Adequate (non-timed) run again this morning, coffee and fruit, shower and Morning Prayer, home for coffee and toast, parish email and work on the Holy Week service books. Really, that’s about the size of it, that and traipsing in to the parish centre to check for phone messages. | Continue reading
Not my feet, of course, though mny morning run was mostly all right. My groin muscles thought that having yesterday off meant that they would never have to work again, and I had some small wobbles in joints and muscles, but the run did me good. Coffee, fruit, cleaned up, Morning … | Continue reading
I didn’t run this morning, as Margaret and the dogs and I all felt an extra increment of gravity and sleepiness. I woke at 6:20 and read in bed till almost 7:00, then cooked hot breakfast and prepared for the morning. I had had word of a possible pastoral need, and that was on my … | Continue reading
A good two miles this morning, at a forgiving pace but without pain or strain. Coffee and fruit, cleaned up, Morning Prayer, then walked the rest of the way into town to pick up a standing mirror we bought yesterday. Another cup of coffee and toast, and now about to dig in to my … | Continue reading
Good run this morning, despite a variety of transient pains and stiffnesses; fruit and coffee, then cleaned up and went to Morning Prayer, and now settled at R&R for public office hours. Since the public isn’t flocking to consult me — can you imagine? — I’ll take a few minutes to … | Continue reading
I woke this morning at a self-congratulatory 6:30, delighted that I had gotten some extra sleep in the morning hours, and only somewhat chagrined when Radio 4 reminded me that it’s now British Summer Time, and I had lost the hour of sleep I had imagined I’d harvested. Got up slow … | Continue reading
I have indeed been running every morning; ‘running’, or going two miles at varying paces anyway. I haven’t taken a timed run in a long time, since that was both making me [more] miserable spiritually (the gains were a rush, but the experience of haunting competitive pressure was … | Continue reading
With a friendly mixture of applause and pushback, I want to flag up Fr Mark’s observations on burnout, and to add some complementary observations. First and most importantly, whatever Mark and I agree or disagree about, we are on one page with regard to the desperately vital impo … | Continue reading
My miles this morning called back the good ol’ days of non-timed runs: a good pace, comfortable stretching and exercise, no desperate strain to go faster. Then coffee and fruit, shower and Morning Prayer for the Feast of the Annunciation, home for another cup and some parish duti … | Continue reading
Sorry — I was alternately writing furiously for homilies for the regular Sunday service and also our Healing and Wholeness service (and our Lenten series), and enjoying the last few days of our visitors’ stay with us. We loved seeing them, and three talks is a lot, and I was utte … | Continue reading
I walked my miles this morning. I mean, several times I tried jogging, but even the lightest push toward forward motion sent a message from my groin muscles saying ‘No’. Most of the day yesterday, and certainly this morning, my timed run yesterday cost me a lot of energy and some … | Continue reading
Another best time for my morning run — though I was sure I’d fallen way behind my recent good times — takes my rolling average down to 17:52. I notice that theere’s a community mile run on 5 May in hoour of Roger Bannister; I’m thinking of giving that a go, since I have copious e … | Continue reading
Took a good non-timed run, coffee and hot breakfast, gave my homily a once-over and spotted a coiuple of places to expand ex tempore, then went in to Morning Prayer, Holy Communion for St Joseph, and home to a restful afternoon. I worked intermittently with the Palm Sunday liturg … | Continue reading
The house was a veritable hive of activity this morning before 8:00, as first I ran my miles (good pace, physically comfortable), then Margaret made her way to a bus stop to catch a train to a teaching day in Nottingham, then our US visitors took a taxi to a train to the Big Smok … | Continue reading
Two miles at a leisurely pace — my legs were positively leaden for the first mile or so, and when they started to move more freely my adductors were tight and resisted my hitting a good pace, or stretching out for longer strides. No worries: I pushed hard yesterday, one can expec … | Continue reading
We had a wonderful first afternoon (and evening) together with Laura and Shannon and Ayres, and this morning I ran my two miles in an unpleasant personal best time that pulled my rolling average down to 18:08. It’ll be hard to push it below 18:00, but that’s going to happen event … | Continue reading
I mean, it should be ‘Lent Vac’, shouldn’t it, since most of the vac comprises the last five weeks of Lent, and Trinity Term follows hard on Easter Day? But call it what you will, it begins today and to celebrate it we will welcome Shannon, Laura, and Ayres for a week’s visit. Tw … | Continue reading
I have some essays to mark, I promised to send my prelims students some guidance on gobbets, and I should talk with Sarah about setting the collection — but I’m through with tutorial teaching now for a few weeks. Indeed, I don’t expect to have tutes in Trinity Term, so it’ll be O … | Continue reading
Merciful heavens, I’m relieved to have gotten through this four-week interval. In Hilary Term, I continue teaching whatever tutorials I usually offer, plus I take up the last four tutes for the Introduction to the Bible class for first-years. It’s a lovely time with wonderful stu … | Continue reading
Easy (non-timed) run, 1° weather, coffee, hot breakfast (minus eggs), shower and Morning Prayer, meeting with a wedding couple, follow-up paperwork, long Staff Meeting, homework assignment for safeguarding certification, follow-up paperwork, tutorial essays to read… This is Eight … | Continue reading
I took my morning run widdershins today, as that takes me to the Iron Bridge earlier, and Thames Water has posted signs to the effect that they expect to cut off all vehicular and pedestrian traffic across the bridge between 10 and 14 March. I wanted to check this out at the begi … | Continue reading
This morning, I really did not want to run. I didn’t feel achey or even especially leaden, but just weary through and through. Hey ho, I did some cursory warm-ups and started on my way, hitting a pretty strong pace on the out mile. A little before the end of my first mile, though … | Continue reading
I started my morning run at speed, but my legs were very stiff and my upper legs sore, and as I pushed to get some momentum and limberness, I accidentally did something off-kilter to the timer, so when I noticed halfway through, I just shut it down and took it easy the rest of th … | Continue reading
So, a non-timed run this morning (good thing, because my legs were weary after my stretching them out yesterday morning for my timed run), bade Margaret good morning as she made her way to Wolverhampton for a catch-up with the Feeneys, fruit and coffee, cleaned up and went to Mor … | Continue reading
The Ash Wednesday service last night went well, I think. Certainly we achieved a truly impressive success in ash/oil mixture for clear, bold forehead crosses; I’ve never seen the like in all my years of ordained ministry. My homily will be below the ‘More’ fold. This morning’s ru … | Continue reading
Non-timed (good) run, coffee and hot breakfast, cleaned up and went to Morning Prayer (St Helen’s Wharf barricaded because of a gas leak; that’ll be unwelcome for the 10:30 service), splendid meeting with an adult baptisand, then helped Margaret restore her data to her new phone, … | Continue reading
I don’t know what happened yesterday, but it looked from this side like a spam attack. I tried to login several times, but couldn’t break through. I did run gently yesterday, -1° thank you, non-timed, and hit a pretty good pace for much of the run. I had a lot of emailing and edi … | Continue reading
Just for the curious, below the ‘More’ fold I will drop this morning’s sermon and the handout from the Faith Forum talk I gave on the Incarnation. Here’s this morning’s homily: And here’s the handout: | Continue reading
A second -1° day in a row, and my run felt disappointing. I didn’t feel strong or limber at the start, and I ran out of gas in the last third of a mile; it was all I could do to keep running all the way to our door. At the time, I thought that… | Continue reading
I ran into a new (to me) inaccurate citation this morning: the one about plato claiming that empathy is the highest form of knowledge. No, wrong, incorrect. It caught my ear because I felt confident that it was both not the way Plato thought about knowledge and not the way he’d h … | Continue reading
I took an untimed morning run today; just as well, because my right knee was irritable and my whole body felt resentful about the bitter -1° weather. Hot breakfast, coffee and another coffee, and working on both a homily for tomorrow (on Moses’s face, not on Paul’s ill-conceived … | Continue reading
Whose idea is this return to cold weather? I know, ‘March comes in like a lion…’, but honestly, when I checked the weather app before my morning run, the temps in my morning running time were consistently below 5°. It’s blessedly good to have longer days, but it would soothe my s … | Continue reading
I took a non-timed morning jog/walk (we had a spell of rain exactly in the middle of my run, so I sheltered under an overhang for a while); home to coffee and fruit, shower and dress for Morning Prayer, then to Oxford for three tutorials and a talk by Jarel Robinson-Brown. Then, … | Continue reading
I’ve let sermons back up a bit. Below the fold, as it were, I’ll post Sunday’s sermon, then Sunday evening’s homily from the Healing and Wholeness service, then this morning’s homily from the 10:30 Communion service. Sometimes people ask — the answer is, ‘here’. So, here’s the se … | Continue reading
I took a non-timed run yesterday morning after not running at all on Sunday (rain and inanition, if I recall correctly). It was just as well — I felt as though I were running in treacle. Then on Monday: coffee and fruit, cleaned up, Morning Prayer, home for coffee and a Teams mee … | Continue reading
I slept till 7:00 (unthinkable for me) and it was rainy when I woke, so no run today. Coffee, fruit, morning Prayer, home for more coffee and toast, then marking and work on Holy Week service booklets. (Quick in wirintg, not quick running, which I didn’t do.) | Continue reading
I finally got in a weather-able, correctly timed, non-leg-weary run this morning, and at a good time — my rolling average drops below 20:00 for the first time, to 19:50 today. I am sure I’ll have more slow days in weeks to come, but at least I see some progress, which is why I re … | Continue reading
The other morning I was especially stirred when I read the previous night’s headlines from the Fractured States of America, so I went on a tear on Bluesky. This is what I wrote: Look, I hate to say this, but from over here it looks as though the US has turned the corner and enter … | Continue reading
News has come round the Web (via Mike Aubrey) that Carl Conrad, an exceptionally thoughtful, generous classicist-philologist who for a long time taught at Washington University in St Louis. I just posted the following reminiscence at the B-Greek bulletin board, descendant of the … | Continue reading
I had a bit of a lie-in this morning, at least by my standards, waking up at 6:15 and not getting out of the house till after 7:00. I promptly decided that the way my legs felt, I would take today as a restful day — walking and jogging my two miles, but not asking… | Continue reading
Perhaps more to the point, I timed my morning run but botched it somehow — I wasn’t on my best pace, but I am 100% confident that I did not take 2:56 to get around my two miles. No big deal, though if I wasn’t running to time, I wish I had had the chance… | Continue reading
Lovely evening at Exeter with the churchwarden and his sister; high marks for another ancient college (with an exquisite chapel)! It was raining when I woke up at 6:15, so I (with relief) opted not to run. I poured a cup of coffee, had some fruit for breakfast, will clean up and … | Continue reading
Last night, I had the chance to talk with three of the students whom I’ll meet in tutorials for the first time tomorrow. We had good conversations (not about Luke), and Sarah (their HB tutor) has been very encouraging about them. The next four weeks — with my four first-years as … | Continue reading
Not so much physically active, but definitely active on emails and services and sermons and… So, this chilly morning (0° when I ran) I put in my two miles with a new personal best time, one that pulls my rolling average back down to 20:03. I can’t tell you how I made the differen … | Continue reading
The only item on my timetable for today is a pastoral visit to a retired priest in our parish (which ordinarily takes upwards of two hours, sometimes more, since he abounds in story-telling). Apart from that I’m swatting emails when they fly too close to me, and working on a serm … | Continue reading
Two miles at a mid pace, rolling average creeping up to 20:09; coffee and fruit, say Morning raayer, then after a while, coffee and toast; shower, dress, fine-tune sermon (in the ‘Continued’ section), then to church for Mass and sermon. I’ll preside at Evensong tonight. | Continue reading
Let’s see…. Yesterday morning I took an easy, non-timed run. As it turned out, I walked for significant portions of the two miles; my ankles and knees appreciated the gentler treatment. I didn’t even start the clock; I knew from the start that this would be a semi-rest day. Then … | Continue reading
A second sub-20 two miles this week, as once again I surprised myself and lowered the rolling average to 20:02. At this rate, I may attain a five-day average below twenty minutes as early as tomorrow. I didn’t expect my pace to break twenty minutes till warmer weather. Lunch and … | Continue reading