Today was a wintry day in Honolulu.  The winds whipped down the valley bringing sheets of rain.  We might have broken 70 degrees, but I’d be hard-pressed to say when.  I did make it down to breakfast before the rain set in.  To the dentist, too.  But the afternoon was a real mess.  It might actually be blanket weather tonight.  The rest of the week should be a little warmer, but it’s really wait and see.

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It’s been a four-day break from the classroom.  Friday was a professional development day.  Today was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  I’ve mostly stayed away from email for the weekend, will probably check it once before going to bed.  The next couple of weeks might be relatively normal.  I’ve got to get ahead on chapel, I think.  Plus, because of concurrent learning,  I need to have one whole unit planned and printed out as much as possible about a week before the current one ends, which can be intense.  It’s crazy to think that we’re already/only two weeks into the semester.  Things just keep flying at you  . . . I mean, flying by.

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Yesterday was one of those rare Sunday’s where I received a package from Amazon.  Pretty excited about both of them.  (Many thanks to Hearts and Minds Bookstore in PA for the order and quick shipping.)  Top of the list: Andrew Root’s The Congregation in a Secular Age.  It’s the third of a trilogy.  I didn’t see this one coming, for some reason, at least not the congregational focus.  I’m about forty pages in and loving it.  I’ve been surprised by Root’s thinking at almost every turn; it seems to be coming but a truly different but necessary place when it comes to understanding culture and ministry.  The whole series is a response to Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, which I learned about from James K. A. Smith, so it’s charting its own course while weaving many different threads together.  The other book is a general theology book that might help me think through some curricular changes for next year.