Phill Sacre

Category: Personal

Miscellaneous ramblings about my personal life. Unfortunately, the most common entry on this blog. Also the most boring / useless. But hey, you never know…

  • Easter Break

    As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, the term system at Oak Hill is a bit strange. Last week was the final week of this half of the third term… we’ve got six more weeks after Easter, then exams, then that’s it for the year. Three weeks into the new term and I’m beginning to feel the strain: I spent most of the week off we had between terms working, and it feels like I haven’t really stopped since Christmas. I have to say, working life was a lot less stressful than college life: there’s much more pressure in terms of deadlines etc at college! And you have to manage your own time more, whereas at work I had a project manager to do that for me (to an extent).

    The past few weeks have flown by, at any rate. We’ve been back to Colchester a couple of times, including going to Sunday@6 last Sunday to see the new vicar at Fordham do his first (evening) sermon. We will be spending Easter weekend back there too – speaking of  which, we now have three weeks off! I say three weeks off, it’s not really – as of tomorrow I will be spending seven days up near Stoke-on-Trent, doing a mission week with a team of fellow college people. I’m a bit apprehensive about it, as it’s something of an unknown quantity – but at the same time, I’m sure it will be good fun once we get there.

    Anyway, this post was just to say I may not be around too much over the next week or so, but hopefully the Internet will survive without me. Just.

  • Need… Caffeine…

    We’re a few weeks into lent, and I’m … just over a week into my caffeine fast. Well, tea and coffee drinking fast. Well, tea and coffee with caffeine in drinking fast. But it doesn’t really sound as good if you say that.

    I did this once before, a few years ago (although strangely enough, I can’t find a blog post about it…) so I was prepared for the headaches for the first day or two. After that it’s fine, it just leaves you feeling a bit tired after a while.

    I don’t really have much else to say, to be honest, so this is just a blog post in the traditional sense of blog posts on my blog. I just wanted to post up something which wasn’t about secularism or gay marriage (what larks!), but yet still communicated the message that I was actually, you know, alive and everything.

    So, I’m alive. *waves*

    Here’s a video of a baby monkey riding a pig.

  • Family Illness

    A couple of weekends ago my parents came up to visit us. We had a cup of tea at our house, and then walked up to Oak Hill – which involves going up a relatively steep hill. My Mum struggled with this – she began to get quite breathless and had to make the return journey by car.

    Anyway, we had dinner, and they returned home that evening. The following evening she had pains in her chest, and early on the Monday morning they went to A&E at the hospital. I’ll cut a long story short here, but it turns out that she has a rare form of lung cancer (by ‘rare’, I mean less than 10% of people who have lung cancer have this particular type.) They were originally warned that it was potentially untreatable, and that she may well only have a few weeks to live.

    (more…)

  • Two down, one to go

    I’m talking about terms, of course. After this week (in which I have two exams), we have one week of holiday, and then we’re back in to the third and final term of the year.

    So, how have things been going this term? I thought I might post up some reflections similar to my reflections after one term.

    The workload has definitely increased this term, which was only to be expected really! I think next term is going to be even worse (with the elective modules I’ve chosen, I have an additional three assignments to be handed in as well as the five required ones).

    These are the main courses I’ve been studying (in no particular order):

    • The Development of the Church and the Doctrine of God – it’s a bit of a mouthful, but basically it’s a church history / doctrine combo module. I’ve found it a great way to study doctrine – learning about it via the medium of early church history and the various heresies that had to be dealt with. As part of the course I wrote an essay on the Trinity which I really enjoyed writing, but more on that story some other time. This course continues through til next term.
    • Old Testament 1 – Genesis to 1 Samuel – I’ve really enjoyed this module. Seulgi, our lecturer, is so enthusiastic about the Old Testament it’s difficult not to enjoy it! The Old Testament is fascinating, and it’s been great to look at it – even at a fairly speedy pace. Just getting an overview of the theme of each book and some of the context, history etc has been invaluable. Next term we will also be continuing with the Old Testament module.
    • Foundations of Philosophy – I’ve never studied Philosophy before, so it’s been great to look at Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine and so on. This course also continues over into next term so I will talk about it properly some other time.
    • Pastoral Epistles – Looking at 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus. We’ve just finished looking at 1 Timothy, we will do 2 Timothy and Titus next term. This has been fantastic as well, it’s great to go further into a particular part of the Bible and the Pastorals really are fascinating books.
    • Apologetics – following on from Cultural Exegesis last term. I’ve learnt a lot in this module about the ‘presuppositional’ model of apologetics, which I kind of knew a little about beforehand but makes a lot of sense to me. Of everything I’ve done this is probably one of the most helpful, practically speaking – I would definitely like to post something up about this in the future.

    Overall, I’m still enjoying the courses, and I’m looking forward to the next term!

    So, that’s how my term has been. Apart from academic stuff, Phil and I have settled down into life at our placement church, and have also been going to Christ Church, Cockfosters in the evenings (including joining a home group there).

    And despite missing Colchester and all the friends we have there, I think we’re pretty much settled into life in London and are happy here 🙂

     

  • Nearly Christmas…

    … and already we’re two weeks into the new term at Oak Hill. (Don’t ask about the term dates… it’s apparently all the fault of the Church of England, or something.)

    Anyway, in the past couple of weeks we’ve also had a couple of trips back to Colchester, once two weeks ago to see Anne-Marie and Sarah, and then yesterday to go to Tom and Clif’s Christmas party. Have to say I feel slightly the worse for wear today, mainly because I think staying up late last night wasn’t great for fighting off the cold I’ve been battling the past week or so. I’m definitely not feeling 100% today.

    Anyway, we have one more week of term (which is a reading week), and then we’re into the Christmas break. I’m not entirely sure whether it’s a good thing to have a reading week so soon into the new term, I don’t really know what I should be reading just yet! – but it will be a good opportunity to consolidate a little, I feel.

    Either way, just wanted to post up to let you all know that I’m still alive, just in case you were wondering!

  • Reflections after one term

    I’ve now been at Oak Hill College for a whole term. I had my one and only exam for this term this morning (New Testament Greek). I thought I’d do a quick post up with my reflections on being here after having completed the initial courses.

    My attitudes have changed slightly since my previous post on the subject, now that the courses have finished here’s a quick summary of what I now think:

    • Creation & The Doctrine of Humanity – I think this is probably the course which has had the most personal impact in terms of my understanding of God. We often talk about God as redeemer and saviour – but not often as creator. This module really got me thinking about that, and in general I think our understanding of creation could probably do with being taught more in churches – it’s so important!
    • Biblical Theology – This was fascinating stuff, particularly when we got to Solomon and typology. That said, I wasn’t sure about how far you could take typology (if you don’t know what that means, don’t worry.) This is a topic I’d like to blog about a little bit more in the future so I’ll continue thinking along those lines.
    • Greek – the exam this morning was pretty hard! But overall I’m finding it really good to learn to read the New Testament in the original language… it’s fascinating to be able to pick apart some modern translations and see which decisions they’ve had to make.

    In general I think it’s a great college and community, very supportive. The teaching we’ve had has been excellent as well. And this term has been a fairly well-pitched introduction – it hasn’t been too stressful in terms of assignments and deadlines, the workload has been about right for someone who wasn’t in the academic world before coming here.

  • Flower

    Flower by phillsacre
    Flower, a photo by phillsacre on Flickr.

    Via Flickr:
    A flower in a vase (well, jug)

  • Autumn is the new summer

    …given some of the temperatures we’ve had recently! That said, the last few days have been getting down to the kind of temperatures one would expect at this time of year. I’m not complaining, anyhow!

    Just thought I’d make another post to update with my progress. We are nearly done with the first term here at Oak Hill, next week is the last week of lectures and then we have revision and exam week after that. Next Tuesday is the deadline day for assignments, so in the latter part of this week I think I’m going to be doing a fair amount of polishing and generally making my assignments ready for submission! I’ve got the word count for most of them, so it’s just a matter of actually checking they’re as good as I can make them.

    Anyway, that’s how life at Oak Hill is going so far. I’m still enjoying it!

    Apart from that we haven’t done much since half term – just the usual work and what have you. On Friday night there was a fireworks night at Oak Hill, Charli (who we know from Colchester) came along, and we all really enjoyed it. On Saturday we went to John and Liz’s for dinner (college friends), and had a nice time there. We ended up discussing “strategic” churches, and how the word strategic can be a pretty negative one in that context! Well, I suppose if you get a bunch of theological college students together you will end up talking about Christian things…

    Right, I think that’s pretty much it for the time being. I’d better go and do some work. All for now.

  • Fireworks Night

    Fireworks by phillsacre
    Fireworks, a photo by phillsacre on Flickr.

    Via Flickr:
    We had a Fireworks night at Oak Hill last night. This was probably the only picture I took of the fireworks which is actually usable.

  • Autumn

    Multicoloured leavesAn autumn sceneFallen LeavesLost ScarfAutumn Leaf

    Went out for a walk this afternoon with Mrs Phil. We went alongside the Dollis Brook, something like the Dollis Valley walk but I’m not exactly sure. Anyway, it was a beautiful autumn day and I took some photos 🙂