Today I’ll be working on feasting in the Old Testament and then jump to the institution narratives and Paul’s instructions – big day!
I took a walk yesterday afternoon and happened upon a calf who had made its way outside the fence (pic above). High drama for the afternoon. Actually, everybody said “oh, they do that a lot, we’ll get to them later today.” Ah…the slow pace of the country.
On to writing!
Yesterday I spent time looking at Genesis 14 with Melchizedek’s presentation of bread and wine as well as the connections between Christus Victor and God the Destroyer in the Exodus. The later is interesting in the sense that the Lord’s Supper’s link with Passover may lean more towards God’s destructive power over evil (Egypt in the Exodus, death itself in the Christ event) than towards substitutionary sacrifice (although that is a strong theme as well, but one that might be overemphasized at the expense of Christus Victor).
Today is more work on other background texts for the Lord’s Supper – some from Deuteronomy and John.
When I mailed the books back yesterday, I saw the man in the above picture getting his mail with an old fashioned “Radio Flyer.” The pace is certainly different here – in a good way.
The run was easier today and the Elk was yummy (and lean).
Yesterday afternoon, as I was unpacking and organizing books, I realized I had two books from a partner library that were two weeks overdue and could not be renewed. So last night I scaned all of the sections I thought I might need from that book. The book was a collection of essays dealing with primary readings on the Eucharist. A few good chapters about Hebrew ideas of remembering and then some good stuff about the gradual privatization of the Eucharist throughout history. The other book wasn’t that good anyway, so it goes back with few goodbyes. Later this morning I’ll head to the post office and ship it back.
This morning was nice and cool, so I read outside next to the garden. Beautiful.
Took another 2 mile run this morning. Legs are hurting.
Doing Elk steak for lunch. Welcome to the wild west.
Today is mainly Old Testament work on the meal as ritual, celebration, and fellowship with God.
Video chatted with Hannah and Krista last night. I miss you guys 
My wife’s grandparents have been gracious enough to let me stay two weeks on their ranch in western Nebraska (almost Wyoming) to write a major portion of my doctoral thesis. This is a nice, slow paced environment with cool mornings and crisp air, wonderful atmosphere for getting chapter 2 (over half the paper) done. I’ve decided to post once a day with a progress report – to keep me honest more than anything.
I’m also at the beginning of a weight-loss program. I went in for a physical at the beginning of this week and my blood pressure was too high for a 33 year old. High blood pressure runs in the family, so I’m supposed to drop 30 lbs. by Dec. 15 and we’ll see if that helps out. The mornings are good for running out here, so hopefully it won’t be too much of a bother to run a bit in the morning – since I’ll be sitting on my behind most of the day behind this computer. I’ve also put a weight tracking widget to the left to keep me honest as well.
Today I’m headed off to church (Wesleyan) with Jan and Andy and then out to lunch. I’ll unpack my books (70 lbs worth shipped via FedEx) in the afternoon and get started on grabbing notes from a few of the first few sections of my outline.
I got the greatest Father’s Day gift from Hannah. It’s a wonderfully painted, large coffee mug, complete with travel top. You’ll definitely see this making the rounds on campus this year.
This was the sign I found posted on the doorway to my office. I guess campus really isn’t the same over the summer.
I’ve got an external hard drive attached to my laptop for TimeMachine backups, but every time I need to pick up and go somewhere I need to manually eject the drive or face the dreaded “you didn’t do this like we want you to, and you might have lost data” nag screen. Instead of digging into a Finder window to eject the drive manually, I now use Semulov to eject specific drives or all attached drives right from my menu bar. A handy utility that saves a few mouse moves and a lot of eye rolling.
Continuing on with the Mac Bells and Whistles kick – next up is MenuCalendarClock.
I often need to know the current date (and I can never remember). I know that iCal displays the current date in its dock icon, but I hide my dock, so that requires mouse work. I know the current date is available if I click on the clock in the menu bar, but again, that requires the mouse.
MenuCalendarClock is a fairly robust menu bar extension for iCal, but I use it mainly to display (with a small footprint) the current date in my menu bar (see above). When you click on the icon in the menu bar, you also get a quick mini-month display that’s helpful in quick situations. If you don’t want the fuss of digging into iCal but need a quick glance at dates, MenuCalendarClock does the job. The basic version is free – bells and whistles will cost a little bit.
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This has been an unusually difficult season. Death has been more present over the past year than it ever has been for me – death of a grandfather, death of family members of friends and colleagues, death of marriages, death of jobs, death of comforts. The latest was the death of a friend and colleague’s little girl who struggled with an illness for a long time. In the middle of that struggle, she was such an encouragement and blessing to a great number of people. She will be deeply missed and I am deeply thankful to God for the grace and peace that extended from her through her family to so many of us.
Words for prayer are so hard to find in times like these, and so I rest on the Church to help frame prayer. The following comes from Stanley Hauerwas’ Prayers Plainly Spoken -
“Lord of Life, death scares us. We know we must die, but we have become skilled at living in a manner that ignores that stubborn fact. After all, most of us are not really old enough yet to have to face our deaths. Death happens to the old, not us, who are thus condemned to live as if we are perpetually young. Yet death slinks even into our young lives. We do not like it. We try to hide its presence by not being present to those who are dying and avoiding those who must be present to the dying. We therefore pray for your unfailing and sustaining presence for the Mills family. Give them the same courage that sustained them and Regan through her illness. May that same courage find a home in our lives, that we may come to fear you more than our own deaths and thus be enabled to be present to one another. Amen.”
This will be of no interest to the QuickSilver nerds, but for the rest of us, Spark solves a small annoyance for me. Unless you want to set up hot corners, there’s no quick way to activate the Screen Saver in Mac OS X (and, by extension, lock your computer). Spark lets you assign the launch of an app (or any document) to a specific hot key. Here’s what I did:
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isaac :. gaff |