In other words, my summer break has started. I turned in my grades yesterday, and I'm officially without teaching responsibilities until August 23. Unfortunately, that's not the same as being without any responsibilities until August 23, but I'll take it.
I've got two trips planned for this break. I'm going home this weekend, and at the end of the month and through the beginning of August, there's a Christian faculty retreat on Catalina island. I've wanted to go for the last couple years, but I had always managed to find myself teaching during that week. However, that retreat will be happening at the same time as the Willow Creek leadership summit. I was very impressed with the content of the last one, and I expect this one to be just as good.
I do think I'm picking the better of the two from the perspective of personal edification. I really haven't been engaged by (or engaged with) other academic Christians in a while, and I certainly haven't been engaged in any sort of discipleship in that context since leaving UCSD. Academics bring a different quality (as in characteristic, not as value) in their discussions of faith. Whenever I think about this, the books "Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" (Mark Noll) and "Love your God with all your Mind" (JP Moreland) come to mind. I think I would enjoy doing a series of classes on the latter at some point in the future, but not in the foreseeable future (because I'm already involved in teaching a class).
The class that I'm teaching with Mike and Daniel started off pretty well. We had around 30 people show up, and it seemed that they were fairly well engaged in the material. Mike is going to be left by himself this week because both Daniel and I are going to be out of town. I'm a little disappointed that I won't be there because we'll be starting into the manuscript study of Genesis 1. But I'm going to take my materials with me and try to make some time this weekend to go through it on my own.
I'm thinking about buying a bass guitar. It's something that floats in and out of my mind, but with the recent goofing around with Nintendo video game music that I've been doing, I'm once again considering it.
