Learning to write in the tropics

After an intensive three weeks in which I sat through fours hours of theology classes a day I finally have some time to think about what brought me here. For years I tackled material on the body, in particulars women's bodies, during pregnancy and childbirth, and more generally throughout their reproductive years. It sounds like something very 20th Century but it was in the 18th Century a period characterised by government concern over lack of population. This was in the old Holy Roman Empire that was recovering from the Thirty years war, which had devoted vast regions of the empire, depleted both resources and people. In this moment of religious warfare and radical religious change, there emerged a group of reformed Lutherans, though the Lutherans would not recognised them as 'one of them' that called to a deep personal conversion. In practical terms Pietists, as they were derogatorily referred to by Lutherans, sought to create or mirror God's kingdom on this earth. In...

While the focus is on academic production some digression is inevitable..... I recently recorded another podcast, this time with a good friend who happens to be a Dominican friar. We talked Dominican life, discernment, and being a lay Dominican. If interested you can listen to it on the  Light from light  podcast. Now most people hear Dominican and think the white habit (female or male version) but there a quite a few lay men and women who are also Dominicans. The most famous of course is St Catherine of Sienna but most lay Dominicans work a regular 9 to 5, are married and have children. In some cases they win Nobel prizes of literature, as Sigrid Undset did back in the day. You never know where the combination of study and prayer lived in community (slightly different for the laity) will take you. As I have led a fairly nomadic life, with the exception of covid-tide that had me in one place for the first time in like 4 years, I have begun to wonder how positive this nomadic l...

 Against all odds and without being fully or even partially vaccinated I am in an airport again, for the first time since March 2020, when I naively came to Honduras for a short visit and ended up staying, locked behind closed borders. It is scary to be here, somehow the mask doesn’t feel like sufficient protection and I wish to be back in the safety of my home. At the same time, it feels like it is time to go, time for another adventure, even if this time rather than exploring a new place I am returning to somewhere familiar.   I sit after the first short leg of my journey in an airport that last November was under water after two tropical stores came through in the span of two weeks. There are still areas hidden under canvas being rebuilt or refurbed after the water went down.There are still some hours before my next flight. People walk about seemingly unafraid of the ‘rona’ not keeping any of the tooted 2 Mts of distance while I sat here eating my sandwich with some trepida...

 " Behold, I shew you a mystery;   We shall not all sleep,  but we shall all be changed.  In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,  at the last trump:  for the trumpet shall sound,  and the dead shall be raised incorruptible,  and we shall be changed.  Then shall be brought to pass  the saying that is written,  Death is swallowed up in victory.  O death, where is thy sting?  O grave, where is thy victory?" Johannes Brahms " Ein Deutsches Requiem : Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt"  Brahms requiem is one of my favourite pieces of music to sing, as an alto I have some really cracking parts. I have sung it in choir quite a few times, it never gets old. I first sang it when I still wasn't fluent in German so most of the words didn't have as strong an impact as they do now but the music itself transmits its message even without the words. I had seen it just as that, a beautiful piece of music until recently that I ...

 After four intense months in Dresden, during one of the hottest summers I have ever lived through, time came for me to move to what was suppose to be my home for the entire PhD. The small university town of Jena was chartered in 1230 and its university was founded in 1548. It is best known for having been the home of the German Romantic movement, home of such intellectuals a Friedrich Schiller  and Wolfgang Goethe. Walking through the small university town it is easy to find many a blue plaque identifying 'X" house as the home or birthplace of some well-known, long dead personage. What fascinated me the most was that it had managed to remain so small, for so many centuries, somehow it felt unchanged -minus the hideous communistoid tower right smack in the middle of an otherwise medieval/early modern town centre- since the 13th century. This feeling was helped by the fact that the medieval Catholic Church, only one in the town, had been Catholic since its foundation back in th...

 Living in Germany is difficult to describe, it is a beautiful country with a complicated past, it is materially very comfortable to live in Germany but dealing with Germans can be a pain in the neck and yet I made some great friends there. The contradictions abound from its history to the fact  that nowhere else in Western Europe, outside of Spain, will you find so many good Spanish speakers. A friend of mine from Oxford, the best dance partner I've ever had, embodies these contradictions, he is quite smart, a physicist, and you would never guess from his geeky exterior that he is a such a good dancer nor that he has such a passion for it. Coincidentally, he is one of those Spanish speakers.  The best way to begin with Germany is at the beginning of my encounter with the place, with my time in Dresden and  the Goethe Institute. We were given accommodation in a student house in the middle of an industrial park, of all places, that was next to a forest in the outskirt...

 I have recently been invited to talk on a podcast called Guatemala Global about my research and just life in general.  This has been an interesting and enlightening experience, making me wonder about my presentation skills and those rather annoying nervous ticks I have discovered I have while presenting. How can I get rid of them (is it even possible)? During last nights podcast the subject of alcohol and fermentation came up mainly because I learnt to drink with nuns.  I say that quite lightly but I am realising learning to drink amongst religious is not something that happens on a regular basis. I studied in Spain, particularly in wine country and a lot of wine was easily available. My body developed a high tolerance for alcohol quite quickly and this has remained with me through the years.  My one random nun comment led to a more extensive discussion of fermentation and alcohol creating, which brought me to the subject of alcohol consumption and fermentation duri...