Two weeks of break from school do not equate to a break from life. This I am learning, as my days are occupied with spackling, packing, moving boxes and furniture, and looking at paint chips as my bedroom takes shape. My nights have been spent locking doors and scanning barcodes, while answering calls from students and faculty alike, in somewhat of an extension of my hours transferring calls to these people from the Fuller switchboard.

Fun has been had, in the form of hanging with housemates, experiencing the beauty bar, drafting for fantasy baseball, and being family with my church, while i've also been able to rest and walk around at work without upcoming papers and books hanging over my head. Pleasure reading recently completed involved my first dose of brian mclaren, in the form of 'a new kind of christian,' which was really refreshing. have been asking the question "how is it possible to follow the jesus of the bible in the company of the church without being a quote-unquote 'evangelical christian' with all the attached baggage." mclaren's book was reassuring on that front, more in the 'it is possible' sense than anything else. many memories came up in the read, and i now understand much better than three years ago, in an era when verbals seemed to dwarf all other aspects of life now. kind of hard to believe how much of a shift has taken place...

oh yeah, and i just got a ticket for wrestlemania, ten days from now. too sweet.

Among my least favorite words in the religious vernacular is 'spirituality,' but I have really come to like Eugene Peterson, who treats spirituality as a very earthy, human thing, rather than an exercise in esoterics. Christianity Today recently interviewed him in relation to his most recent book, first of a five-part series, entitled Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places.

Here's the interview: Spirituality for All the Wrong Reasons

Lessons learned during week ten + exam week (in a four day period):

Not many that I can think of, most will come in later comments, but I do have this:
When preaching in the morning, it's not a good idea to stay up all night the night beforehand, especially if you don't fully hydrate with that 'hydrogen and oxygen, at a two to one ratio' combo.

The preparation process was interesting; the main idea, body of the sermon, was in me about a month ago, as were many of the connection points and much of the illustrative material, but actually putting things to paper didn't happen until the final eight hours before delivery. How to go heart to paper to mouth without going babelfish on the message, now that's the question...