The Conference and my Studies

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