Week 4 follow-up

In a comment on my last post, my excellent friend Chubbic has pretty much nailed my (our) mental process, if anyone's curious. I have my reservations about the way MBTI typing sometimes gets used, but this is as clear a description of the way my thinking works as any I've read.

In light of some exchanges with classmates since yesterday, I was prompted to open a running file of research ideas I have kept since fall 2011. In this file I've jotted any topic I've come across that struck me as something I might enjoy researching someday, when I had the freedom to pursue it. The idea is that some of these might germinate into articles, or even popular-level books. I've ignored this list for long stretches, while trudging through valleys of academic ennui. But glancing over it today (it's a little over a page long, at this point), I felt a little more encouraged than disillusioned, which itself is a hopeful sign. Even if most of these never come to fruition, much less publication, it's heartening to think that they haven't totally lost interest for me. Even if I don't go the route of the traditional academic job, there are still some neat things I could do after graduation. And just because my interest and creativity and drive have been at a fairly low ebb over the past few years, that doesn't mean it will always be this way.

September 17 dissertation notes (week 4: scrutiny)

Thanks for the encouraging comments last week; they helped a lot.

Tonight was the feedback session with my advisor and Early Church colleagues. It wasn't so bad. The last three times we did this, I was so nervous beforehand that I didn't eat. (Which, trust me, doesn't happen that often.) Tonight Kevin took me out for dinner beforehand, which was helpful in multiple ways. I came in feeling more sane, more settled, and less likely to faint, which is always good.

In case you're wondering, I went with my instinct and submitted my material from over the summer, rather than trying to cobble together something more "respectable"-looking at the last minute. It was the right decision. The consensus was that it's in many ways an improvement over what I've submitted in the past. However, there still isn't absolute clarity about what the core focus of the dissertation is, so I need to put some more work into that before I resume chapters. It's really frustrating to me that I struggle to express my thoughts in the concise and crystal-clear form my advisor wants to see. Why is this??? It isn't about writing ability; it's something about my thought processes, I guess, and that's tougher to pin down. The discussion was whether my dissertation is about preaching, or the Holy Spirit, or the role of the Holy Spirit in preaching, or the role of the Holy Spirit in the sacramental life of the church; and my response is pretty much, "...All of the above?" Which doesn't seem to be working for anyone. So, I don't know. My advisor wants to see a revised outline in two weeks (which, I have to remind myself, sounds like a long time, but probably amounts to 32 hours of work if I'm being super optimistic), so I'll nail it down one way or another.

Since I spent most of this week reading my classmates' excerpts in order to give them feedback (I ultimately have to read each draft about 4 times in order to come up with good comments/questions; it isn't something I can cram in the night before), I don't have anything else to report productivity-wise. That's okay. It's always an interesting and worthwhile exercise reading others' work. I don't even mind, much, that I am nearly the farthest behind at this point. They're a good group of guys (and women -- we've been slowly gaining some).

Anyway. That's done. I don't have to worry about another meeting until January. Maybe I'll be in better form by then.

September 11 dissertation notes (week 3)

This week, I’m back to feeling how little I know what I’m doing, and how little energy I have to fake it.

Following an enjoyable Labor Day weekend, I lost the earlier part of the workweek to sickness, to one of those colds that often hits once campus fills up with people again, then retreats as quickly as it struck. I more or less sleepwalked through working in the library on Tuesday and Wednesday (though I avoided knocking over any priceless manuscript displays as far as I know), then was able to sleep more than 12 hours on Wednesday night into Thursday, which helped a great deal! I’ll probably be feeling back to normal by the time the weekend is through.

The thing that really made the bottom fall out of this week, though, was my advisor’s call to submit excerpts of our work for a group feedback session next week. We do this three times a year, and it has a history of going rather poorly for me, filling the previous two weeks with anticipatory dread. I’m supposed to submit something by the end of today, so I’ve been cobbling together a section on Gregory’s preaching in the context of baptism…mostly culling portions from older drafts and trying to make them fit into the restructured format I worked on over the summer. But I’ve realized it feels like such a waste of everyone’s time to ask for feedback on a slapped-together ten pages when I don’t know if the new structure/refined focus (what I sent to my professor a week ago Tuesday) is in good shape. It would probably feel less shameful to say that although I should have written a bunch more pages over the summer anyway, I don’t feel comfortable moving forward until I know if the outline is on the right track. That's mostly an excuse, though.

So, I don’t know what to do. When I have to deal with the dissertation itself and talk about it (instead of busying myself with slowpoke research), there’s such a sense of shame, dread, and confusion—of knowing that I’m quite capable of writing a publishable dissertation, but that I somehow keep failing to follow through on the steps needed to make that happen.

Well, that’s what’s happening this week.

A Sermon on Calling

Even though I studiously take notes on most sermons, I’m honestly not that good at revisiting them, and I want to make sure I remember parts of today’s—possibly they’ll be useful for someone else, too.

Our guest preacher’s text was 1 Corinthians 7:17-24, and he taught about work and calling. I would really encourage you to listen to the sermon itself, once it is posted, rather than hearing it filtered through me. However, here were some of the major points, as I heard them:

• God calls us first to Himself and secondly to particular places and roles. (See, e.g., Romans 1:6, “called to belong to Jesus Christ.”) And we all have multiple callings in our lives; "calling" is not reducible to our employment.


• The meaning of our work is often hidden from us. Not being able to see the significance of our work can drive us to despair. But God sees it, and He knows why He puts us in a particular place of service. It’s our job to strive to be faithful in that place.


• We struggle with this because we get stuck in a place we don’t like or that doesn’t feel quite right and are tempted to think, “If I could just escape, then I’d be happy.” But as v. 17 shows, there is in Scripture a bias toward staying in the place where God has placed you.


• This is not fatalistic; it does not mean, for instance, that if you are in a bad or unhealthy situation, it wouldn’t be right for you to look for opportunities to get out of it. Like anything, situations like this call for much wisdom and discernment. (An example might be my husband’s decision last year to change careers rather than trying to salvage a career in academia/ministry.)


• However, it does mean that you aren’t always looking for “the next thing” or for advancement or change for its own sake. This ties into a challenge many of us experience, where Christian and secular ideas about calling are banging around in our heads, to the point that what we’re espousing is really a secular idea baptized: namely, that “my work should be fulfilling.” We are prone to exaggerate the range of options we have and to act like there’s a perfect situation out there for us, if only we could find it, or set ourselves up for it in just the right way. (And, realistically, it’s a relatively privileged few who have this kind of flexibility open to them, much less the ability to take advantage of it.) Biblically speaking, though, we’re called instead to serve God based on the abilities He has given us.


• So, in other words, try not to think of life as a series of choices; ask yourself instead, “How can I find myself within the web of relationships and circumstances in which God has placed me?” Instead of, “What do you want to do?” or “What will make me happy?”, ask “Where has God put me?” Trust Him with the gifts, experiences, opportunities, and relationships He’s given you, and don’t worry about the tangible results, which are not up to you and not even, necessarily, the point.

[To be clear, the rest are my own extrapolations/reflections.]

One thing I like about this is that it’s affirming of the goodness of ordinary pursuits. I know I’ve heard a lot of messages, whether explicit or implicit, trying to stir up Christians to make a big impact in the world for Jesus; but I’ve wondered lately how much this might be shaped by worldly thinking, or, dare I say it, a “theologian of glory” mindset. It presumes a lot, both about the uniqueness of our gifts and about God’s intentions in using them. It certainly seems to rest on me knowing what I’m doing, which is a potentially crushing thought—because what if I miss that one thing I’m apparently uniquely equipped to do? And who is to say that the more obviously visible impacts are the most important or most pleasing to God?

I also think this is an especially challenging word to my generation. I’m probably not alone in having grown up imbibing the message that I have a unique calling and a very specific niche I’m called to carve out, and not only that, I can expect to be "fulfilled" in the pursuit of my passion. Talk about soul-crushing—and how discouraging to reach a point where you’ve followed all the “right” steps and discover that you’ve “failed” because you just don’t love it enough! Again, how much of this is a function of privilege, of the illusion that our choices are unlimited and that we really can be anything we want to be? I know for a fact this isn’t how Christians have thought about vocation and calling for the vast majority of history; and I doubt it’s a mindset that would even make sense to most Christians in the broader world.

Looking at calling this way can be liberating when the purpose and impact of my work is not transparent to me and might never be in this life. It lifts the burden of needing to have things figured out, and to be constantly in pursuit of the next goal instead of learning contentment here and now—which, let’s face it, is a hard enough task.

It’s not easy to figure out how this translates into specific circumstances, or to unlearn a lifetime’s worth of false messages about one’s purpose and value, but, as Kevin put it, it’s about gradually habituating oneself to a different (biblical) way of thinking.

September 3 dissertation notes (week 2)

Things done this week:

• Submitted my outline, along with the 9-page project summary I’d written earlier in the summer. On Tuesday I came to the conclusion that I could spend another couple of weeks trying to perfect the outline, but that what I actually need right now is feedback on the dissertation’s current state. So I sent everything off without much further ado.
• Finished typing notes on the two books I mentioned last week—John Chrysostom on Divine Pedagogy and The Art of Listening in the Early Church.
• Read/skimmed five journal articles of potential relevance. The impressive thing here is that I did skim, as this is an academic skill which I have generally balked at mastering. Even though I know it’s necessary and expected, it always leaves me feeling a bit yucky. I see the point, though—of these five articles, only one (on Gregory’s preaching on festal occasions) is likely going to be cited much, so it would have been a waste of time to read each of them closely. I guess.

My intent for next week is to begin working on one of my chapters—on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit—in earnest. But that’s sort of pending my advisor’s response.

Other stuff

One thing I’ve learned about myself over the last few years is that I process new material fairly slowly. I don’t feel I’ve actually read something until I’ve written about it, or, at minimum, taken some notes on it. So going through a highly pertinent secondary source (book/monograph) takes me a long time, because I first have to read it carefully, mark important passages with Post-Its, then type up my notes in a Word document. I’m not very quick about any of it. I’ve thought many times that my colleagues must have more efficient ways of doing research, but I haven’t stumbled upon an alternative that works for me. I don’t like reading on or in front of the computer—when I’m reading a book, I really prefer to read a book—and while I have no objection to handwritten notes, I don’t have a system for keeping track of them, and it’s easier to have notes in a searchable format for a project on this scale. So I just keep plodding through everything. I guess you can see why I’ve been kind of a slowpoke about this. And why I have a hard time with skimming.

It’s worth noting that I found a route for a good 30-minute walk through the neighborhood this week—on the days I’m working at home, this is as important for my mental well-being as anything else.

August 27 dissertation notes

A little background:

My dissertation, to put it most concisely, is on Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 330-c.390) and his theology of preaching. Since December 2013, I’ve written around 120 pages.

At my last advisory meeting, my professor didn’t have a good grasp of what the bigger picture of my dissertation actually is. In the course of that somewhat frustrating discussion, it became clear that the current structure of the dissertation was a relic from an older version of this project (there have been several), and it wasn’t necessarily serving my argument well. So I was asked to submit a detailed outline that better reflects what I’m actually trying to argue. This doesn’t mean I’ll end up having to rewrite large portions, necessarily, but that the way I’m fitting it together will need to be re-thought.

In the process of filling in the outline, I’ve basically been making an assessment of all the material I have so far, trying to determine where further research is needed, etc. To help myself out, I’ve also written a kind of mini-prospectus/summary of the project, which is around 9 pages or so. For better or worse, I need to submit this stuff next week.

Things done this week:

• Finished going through the research notes I currently have, noting things on my outline where appropriate
• Finished reading through relevant parts of Carol Harrison’s The Art of Listening in the Early Church.
• Revisited an article I read three years ago on the genre of the homily/sermon in late antiquity
• Typed up notes from a book I read earlier in the summer on John Chrysostom’s preaching method (not my guy, but still methodologically useful)

Other thoughts

With the outline, I feel like I’ve reached a point where I’m mostly spackling, trying to show that I really do have enough material, and might have passed the point where it’s actually a helpful exercise.

To be perfectly honest, I’ve never really gotten outlines. All the numbers and letters and Roman numerals really confuse me; I never remember what is supposed to go where, and it distracts me from the actual content. I’m not sure my brain is that logical.

Rare is the day that I can just “sit down and write.” I’m not sure how doctoral candidates do that, even. There are so many subsidiary tasks that set you up to write, and they’re not always a linear, predictable set of tasks. I’ve never mastered how to balance these effectively.

I have gotten better at breaking the big, overwhelming job down into smaller, more manageable bites. The problem with this is that I might actually be too good at it, and I lose track of the bigger picture and the relative importance of various pieces. What sounds like a simple step (reading back through my research notes, for example, or typing up and translating some Greek quotations) ends up expanding to consume more time than I had budgeted for it, and I end up feeling disoriented and farther behind than before. I’m sure I’ll have occasion to comment on this again.

Book Review: God's Battle Plan for the Mind: The Puritan Practice of Biblical Meditation

God's Battle Plan for the Mind: The Puritan Practice of Biblical Meditation by David W. Saxton
Reformation Heritage Books (2015); 160 pp.

What does the word "meditation" make you think of? Bible study might not be the first thing that pops to mind. But as David Saxton's book shows, meditation on Scripture is an integral part of Christians' spiritual heritage, and, in particular, it was the engine of the spiritual life for seventeenth-century Puritans. In fact, meditation could be simply described as "the doctrine of Christian thinking." Sadly, as J. I. Packer noted years ago in Knowing God, meditation has become a lost art in the church.

Far from calling for emptying one's mind, biblical meditation is the practice of filling it with the truths of Scripture -- "chewing on" and "digesting" the promises of God, rather than glancing over them in a superficial or merely intellectual fashion. This practice has countless benefits for the Christian, not the least being that, through it, "the Spirit slows down a worrying mind and restores order to the soul of His creatures." Of course, to receive this kind of food and restoration, we have to be willing to devote space in our schedules for more than a cursory reading of Scripture.

After defining meditation, Saxton quickly gets into the thick of its implementation. For this, the Puritans' counsel is often strikingly practical: e.g., the same time of day might not work for every person, but the important thing is to set a consistent time for regular meditation -- ideally when one is freshest. When beginning a period of meditation, choose a verse or theme small enough to dwell on fruitfully, instead of a lengthy chapter. And, of course, the entire exercise must be anchored in prayer, with an eye toward application in daily life. Sermons, too, call for follow-up in meditation, rather than being half-attentively taken in and then forgotten. Saxton has mined a vast body of Puritan literature on how to undertake the practice, and he includes a full bibliography for further study.

Saxton isn't under any illusion that Scriptural meditation comes easily to most modern Christians. But Puritan pastors didn't think any differently about their own congregations. They knew that people are busy, that distraction comes easily, and that the appetite for meditation is something which must be actively cultivated. They understood that meditation "is not a task to be...attempted in our own strength" and urged that Christians persevere in the face of setbacks; these are only to be expected in the process of sanctification.

To my surprise, this book follows up well on my previous book review, in that biblical meditation was viewed by Puritan pastors as a potent remedy for sufferers of depression or any kind of discouragement. As Oliver Heywood wrote, meditation "helps the Christian in sad pressures and soul-conflicts; good thoughts counterwork bad. David could out-argue his disquieting thoughts, so may a Christian."

If you feel intimidated by the thought of taking on a deeper practice of Scriptural meditation, I would say two things, based on my reading of this book (and I am assuredly saying them to myself as well!): it is right to recognize the gravity of the practice and the likelihood that it will be a struggle at times. And yet, be encouraged by the fact that dwelling on God's Word is a refuge for the weary soul. If you need some direction on the journey, Saxton, along with the dozens of Puritan voices he shares, offer hearty companionship.

The publisher provided me with an electronic review copy of this book, and I was under no obligation to give a favorable review.