Diary of a Theologian

I have a new video resource: five 30-minute segments on basic Christianity specially focused on needed teaching in our post-pandemic situation. The topics are (1) creation, (2) the mess i.e. sin, (3) God’s desire to be involved with creation i.e. his Speech and his Spirit, (4) what a human being is, as revealed in Jesus the one true human, and (5) Jesus’ death and resurrection, in which he is revealed as our true friend. The videos are here: https://edod.org/resources/articles/a-post-pandemic-catechesis/

Each video has both a short talk by yours truly and a conversation with someone from the diocese of Dallas. Each ends with a couple of questions  for further discussion. The idea is that these could be easily used in parish settings, for weekday classes or home groups, for instance. A small group could gather and watch the video (30 min.) and then have their own conversation.

If any of you use them, I’d love to hear how it goes. This is the first time I’ve done anything like this. I used to say, “VA doesn’t do A/V,” but that’s starting not to be true.

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In a few days I will be heading to Spain for a pilgrimage on the Way of Saint James, or in Spanish, the Camino de Santiago. I hope to walk on the old Camino Francese from Roncesvalles to Santiago de Compostella, a distance of nearly 500 miles. (Of course, they don’t reckon distance in miles, but I promise to do my best to maintain the awkward but traditional English units.) 

My weekly blogs here will be—God and technology willing—reports from the pilgrimage. I do not plan to do any other blogging. One of the necessities of a pilgrimage like this is to disconnect from one’s usual world and to open oneself to God’s work in the soul. I do not plan to check email except weekly and then only cursorily. I do not plan to engage the cellular function of my phone. Stripping back to essentials, I hope to be open and vulnerable to what God wants to show me.

I also hope not to have too many blisters.

This means, incidentally, that my occasional blogs on holding the Prayer Book close (of which there have been six this year so far) will not resume until late May or June.

I will be carrying you and praying for my readers and friends (in Dallas and New York and elsewhere) as I walk, and I welcome your holding me in prayer also. Although it was no part of my plan, this pilgrimage is occurring in the tenth year since Susan died, and its length and dates are almost exactly coincident with the period of her final hospitalization – the silence of the final weeks of her life. I sense that I am being drawn, and I think for the last time, to enter that silence with her. I’m not at all sure what this means.

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On the Web. I have a column on the Human Life Review website (thoughts spurred by Ash Wednesday and reflections on Gen. 2-3). It’s called “The Optimism of Adam”: https://humanlifereview.com/the-optimism-of-adam/