Day 6 (8/31 - Mon)

Today is the last day of August. I know that the end of summer doesn't technically come until the Autumnal Equinox, but September just feels like a fall month all around, what with the start of football and the crispness in the air, etc. So today feels to me like the last day of summer.

How did you celebrate the last day of August? Here on campus, these people definitely seized the day.

See you in September!

Day 5 (8/30 - Sun)

This year I'm trying very hard to be intentional about keeping Sunday as a real Sabbath, a day of rest. For me, that means mental rest as opposed to physical rest, so I traded the textbooks for recreation (in the truest sense of the word) and a beautiful bike ride with a friend along the Prairie Path. Most people don't actually stop to consider the root idea at the center of the word "recreation" -- it is an activity that re-creates us, that is, build us up. The word is really about transformation. The colder temperatures these past few days (the nice man on the news gave dire warnings of possible record lows in the 40s tonight) have got me thinking about fall, and the inherent transformation that will bring. Just down the path from my front door is this leaf, whose picture I took today:



Right now it is green. It looks completely healthy, and if I didn't know better, I could assume it would always stay that way. But a few weeks from now, I will walk outside and notice that it's suddenly changed, taking on a reddish-brown hue. At least, the transformation will seem sudden, but it's really not. That's the thing about processes, that you almost never see the change at the moment it takes place, but later on you can step back and see that change has come. A lot of people are afraid of change, but the fact of the matter is that change is essential for...well... anything. Without change, nothing would ever happen. This is something we talked about a good deal in our Wheaton Passage group a couple weeks ago: processes take time, and that's okay. Sometimes it seems like nothing is happening in our lives, but that's not true. Fall sets up winter sets up spring. But transformation is coming: our lives won't look the same a year from now, because we continue to grow, continue to re-create. A college setting is a wonderful place to see that happen on a daily basis. I'm excited to see what this year will bring.

And I think my leaf will start to change around October 4th. Post your guesses in the comments, and the winner who guesses closest will win a little prize. :-)

Day 4 (8/29 - Sat)

Saturdays are lovely times to slow down the pace just a bit. Especially Saturday mornings. Especially in the fall. "But wait!" my imaginary electronic interlocutor retorts -- "It's still August!" Yes, that. Today it hit a grand high of 66 degrees or something suitably silly like that. It felt just like a crisp fall Saturday, and there wasn't even any college football going on to make the magic in the air complete. Today I enjoyed slowing down time by reading in the morning, then by leisurely working through some Thucydides work in the dining hall over lunch. After some more work in the office, I joined up with my good friends Mark, Kate, and Alejandro and headed outdoors (at last!) for a lovely picnic in the park. Herrick Lake, to be precise, and I was glad to introduce it to my friends. In my mind's eye I foresaw the gentle sunbeams of a late summer evening bouncing across the shimmery waters of the placid lake. In reality I saw a mostly cloudy sky blow cold winds across the lake right onto our picnic table. "Canada," I cried, "why are you giving us your air?"

Fortunately, we had our jackets and settled in for a fun time of picnic foods and delightful conversations. And lots of laughter. Thank you, Saturday.



(Disclaimer: for the curious, please note that Mark and Kate are eating, they don't usually look like this)

Day 3 (8/28 - Fri)

The first week of classes is over. What have I learned?

• that Thucydides is deep and leads to all kinds of fascinating questions
• that the new food options in SAGA are really great (flavored butters? sha-zow!)
• that my office doesn't clean itself
• that preparing for all my classes while getting research done AND watching Baseball Tonight on ESPN every night is ummm... not going to happen
• that friends make all the difference
• that we were made for community

I enjoyed a potent reminder of this tonight as I attended the Fall Gathering of the Wheaton Graduate School. What follows is the quotation projected onto the screen throughout the entire gathering:

"It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed. Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God's grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren." --- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from Life Together

We sang together tonight, held candles together, held them up aloft, and in that candle-lit throng I felt the tug. We're a body, a family. Genuinely. Eternally. By the grace of the King. Amen.

Of course, there are many ways that community manifests itself -- such as this evening's gem, the annual fall country dance! Right in front of chapel, too. I love this weird and wonderful place.

Day 2 (8/27 - Thur)

I don't teach on Tuesday or Thursdays this semester. "What?" most people who don't really know what professors do usually say when they find out this little detail. "You don't work on Tuesdays and Thursdays?" No...that's not what I said. I don't teach on those days. But I work! I work on lesson plans, grade things (thankfully no grading yet this early in the semester!), read books relating to upcoming course subjects, make trips to the library, work through backlogs of emails, host office hours and meet with students, make progress on researching and writing my own academic projects, upcoming journal articles, etc. And of course, eat lunch at SAGA, our friendly neighborhood campus dining hall! So, I do work on days like today. Most of it is flexible, though, and I choose how I spend it, which is a blessing most people don't have, so I acknowledge the greatness of my job. So much variety, every day. In future posts, I'll describe some of these activities in more detail.

And here is where most of the magic all happens: Wyngarden 205.

Day 1 (8/26 - Wed)

The first day is in the books! I enjoyed all my classes, and I think I'm going to have a great group of students this year. I love having strong beginnings. Tonight I also got to host my Wheaton Passage group of freshmen at my house for a little celebration of the start of the year.
Here is my MWF schedule:

9:15 - Beginning Latin
10:35 - Chapel
11:30 - Advanced Classical Greek: Thucydides
12:45 - Lunch
2:00 - Intermediate Latin

I get to teach this final class in the best classroom of all -- Blanchard 440, the room at the top of the Tower, the one with the round, hobbit-like windows in this picture taken on this, the first day of the 2009-2010 school year:

Day 0 (8/25 - Tuesday)

One Campus. One Year. That's my proposal.

Tonight I attended the opening All-School Communion of the 2009-2010 school year. This time of the whole undergraduate student body coming together to celebrate our Lord and Savior and our community is the last "orientation" event before the start of classes tomorrow. It is thus a significant time, a Janus-time of liminal contemplation. It is the final threshold of the new year. Maybe that's why I loved it so much. Or maybe it was the freedom of celebration and worship I witnessed across the student body. Or maybe it was the beautiful and true words of hard-won wisdom shared by so many students regarding the importance of being vulnerable with each other, of admitting our times in the desert, of reaching out and finding a cup of cool water in times of need, of glimpsing the joy that is to come. Maybe it was all of these.

Our college president, Dr. Litfin, gave the closing words. After 16-some years of service in this position, he is retiring at the end of this year. Thus, he spoke with the knowledge that this would be his last first speech of the year. The image he shared was of the school year as a race, a long race that we would run, but not alone. We will run this race in community. At some point during the night I had the sudden inspiration: wouldn't it be fun to chronicle this race, this year? To take little snapshots each stage of the journey, little tiny memorials each day as reminders of where we've been? I have a friend who once used her blog to post one picture every day for a month with a little caption or some such, and with this as inspiration I suddenly came up with this idea --

One Campus. One Year. That's my proposal.

I teach Classics at Wheaton College, a 4-yr residential Christian liberal arts college in Wheaton, Illinois. I have come to love this place, and I believe in it. I invite you to share my year, one snapshot of life at a time.

Classes start tomorrow, and I've been working hard to get everything ready. Here are all the books and such for my three courses.

Intermediate Latin, Advanced Greek - Thucydides, Latin 101.

What will this year hold? I'm ready to cross that threshold and find out! New year -- Let's go!