I'm looking for potential volunteers who like endurance cycling and would be happy to talk to me about their experiences and explore whether they've grown as an individual through the experience. I may be looking at questions of suffering in endurance and whether your understanding of 'the meaning of life' has grown from this voluntary suffering. I'm interested in whether endurance cycling, and suffering, is a way of seeking meaning in a life. Whether there is a spiritual aspect to this.
I am still working on the title question and I don't submit for approval until September this year. I also have to get an ethics committee's approval to interview and/or use a questionnaire.As many of you already know, I'm training to be a Vicar and I'm doing a degree in Theology, Ministry and Mission alongside that. My final piece of work is a dissertation and I'm beginning to scope out the question. I've had a growing interest in the physical side of Christian faith and looking at how Jewish and Christian understanding of the human body is quite 'fleshy'. Neither of these faith's orthodox doctrine subscribe to Plato's corruptible body/immortal soul duality. Of course, orthodox doctrine isn't the same as the 'everyday worked out faith' of believers. What we believe isn't always orthodox, but that isn't the point of this dissertation. I'm looking at the body, the intentional seeking of suffering and whether this is an unintentional seeking of meaning. I'm interested in whether endurance sport is a spiritual thing or not - or whether a sense of spirituality has grown from undertaking extremely difficult cycling events.
If you are interested in having a conversation with me as part of my research into this dissertation, could you please PM me. I'll keep it confidential. You don't have to be a person who identifies or rejects faith... you just have to be someone who is interested in participating in my study.
(At this moment I'm just collecting a list of contacts who might be interested)Many thanks - Graeme.
My short project was about whether is was possible for physical exercise to be worship. The academic mark wasn't great, but I enjoyed working on the study and if this topic interests you the link to my essay is here:
http://balancingontwowheels.com/about/physical-exercise-and-worship/
