mastering the skills of proper anticipation

The christmas (or more technically, advent) season can teach a whole lot of things to a whole lot of people. For instance, that guy I saw at target last week who was freaking out because he thought the stcking hanger was twenty cents cheaper than it rang up at the register could learn a little patience and civility. But for those of you who haven't yet found a way to benefit in your character development from the holiday season, let me offer a possibility, one that's certainly been teaching me.

One valuable life skills you can master in this season is the skill of properly anticipating. The holiday's offer opportunities aplenty for developing this attribute...I'm currently anticipating a trip to california, time with family, a package from my brother, a paycheck, a particular dinner that my wife's family enjoys, and of course the xbox 360 that I wrote about earlier, and am still waiting for. I'll admit this last one is proving very difficult.

Anyways, the point is that this season provides lots of opportuinites to wait, both for events and in places like the line at Target. And in such a wait-fest, much of which is beyond our control, iwe have the chance to shape the right kinds of attitude towards all kinds of things we have to wait on n the rest of our lives. It also makes it quite obvious to all the people around us, if not ourselves, how well or poorly developed our skills are at this point in our lives.

So, check yourself, and have a merry, character forming christmas...in a few days, that is.

Christmas Play

My wife's extended family in Fresno has a tradition where the kids put on a christmas play for the grandparents. Now, I know you all are envying me right now, but I am looking forwad to throwing myself into the mix for this year's production. I checked with a couple of cousins today, and it doesn't seem like there is any script yet, so the possibilities are wide open. Any ideas?

The best I've got so far is a story wherein the heroine goes on a rdiculous journey to purchase her grandmother's christmas present. This would allow for lots of comic interaction between different kinds of characters.

Either that or baby Jesus.

Ideas?

contexts

I'm working (loose use of that word) on a paper on the medieval rise of the university and the shift towards the university as the dominant context for theology. For starters, the stories behind the roots of the university system was fascinating. Basically you have the formation of guilds-student unions in the literal sense. the guilds of students, and soon after the teachers guilds, rose to fill some of the same functions as what we would be familiar with in the labr union movements...protection and bargaining power, keeping the groups from getting ripped off. That developed a safer context for educational disciplines, and before long the establishment of universities takes on some of the forms that we're familiar with: set curriculae, decree bestowal and requirements, and even some of the structural side of Universities.

What’s interesting for my purposes is how the development of such institutions affected each of the disciplines studied there, and particularly the discipline of theology. It seems theologians in the modern university have to be attentive to both ecclesiological and academic demands and criteria, and the competing voices somehow have to sing together to be helpful to anybody. I’m betting that’ll be enough bait for a little conversation, but if need be I’ll suggest that Theology separated from the church sucks. So, there.