Hey,
If you're strapped for time and can't afford to read the whole thing, here's the spoiler: not too much is new. Life goes on
Work is OK. We had a couple shaky weeks the last couple but both mine and Alyssa's situations seem to be on the upswing. Which is nice. The more optimistic we can feel about teaching now, the less hopeless the job-hunting process for next fall seems. So far there's not much, but the postings don't really come out until pretty late. We are strongly considering places other than Ontario, though, which opens up possibilities. I know it seems a mite odd to come back from England just to go far away from friends and family again, but coming home really is more about settling down then being with family. There are hiring freezes in my hometown and there's never any jobs in North Bay, so the likelihood of either of us living close to family wasn't going to be really great either way. We're still hopeful to find something somewhat close one of our sets of family, but if we have to head out west or something, we want to be prepared.
We're fresh off the heels of a bank holiday weekend (read: long weekend), which had - among other things - the added bonus of being able to go to the Sunday night post-church pub night. We almost never go because hitting the pub Sunday night seems to be a recipe for a killer Monday morning, but since we could sleep in yesterday, we took full advantage of the opportunity. I realize that we miss out not doing it, and we're thinking about sacrificing some sleep to make that investment in the relationships we're building here. I spent most of the evening in a really great conversation with our minister about denominations and doctrine and traditions and other some such things. Which is *so* much better with a pint of bitter. I had a thought this morning (I'm on a free period right now; not slacking off) that if we overextend Paul's metaphor of doctrine as spiritual food - that the base doctrines and the gospel are like milk and more difficult teachings like solid food - it may not be useless to think of denominational doctrinal differences as different foods as well. That we were all raised and nourished on the same root sustenance; the gospel. The same nourishing, life-giving milk that every human being gets (or used to get in the pre-formula age). But after that we develop and we differentiate. In food this has a lot to do with culture. But in many ways I think that our denominational emphases are dependant on a kind of spiritual culture. If you grow up as a conservative evangelical, then you're going to gravitate towards substantial, meaty, tough to chew and nourishing food. If you grow up charismatic, your religion might naturally be a bit more firey. Does that make it wrong? Bad? No. All Christian denominations have some bitter and some sweet; it's the interplay between flavours and differently-balanced emphases that makes for the difference. Lots of people switch. When I was a little younger than I am today I pursued a much more dense diet than in my childhood, and recently I've started experimenting a bit with small samples from other palates. My point, I think, is that so long as the food is nutritive and substantial, it's good. Some might be better than others. Some might be good for a season but not as a steady diet. But it's all food. Naturally, to extend a metaphor is to invite errors, so I think I might cut it off there before it gets too out of control.
What was I talking about?
Right, news! Besides the above, we haven't done much travelling. We spent the bulk of our holiday weekend sitting inside glaring at the weather and listening to me cough. I'm almost over the cold that flattened me a week ago; I like to think I've won the day but I still have to drive it from the field so that it never dares rise against me again. If nothing else comes up (HINT, London people!), then the plan is to do our round-the-city Monopoly excursion on Saturday. When monopoly came across the pond, they didn't cling to the absurdity that we do of keeping the chicago street names. They picked London ones. Londoners have never heard of Boardwalk and Park Place. Cool, huh? Anyway, our plan is to do a photo scavenger hunt of all the spaces on the monopoly board, pick up a box of london trinkets for all the pieces and then, once we're home, put together our own UK monopoly game. A home-made souvenir. We aren't desperate to do it by ourselves, though (HINT!), so if anyone wants to come along (HIN...well, actually quite explicit now) then that would be brilliant.
Running out of time. Thank you, friends and family back home, for your prayers and well-wishes. You're in ours. Peace.
If you're strapped for time and can't afford to read the whole thing, here's the spoiler: not too much is new. Life goes on
Work is OK. We had a couple shaky weeks the last couple but both mine and Alyssa's situations seem to be on the upswing. Which is nice. The more optimistic we can feel about teaching now, the less hopeless the job-hunting process for next fall seems. So far there's not much, but the postings don't really come out until pretty late. We are strongly considering places other than Ontario, though, which opens up possibilities. I know it seems a mite odd to come back from England just to go far away from friends and family again, but coming home really is more about settling down then being with family. There are hiring freezes in my hometown and there's never any jobs in North Bay, so the likelihood of either of us living close to family wasn't going to be really great either way. We're still hopeful to find something somewhat close one of our sets of family, but if we have to head out west or something, we want to be prepared.
We're fresh off the heels of a bank holiday weekend (read: long weekend), which had - among other things - the added bonus of being able to go to the Sunday night post-church pub night. We almost never go because hitting the pub Sunday night seems to be a recipe for a killer Monday morning, but since we could sleep in yesterday, we took full advantage of the opportunity. I realize that we miss out not doing it, and we're thinking about sacrificing some sleep to make that investment in the relationships we're building here. I spent most of the evening in a really great conversation with our minister about denominations and doctrine and traditions and other some such things. Which is *so* much better with a pint of bitter. I had a thought this morning (I'm on a free period right now; not slacking off) that if we overextend Paul's metaphor of doctrine as spiritual food - that the base doctrines and the gospel are like milk and more difficult teachings like solid food - it may not be useless to think of denominational doctrinal differences as different foods as well. That we were all raised and nourished on the same root sustenance; the gospel. The same nourishing, life-giving milk that every human being gets (or used to get in the pre-formula age). But after that we develop and we differentiate. In food this has a lot to do with culture. But in many ways I think that our denominational emphases are dependant on a kind of spiritual culture. If you grow up as a conservative evangelical, then you're going to gravitate towards substantial, meaty, tough to chew and nourishing food. If you grow up charismatic, your religion might naturally be a bit more firey. Does that make it wrong? Bad? No. All Christian denominations have some bitter and some sweet; it's the interplay between flavours and differently-balanced emphases that makes for the difference. Lots of people switch. When I was a little younger than I am today I pursued a much more dense diet than in my childhood, and recently I've started experimenting a bit with small samples from other palates. My point, I think, is that so long as the food is nutritive and substantial, it's good. Some might be better than others. Some might be good for a season but not as a steady diet. But it's all food. Naturally, to extend a metaphor is to invite errors, so I think I might cut it off there before it gets too out of control.
What was I talking about?
Right, news! Besides the above, we haven't done much travelling. We spent the bulk of our holiday weekend sitting inside glaring at the weather and listening to me cough. I'm almost over the cold that flattened me a week ago; I like to think I've won the day but I still have to drive it from the field so that it never dares rise against me again. If nothing else comes up (HINT, London people!), then the plan is to do our round-the-city Monopoly excursion on Saturday. When monopoly came across the pond, they didn't cling to the absurdity that we do of keeping the chicago street names. They picked London ones. Londoners have never heard of Boardwalk and Park Place. Cool, huh? Anyway, our plan is to do a photo scavenger hunt of all the spaces on the monopoly board, pick up a box of london trinkets for all the pieces and then, once we're home, put together our own UK monopoly game. A home-made souvenir. We aren't desperate to do it by ourselves, though (HINT!), so if anyone wants to come along (HIN...well, actually quite explicit now) then that would be brilliant.
Running out of time. Thank you, friends and family back home, for your prayers and well-wishes. You're in ours. Peace.
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