Wulf's Webden

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11 March 2023
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Affective Language

Apparently the proper term for what NT Wright has coined “Jesus is my boyfriend” songs (Christian worship songs that are light on theology and might need little or no adjustment for the regular pop charts) is “contemporary worship using affective language”. In other words, language which dwells on feelings and affection and is also likely to be very centred on the first person singular: I this, I that, I the other (see Love Songs to Jesus by Graham Hunter, Grove, 2020)

I tend to lean away from them. I am deeply aware that song lyrics often embed themselves in people’s brains. Given that responsibility, when I am leading worship music, I want to leave people with words that remind them of God’s glory and majesty and express his dealings with us in biblically-rooted theology.

It rather surprised me and perhaps one or two others when I started the worship for this morning’s PCC away day with Good, Good Father, a fairly recent song (2014) that is strongly towards the affective end of the spectrum, particularly in the verses. There was an overall arc to more anchored songs, ending with the classic When I Survey the Wondrous Cross (1707) after communion at the end of the afternoon. I am glad, though, that the first set did seem to fit smoothly into the day and with what our guest speaker had to bring us.

Sometimes putting a worship set together (and I’ve now got hundreds under my belt) is a lot of hard graft and decisions based on sound lyrics and sensible musical choices. Every now and then though, there is a intuition which calls to be followed. I can’t say it always works out but it is worth being willing to take the chance for the times when it does.

10 March 2023
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Almost through the wood

When I got my chainsaw, the plan was to speed up how fast I could work my way through the various bits of wood we’ve accumulated. Long bits need to be broken into shorter sections (about 7-8″ is a good length for our burner) and thicker ones need to be split to help them dry out quicker.

It has done the job very well. This afternoon I finished almost all of the backlog. What I’ve got left now is mainly a collection of shorter or more uneven bits but the corner that had been jammed with sticks and logs for a year or more (probably more – every time I cleared a bit, more would be added) is now clear. The chainsaw will help with some of those, where I can safely secure them for cutting and the rest will be back to hand tools.

That means we’ve got a decent stock of wood seasoning for next winter and space to take opportunities to get more.

9 March 2023
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Undermining screws

I recently got some old timber for the log burner that was very handy except for the minor problem of some pieces having screws in. Screws? Surely that’s not a problem to a man with an impact driver? It wasn’t for the regular length ones but it was a big lump and some of the screws were approaching 15cm / 6″ long. I still count my impact driver as a trusty tool but it wasn’t shifting some of them and I didn’t want to tear up the driver bits by pushing it too long. A bigger screw has a lot of surface area in contact with the wood and requires a lot of force to get it out.

Using my hatchet and splitting maul, I was able to get some more of them out but I didn’t want to swing too close to the metal. When a screw was driven across the grain, it wasn’t possible to set up a split which would let me remove it.

That brought me to another strategy. Out came my cordless oscillating multitool, another of those items rapidly earning the ‘trusty’ title. I didn’t want to use a regular saw (or my chainsaw) as it looked like some of the screws might have been a bit bent. However, the multitool let me gradually open up channels to the point where the screws came loose or the remaining wood around them just dropped off. The other approach would have been to just chuck them in the burner, screws and all. These, after all, weren’t fixings I was anticipating using again.

It was satisfying though to gradually puzzle my way through the necessary cuts to get the job done. It wasn’t the fastest way but, since it didn’t need to be, that didn’t matter. It is also a reminder that a screw can only be as good as what it is fixed into.

8 March 2023
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Static charge

I don’t know if it was just the fact that we had a lot of children at the toddlers group today and the slide was turned out to be the item they all wanted to use but it built up a lot of static electricity. I spotted that to a limited extent a few week ago (one of the kids got a wonderful ‘Einstein’ look when he sat at the top of the slide with his fine and slightly wayward hair) but it seemed even more so today. Sometimes I could feel little shocks of static discharge as I reached out to steady the younger ones at the top, or to calm down the boisterous who hadn’t quite grasped the idea of waiting in turn.

I do have an antistatic bracelet in my computer repair kit but I don’t think I can safely ground myself without causing a trip hazard (lots of toddlers whizzing round the room). I’ll have to see if it happens again and, if necessary, come up with a plan before I accidentally zap a child and send them across the room in a flash of blue light! To be honest, I didn’t get a sense that any of them particularly noticed as they were more excited about climbing the steps and having another go but I would like to pin down what is going on and whether, as seems to be the case, it is becoming more a pronounced phenomenon.

7 March 2023
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Snow Here?

From last night’s forecast, I thought we were going to have snow or at least frost overnight but not a bit of it. In fact, it was a crisp, clear and relatively warm morning.

However, I can see some tiny flakes coming down outside my window now. Nothing is settling, at least not yet. We might have got off lightly this morning but I think I’ll continue with extra precautions tonight.

6 March 2023
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Debts, trespasses, sins

Towards the end of February, I posted a photo of a stack of books to illustrate that I was preparing to deliver another sermon. You can watch the version I did the following day in our YouTube service for the following Sunday:

Service including sermon by Wulf

In the live Sunday service, I edited it down a little bit (the whole segment on whether an examiner would have given Paul top marks for his ‘essay’ or marked him down for getting carried away on the praise of Jesus), but it gives a fairly good impression of the talk. One of the things I mentioned was that older versions of the Lord’s Prayer used the word ‘debt’ instead of ‘sin’ but, last week, I spotted that the ‘traditional language’ version for the Church of England actually says ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who sin against us’. Was I wrong?

It would be embarrassing if I was, as I built a lot on this word debt and another economic term: redemption. Nobody had mentioned it but I’ve since done a bit more follow up study, particularly with an article on the Desiring God website. It turns out that, as in many things, the answer is complex!

While modern Anglican liturgy uses ‘sin’, the traditional form (shared with Roman Catholics and Methodists) is ‘trespass’. It seems that a lot of that goes back to William Tyndale, who published an English New Testament in 1526 that made that choice. Ten years later, he was executed for his pains (the era of the Protestant Reformation makes contemporary British society look quite safe and mellow by comparison) and the King James Bible (1611) opted to use the word ‘debt’ in Matthew 6:12 as most later English translations still do. However, Cranmer’s 1549 prayer book, a strong inspiration for the 1662 Book of Common Prayer which is still the traditional Church of England liturgy, chose to use ‘trespass’ as, indeed, did later Roman Catholic translations into English (despite the Latin liturgy using debita).

Various other Christian traditions have habitually stuck with ‘debts’ in their traditional form so, while I was clearly wrong in terms of Anglican liturgy, I was still correct in the context of a church that draws from quite diverse denominational backgrounds, in terms of traditional language in English bibles and in how it was written in the original Greek.

By the way, Luke’s version (Luke 11:4) is also worth a look. Modern versions tend to contrast ‘forgive us our sins’ with ‘as we forgive those indebted to us’, indicating how both words hover around the same centre of meaning.

5 March 2023
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Covers (back) on

It’s getting cold again. The latest forecast suggests it might get down to -5 between Tuesday and Wednesday. So much for the arrival of spring!

I was down at the allotment on Friday putting horticultural fleece back over the broad beans and other young plants I’d uncovered a week or two earlier. I’ll have to remember to get in the back garden tomorrow and use the rest to cover things like the camellia, which presently has lots of promising buds. It would be nice to see it come properly into flower rather than losing this year’s display.

4 March 2023
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At the Benefit Gig

We’ve got a benefit gig running at church tonight – in fact right now. It runs until 10pm at Thorpe Acre church in Loughborough. Free entry and all donations welcome towards the relief efforts in Turkey and Syria following last month’s devastating earthquakes.

3 March 2023
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Lenten Mild

I’ve finally got round to another batch of beer. Yesterday I did the mash and boil and today I got it fermenting away. This one is based on Batemans Dark Mild and I last brewed it in 2016 under the moniker Dark Biscuit (because I used biscuit malt rather than crystal malt). This one I have christened Lenten Mild as we’re just over a week into the season of Lent.

I still had a few minor tweaks on Graham Wheeler’s recipe, as I didn’t have everything in my store cupboard. The main twist though was an increased brewing volume. Normally I start with 10l of water, which typically results in about 6l of beer. This time, I spotted that, if I used up all of my remaining pale malt, I could push the water content to 14l. I still mashed with 10l but used the rest to sparge the grains (boiling in 1l batches, pouring over the grains bit by bit and adding the result to the kettle).

I think 14l is about as far as I can push it with my current equipment and about 13 or 13.5l would feel safer but, if it turns out well, I might use a similar approach again. The main factor which may influence things is that 14l (or whatever was left after the boil stage) is too much to fit in the plastic jerry can I normally use to store the wort overnight. Instead I left it in the kettle with a clean tea towel over the top to help limit particles getting in. So, a few question marks but I’ll know more about whether the experiment worked in a week or two.

2 March 2023
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All-real Content Continues

I recently got added to the list of people with access to the AI powered version of Microsoft’s Bing search engine. I’ve been noticing a lot of buzz around Artificial Intelligence powered online interfaces recently, such as a demonstration from Samurai Guitarist on using ChatGPT to write a song in the style of Guns ‘n’ Roses. The first thing that came to mind was to see if the AI powered version of Bing could draft out a blog post for me.

The short answer is no. This content continues to be entirely down to me. I started with “please write a blog post for blog.webden.org.uk” and it told me it was beyond its capabilities although it did pull together a set of links and suggestions on how to do it myself. That answer closed with “I hope this helps you get started with writing a blog post.” Clearly the AI hasn’t figured out that I am the author of this blog (or it knows and is just keeping quiet).

I tried again, more tersely: “write a blog post in the style of blog.webden.org.uk”. This time, I got “That is beyond my capabilities and also violates the copyright of the original author.” Interesting. Maybe AI has learned about copyright and is enacting the equivalent of Asimov’s three laws of robotics? Or maybe Microsoft’s lawyers have got wise and requested a spike to be put in things that could get into grey areas around copyright?

Just for fun, I decided to check this last theory by asking SG’s question. To my surprise, it didn’t give the copyright variation notice but churned out not only a potted history of the band but a different but equally believable pastiche:

I'm on a highway to hell
But I don't care what they say
I've got my whiskey and my cigarettes
And I'm living for today

I’m not planning on working that up but I did ask for suggestions for blog subjects. I’d say the results were fairly anodyne, a mixture of things I’ve done (book and movie reviews) and things that I’m really not qualified to comment on (a guide on how to take care of indoor plants). I am fairly confident that, for at least several months to come, this particular blog is going to remain 100% human.