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I had one three hour block of electives at seminary I had not already registered a class for. Tonight I signed up for one, meaning I now have everything scheduled I need to graduate. Amazingly, I will finish less than five months from now (assuming I survive the six classes I will be taking this fall!).
Tonight I had the delight of attending the first class for “Shakespeare: A Christian View of the World.” It was a positive thrill. It has been five years since I last took a Shakespeare class and that is about five years too long. When I saw that this class was coming up as an elective at Covenant, I could not resist adding it to my schedule.
A semester with the Bard? At seminary?
I am really excited about the selection of plays we will be looking at. While not all of my favorites are amongst the eight we will study, Hamlet makes a showing, along with other old friends such as Twelfth Night and Measure for Measure.
We are going to be looking at how Shakespeare's Christian beliefs influenced his works and also (so it appears) simply soaking up the greatness of the world's greatest poet. It certainly must be said that Shakespeare's work is a testimony to the gifts God bestows.
As T.S. Eliot said, “Shakespeare and Dante divide the modern world between them. There is no third.” (Of course, Eliot was too humble…)
I'm delighted I am in one half of the world this semester.
Over the last 24 hours I've begun to decompress. Last night I finished my final final and polished up my last exegetical paper of the semester. After the crazily intense Jan-Term Hebrew Weak Verbs course jumping into the semester this spring was a challenge and the particular way this semester's schedule fell out only made things more difficult to hold together. Though I learned a lot, I have to say I have never been more thankful to have reached the point where I can say, “I am done.”
That's not to say I am done entirely, of course. I have three semesters left at Covenant. And I'm not in a particularly hurry to move on. I'm just happy to be able to focus my time on other things for a few months. I am about four to five months behind on many of my projects. Sheesh.
I always feel bad complaining about N.T. Wright's work — he's not only prolific, he's perhaps one of the best examples of a scholar who fits somewhere within Evangelical ranks. I like that Wright is willing to question the status quo while remaining strong on the essentials. He's not merely someone who can sound scholarly, he's a major mover and shaker. So, the benefits to reading his works are fairly obvious.
Yet, his scholarly level works can be tedious at times. I'm reading Jesus and the Victory of God for class right now. Some of it is actually quite engaging, and all of his work feels profound. I expect people will be reading these relatively new books still in 100 years. But, it can be slow going. For quite possibly the first time ever — or at least in a very long time — a book put me to sleep. Literally. I'm not sure how long I was asleep, but for a few minutes, I suppose, the second chapter of Wright's work faded into dreamland.
Wright can write quite well, so I'm not sure why he can't try to give his scholarly works a bit more of the life that the great theological writers of the past did. Barth can be hard, but he doesn't put me to sleep. Be that as it may…
I'll likely be writing more on Jesus and the Victory of God in the coming weeks.
Tomorrow I begin a two week intensive Hebrew term. Somehow in two weeks, students are suppose to become masters of the Hebrew weak verb. I'm not entirely sold on this idea, but it is a required part of my degree, so come tomorrow I'll be trying to plow back through new parts of Hebrew… and thinking about Dante.
Well, my article I mentioned last night drew quite a crowd. Slashdot, Gizmodo, DSL Reports and numerous others — including the AHN newswire — picked up the story. Gizmodo more recently has mysteriously pulled the story, but Slashdot is still in full gear, and the article looks like it should easily pass 10,000 reads on OFB before morning.
My SAFARI CMS withstood the Slashdotting quite well. How exciting!
I too often come onto my blog sounding melancholic, if not downright depressed. I don't want to convey the image that I'm just a perpetual rain cloud, I'm not. It just seems on issues such as my last post, my blog is such an inviting canvas on which to paint that I can't resist. And, really, troubling issues are often the ones I need to dwell on in writing, for better or worse.
But, tonight I'll share a joy I had over the last few days: I've translated my first little Hebrew sentences. Sure, they aren't much more complex than “See Spot run, run Spot run,” but to just to get that beachhead feels marvelous with as intimidating as Hebrew appears. Especially since one sentence was even a little snippet from Genesis. I know the language is going to do its best to kill me in the coming months, but for the moment, I'll bask in the joy of what is past.
Well, I have been quiet on here for weeks as I tried to survive the ever crazier scheduling of the semester, but as of Wednesday, I turned in my final project, a paper entitled “May Good Win Out in Glory: Towards a Barthian Exegesis of Genesis 22,” which served to wrap up the semester.
I'll perhaps write more about the end of the semester soon. I do hope to return to my regular posting schedule of the past over the next few days as I decompress and catch up on everything.
This week looks really, really crazy. In part, it looks crazy because I have tons of group meetings all week for final projects. I have no less than three different group projects in motion right now! Of notable interest today is my group for Marriage and Family — we met today to film our project. We opted to do a video project, so we arranged a set and did some acting today. The project still has a way to go, but it feels good to have the video all on tape now at least.
One of the weird paradoxes of Covenant has been that it has been one of the most encouraging and discouraging experiences I've ever had. Encouraging in seeing the professors and students live the Gospel, encouraging in the wonderful opportunities to learn and be stretched, encouraging in the wonderful people I have met, encouraging in the common sense of mission, encouraging even in how I've learned I like homiletics classes!
But it is discouraging too. A lot of that is in the overwhelming workload. This semester is the first semester ever that I have fallen behind in reading for classes at the beginning of the semester. A few classes have drawn so much time that the others have had to play second fiddle. I don't like that — it makes me uncomfortable and it makes me feel like I really cannot do my best work.
I'm hoping it will improve in the coming weeks. But tonight I feel discouraged.
