The last couple of weeks have been different from normal. A couple of theological conferences combined with school holidays and a break from PhD writing left some more time for introspection and catching up with people outside of the everyday run of things.
The trip to Australia went well. I appreciated the chance to listen to those speaking from Eastern Orthodoxy – voices that I haven’t really had a opportunity to hear in person before. And also the chance to see people integrating the writings and thoughts of the Patristics with topics such as dementia. Nice also to be able to visit family and to take my two eldest boys over to visit grandparents.
The conference at Carey back here in Auckland was good too – though I tended to “dip into” selected talks rather than go for the whole day each day. I found Steve Bevan’s talks on contextual theology and a recovery of missiology and Trinity in theology stimulated my own thoughts, including an essay topic for students this semester.
Also good to catch up with Steve and to hear (and see) his powerful metaphor of reweaving theological strands (esp. our starting place as recognising the brokeness in the world), as well as talking about blogging, teaching and life in general. Dinner with Paul was great as well.
Tomorrow life reasserts itself with the new semester. I’m co-lecturing Introduction to Christian Theology at Carey as well as online tutoring the distance students for that same course. This will give me a good chance to “compare and contrast” the different modes of delivery for the same course in the same semester.
With teaching thoughts in mind I caught the end of A Cheating Crisis in America’s Schools an ABC documentary screened in NZ tonight. Some interesting stuff in the documentary on the widespread nature of cheating, attempts to curb internet plagiarism and the lack of a sense that cheating is actually wrong. Wish I’d taped it rather than coming in at the last 10 minutes or so.
Plus, just starting to read Ric Machuga’s In Defense of the Soul: What It Means to Be Human. Having spent the last few months in Science-Religion reading I’m heading back toward Christian anthropology for a while.
Andrew
I was also at the conference (NZ). I thought Steve Bevans’ first address to be the most stimulating. I’m in the midst of developing a thesis on missional ecclesiology so it outlined much of what I’d thought but hadn’t expressed in such a unified way. I also found Steve T’s analogy of reweaving to be powerful and it seemed to resonate with many others I spoke to.