Lesser Feasts

  Sir William Gillies, Wet Weather  (1961) Since returning from the conference I've had hardly a moment to collect my thoughts. There's been so much to do that I have felt overwhelmed at times, though in fact everything's gone pretty well. In the twenty minutes or so that I have before I leave for the meeting of the bishop search committee, I want to think back on -- really, just inventory -- what's gone on in the last couple of weeks. I bought the painting that I used as the image in my previous post. It's hanging in Edinburgh until the exhibition closes in three weeks, and then it will be shipped here. I am truly excited about this. I reviewed applications, and then reviewed them some more. I did four classes on Berkeley, each weirder and wilder than the one before, and got fantastic questions from students. I celebrated the Eucharist and preached on the High Priesthood of Christ. I confronted a student about some egregious plagiarism and became so genuinely worri...

James McIntosh Patrick, The Striped Scarf  (1932) The image is, obviously, a painting of me just before my first conference session. The Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy held its first-ever stand-alone conference this week. I am actually not much of a conference-goer, and I didn't have anything on the program myself, but this was a chance to see lots of people I haven't seen in a while. Plus, it was held at Notre Dame, where I did my graduate work, so there was a nice opportunity for some nostalgia as well. Dinner the first night was at an Irish pub with a couple of old friends. There was a larger gathering at an upscale bar two blocks away, and I protested feebly (and not altogether sincerely) that I really should get back to the hotel and get some sleep. OK, fine, I'll go for half an hour. "Are you Thomas Williams? Can I give you a hug?" That from a scholar I've interacted with in print and on email but never met before. Lots of lively convers...

John McIntosh Patrick, Arching Boughs, Flocklones  (1955) I missed my chance yesterday to write about Saint Jerome, patron of translators, scourge of unscholarly doofuses like Saint Augustine. Today I'm stuck with Remigius of Rheims, who baptized Clovis, King of the Franks. It is said that when Remigius was asked to baptize a dying pagan, he found that there was no Oil of the Catechumens or Sacred Chrism to do the job properly, so he placed two vials on the altar, prayed over them, and found them filled with the holy oils. My own provision for sacred things involves an email to my favorite liturgical artist, commissioning a festal stole and a red stole. I suppose I could just pray for them to materialize, but I'm not sure my prayer would be powerful and effective--I am arguably not as righteous as Elijah--and I really do want to have something beautiful to wear when my new bishop is consecrated. 

  John Houston, Sunset over Cornfields Right on the heels of being called up to the bishop coadjutor search committee, I got asked to chair a faculty search committee in my department. I really, really didn't want to. Faculty searches are a lot of work; they are heavily regulated and subject to all kinds of irksome restraints. (For example, if two committee members see each other in the hallway and one says to the other, "Candidate X looks really promising." they have just violated the state's open meetings law.) But I've had plenty to say over the years about senior faculty who shirk important service, and I didn't want to fall under my own justifiable condemnation; plus, given that I'm teaching only one course this semester and have met all my pressing research deadlines, it really would have been selfish to say no. Not to mention that I'm eligible for a sabbatical next year. Better get that application completed soon. My hope is to spend some substa...

John Maclauchlan Milne, Iona Shore (As is so often the case on this blog, the painting has nothing to do with the post. It's just a piece of Scottish art that I love.) I have a fairly easy gig right now in my day job. Because I'm teaching a 300-student lecture, I am just teaching one course this semester. That means only 100 minutes of classroom time a week. Now obviously there's preparation, supervising teaching assistants, wrestling with USF's reliably unreliable IT, and so forth, but still, it's an easy gig. And I just sent off a ton of research around the beginning of the month, so I can take a breather in that aspect of the job as well. (There are only so many times you can copyedit your own translation of Anselm's On the Procession of the Holy Spirit  before you feel like giving up on the whole enterprise and turning Unitarian.) So the Church's timing in claiming more of my attention is excellent. I am now on the Diocese of Southwest Florida's bish...

  I sent Anselm: The Complete Treatises  off to Hackett last Friday, all 250,000 words of it. Tomorrow I'm sending off a complete draft of Anselm: A Very Short Introduction  to Oxford University Press. At a mere 36,000 words, it will be a much slenderer volume (that's kind of the point), but I'm really pleased with it. I am tired, but content. The VSI will be sent out to readers for the press, so I'll have those comments to take into account, as well as comments from friends who have been kind enough to read the draft. So there will be more work to do, but for now I can put it aside and concentrate on the more immediate task of teaching Plato's Phaedo  to my intro class and figuring out Sunday's sermon. I conclude the VSI with a reflection on a short passage of Anselm's Prayer to the Holy Cross. Here's my final paragraph, followed by the full text of the Prayer. You might wish to keep it on hand for Holy Cross Day, September 14. (It may also help to know...

William McTaggart (1835-1910), Winter Wheat I returned from my very productive New York/Philadelphia trip in good shape to have both Anselm: I Can't Believe How Short This Introduction Is  and Anselm: Complete Treatises with Selected Recipes and Sick Twitter Burns  off to the publishers by my September 1 deadline. This week, though, is all about getting ready for the start of classes on the 23rd. I posted the skeleton of a syllabus yesterday (the deadline to do so, though what the penalty is, or even could be, for failure to meet the deadline is not at all obvious). I do not believe in this syllabus. It's pretty close to my syllabus from the last time I taught the class, and that went pretty well, so maybe I should have more confidence this time. But I have a sinking feeling that I have not remotely accommodated the differences between last time and this time. Last time I had 100 students, so I could get some discussion going (a fair bit, as it turned out). This time I have 30...