these days!
This weekend I've been learning how to lead Godly Play. I hadn't heard of it before coming to Cuddesdon, but I've seen it done a few times in Childrens' Church and felt both intrigued and a little sceptical, so I enrolled myself onto the course.
Basically, Godly Play is telling Bible stories through moving models. The children sit in a circle and the leader speaks very softly, looking down at the model and not at the children, as they guide them through the story. The models are very minimalist, always made of wood or natural materials. And the words used are non-preachy. At the end of the story the leader asks a number of "I wonder..." questions ("I wonder if this person has a name", "I wonder what your favourite bit of the story was", "I wonder where you would put yourself in the story" etc. etc.) The children are never told that an answer is wrong. After the 'wondering' they are invited to 'wonder' some more through drawing, painting, making things with clay or just playing with the model that was used to tell the story.
I think the training's been a real eye-opener for me. There's lots about Godly Play that I love. I love the idea of not being preachy to children, of leaving them to work out things for themselves, and of not telling them "ok now we're making a donkey" but letting them respond in the way they want. There are some things I still feel a bit sceptical about - like how you maintain control in this situation, and how interested the children might be in quite a long story where they just have to sit still and quiet. But I've seen it done with children before and, for the mostpart, they are pretty engaged.
I really wish I was back at St David's now and could try out Godly Play on the children there. I think so often in my leading of Junior Church I was too concerned that the children 'got the message' immediately without giving them the space to work out the message for themselves - or the freedom to take something away from the Bible story that is completely different to what I, in my narrow grown-up way, wanted to teach.
Still, lots of exciting possibilities to do this stuff in the future. There's my Easter placement for a start, I may be able to do a Sunday School session for them. And Curacy of course. We know that Curates always get lumbered with the kids work!
And I really want this Godly Play Liturgical year clock - it might be quite a good teaching aid for adults (and a handy reference for me too!)
