fI was trying to work out what to blog about today, and the long suffering wife has suggested that my write-up about the conference might be seen as somewhat...well "lacking" is the expression she used.
The difficulty with trying to talk about the conference is – that let's be honest – you don’t care. Do you really want to know about a lecture I attended given by the very brilliant Dr Hannah Holtschneider of the University of Edinburgh ‘Regarding the Pain of Others reflections on the use of photography in Holocaust musems.’? No, if you were that fussed, you would have been there, or have all ready done some reading on the subject. Even if you did decide from my description of it that this is a topic you want to know more about, I wouldn’t necessarily be the best person to ask...she would.
I suspect then my wife is suggesting that I talk about the room I was sleeping in – (it had a bed and sink) or about how wonderful Cambridge is as a city (very) ..or… you see, the problem is, I really am not sure what small talk I can make from all this, and even how worth while doing so would be.
Having returned – panic still high about money, working 8.30-6pm in a 9-5 job (so to speak), I am ever more certain that this is not where I want to be – that I would love to be studying full time, that I would love to be learning and with that learning, hopefully, changing. This brings me onto my new Degree course. This is a course which approaches theology not as just an academic discipline in which one can develop an ever better argument, and attempt to answer the question, for example “”Is there a God?”, or “What does God require of humanity”, but rather “How will I become what God requires me to be”. This is a substantial shift for me – not because I don’t look for the application of knowledge, but, up to this point, if I was to submit a paper which revealed a “faith biais” I would have been dragged over burning coals while academics pointed at me while murmuring “shame”. My new course is designed to consider the application of learning not in the presentation of a compelling paper (although that is gladly recived) but in the application of these principles.
This raises an interesting question about the course in my mind as a “Degree”. Please don’t get me wrong – I believe that the focous is a good and positive one – it is training for ministry that the course aims to provide after all – but should training of this type – which requires a particular religious belief within the practical ministrial modules – be termed as an academic degree?
Yours as ever,
Studiously, the broken man
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2 comments:
This made me laugh out loud when you said we don't care because it reminded me of the time I told my husband about your post on not caring about stuff and he just gave me the look of yeah, and?, he's right. :o) Blessings, Whitney
My degree was biological anthropology (at Cambridge *lol*) - I wonder how anyone would make that subject fit into such practice?! It's primarily a scientific subject, with a social science leaning and several controversial areas for some people. Like breastfeeding and probably ministry *g*, it's a topic that you can get cornered with and have to fight your case in as pleasant a way as possible.
Random babbling.. One of my fellow students was a little out of place(?) on that course. Here we all were, studying human evolution with all our might, while she professed to be a Creationist through and through, just writing what she knew the lecturers wanted to see as far as the depths of human history was concerned. She got a First. I still boggle, though I can see why she did it that way. She's now doing a bioethics PhD.
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