So here goes:
Is most of the material you post yours? I ask this because you post poetry and images which I am unable to find elsewhere and wonder if this means that it has originated with you or perhaps that you are good at concealing sources.
The majority of the stuff is mine, when it's not I try to make sure that I post credits and links to the it. Some of the stuff is sent to me by people but the poetry, writing and many of the images are indeed generally mine.
When you write do you do so to impress people, become a source for others or write for yourself? I ask this because at time it appears that I am nestling inside your mind rather that watching you on the big screen (something I rather like if I am honest in my own assessment).
I don't write to impress people, which is good because it isn't that impressive, but to fulfill my own need to dialogue internally, This means that the blog is a sort of scratchpad for me to hang ideas, situations and other 'stuff' that is going on around me in my various bits of ministry and life. So your assessment of 'being inside my head' is pretty well spot on. It's not a performance, it's my reality.
Do you mean it when you claim to be 'an average Church of England priest'? It appears to me that you are very different from the majority of Church of England priests and your ability to engage with often quite complex thinking and produce something simple is either a gift or the result of more, or perhaps different, education from many of your colleagues.
Indeed I do mean it. I don't see myself as being anything but one of the many Anglican Priests who are out there doing the stuff and pastoring the flock. I am different from the others because I am me and my journey to ministry was, I assume, different to everyone else (even though I'm sure there are common areas as well)and everyone else is different too! With the thinking bit, my interests and theological training and study do all shape how I engage and it was one of the courses I've done that pushed the idea of trying to make theology accessible rather than use all the 'theology speak' stuff and make it high sounding and generally inaccessible. I assume (well I hope) that this is what is going on. Of course it could just be that I don't understand it :)
So there we have it, the questions answered as best I can. I hope that this meets some of the demands (undemanding though they were) of your mail to me and hope that this will help others understand me and the blog a little better.
V
2 comments:
When you say one of the courses I assume you mean one of the subject areas within the couple of years that every ordinand goes through so why would this make you any different from the rest?
Also are you claiming that you actually dum down what you write because if you are then you are assuming that everyone is thicker than you?
Hello Anon. Thanks for the question.
What I am referring to here is a Post Grad' course in Applied Theology which I did some time after Bible College. This course was focussed (well it was for me) on putting aside all the theologyspeak that I had picked up but keeping the understanding and communicating it to others such that (and these are my own words, but I think it's what they meant)
I made the difficult things simple to understand and apply and the simple things commonplace in those I engaged with
This is what I seek to do as theologian and apologist combined.
I did want to be a full-time, full-on theologian when i grew up and hope that I will be one day but know that for me at least and for now in particular this has to take place within the pastoral role.
Thus far I have managed to do courses of study in five different settings. Some of which has been (as you rightly say) part of the ordinand path. That said, I only got one full-time year at college because they took my previous record into account (bummer or what?). Not sure what or where next but now I have been fully mended (hole in the heart, who'd have thought it) I have a feeling there is more to come and there is a thesis still hanging on a hook that beckons increasingly louder. Hmmm - Dr Vic - at least I get a floppy hat for the train journeys (guarantees a seat every time).
As for the part the second, 'No, I am not dumbing down' what I write and I certainly never work from the premise that everyone is thicker than me because this would be rude, arrogant and patently wrong! I write as I speak and so, as the other writer said, you get what's inside the limited grey matter not a performance.
Thank you for your questions, I hope I have done justice to them.
Pax
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