Thursday was my last final to give, in this case the final session of my Modern Christian Thought course, where everyone was giving a closing presentation to the course. This course was my absolute favorite of all the university courses I've taught: I had to prep an enormous amount for it, well more than usual for even a new course, and I tried to ( Read more... )

I went to the 9pm Mass at Loyola Sunday night, the last one of the school year, which was a Bluegrass Mass. Leaving the house shortly beforehand, I climbed onto my bike to the gorgeous sound of a nighthawk hunting: the quintessential sound of summer to my northern Illinois-raised ears. The Mass was kind of fabulous. I had to wander a bit, as it ( Read more... )

The students in the Modern Christian Thought class kept me on my toes this week. Predictably, they found some of the hermeneutical philosophy background thick going (Gadamer, Ricœur) and found it easier to discuss the theologians we read something about (Wolfhart Pannenberg and David Tracy receiving more attention of this sort). Thursday's ( Read more... )

One of the most embarrassing or humiliating things for me about having a hundred or more students in a semester is not getting to know a bunch of them. Students who remain silent fall pretty quickly into memory's oblivion by failing to make any kind of impression on you whatsoever, even while you have them. Unlike high school teaching, at the ( Read more... )

Some excellent moments throughout the last week or so. While being sort of marooned away from family was not my first preference for the Easter holiday, I had some chances to make up for that. One highlight was having a good talk with my brother Joe at the beginning of April in celebration of his birthday, reminding me again how after my visit to ( Read more... )

Sophia also confirmed something of what I had heard through Mom: the nieces' continuing, almost-rabid fascination with leprechauns, and the mischievous moving things around they'll do with objects around the house, and other pranks, including the much-feared pinching when they come into your house at night on Saint Patrick's Day. Sophie told me ( Read more... )

One of my less-successful teaching days today. I came into the class session with a set of notes and questions that I thought would make a provocative swing through talking about early 20th century biblical criticism, Ernst Troeltsch, and the issues they raised about the uniqueness of Christianity, the challenge that the reality of the world's ( Read more... )

I have done a profound amount of writing and typing in the last week or ten days, but none of it has been in my journal. I've got to figure out how to be more attentive with that ( Read more... )

These last few days have not been terribly productive, theologically, I suppose, unless you count the exploration of traditional aspects of Catholic culture surrounding Carnival. I have a few days effectively "off" and the restless (Catholic?) guilt of feeling unproductive begins to catch up with me. That said, I can feel the gears in the back of ( Read more... )

One of those great quiet moments. I've been sitting on my couch, distractedly trying to read about Hegel and German Idealism in preparation for my Modern Christian Thought class tomorrow. Finally in getting still enough to get work done, the stillness itself distracts me. It's raining in New Orleans tonight: mid-50s outside and a gentle rain ( Read more... )