Back in the saddle

So, it turns out moving 750 miles to a new city with your family, your cats, and all your household possessions takes a lot of energy. Who knew?

I'm writing this from my office at Memphis Theological Seminary in Memphis, Tenn., where I will start teaching later this month. We're starting to feel settled, and the community here at MTS has been wonderfully hospitable. (I've also already gotten a chance to start connecting with Methodist folk in the area, which has been nice as well.)

I'm really not sure how I'll move forward with this website in the coming months. Things will be busy with me getting my teaching sea legs under me. But thanks to all my faithful readers, who have kept checking in even when I haven't had a lot of new posts this summer. I'm going to do my best.

For your reading enjoyment, here are a few tidbits of note:

1) My friend Adam Butler is one of the writers of a blog that focuses on politics and Arkansas sports called the Blog Hawgs. Last year I sent Adam a list of questions about Arkansas QB Ryan Mallett, which he answered in the form of an outstanding pre-season look at the 2010 Razorbacks. I followed that up earlier this year by sending Adam some more questions about this year's team, and he has once again answered the challenge.

This is no joke: If Adam hadn't decided to practice law he could have become a nationally known sports writer. In fact he was a sports writer - in high school. And I don't mean for the high school rag. I mean for a local newspaper in our hometown of Paragould, Arkansas. While the rest of us would be running around like idiots on the weekend, Adam would often be up at his desk filing stories. So if you follow the Hogs at all, you'll want to check it his recent season preview. And for that matter, check out all his stuff on the Blog Hawgs site. With all the buzz about Texas A&M possibly jumping to the SEC, Adam and his partners-in-crime have kept their site hopping.

2) Our chaplain here at MTS, the Rev. Tiffany McClung, publishes a blog called Miriam's Tambourine. She sent something to the faculty and staff about it this week and it made me think that I should let you all know about it. So check it out at this link!

3) My most recent column in the United Methodist Reporter can be found here. It takes a look at the recent "State of the Church" report by the Connectional Table of the UMC. As with most such documents that the connectional church hierarchy produces, I found it very helpful and illuminating. The rigor and thoroughness with which the church produces self-study and evaluative reports is always impressive, even when the light that such reports shed on our ecclesial life is not always intended. (The Call to Action report and "Four Areas of Focus" are two good recent examples, both of which factor into the "State of the Church" report itself and which I take up in my column.)

I've made it a personal policy to read these types of things with an optimistic eye, and as a result that has helped me to write about them in a way that aims at drawing positive elements out of them. I don't think that means I should shy away from a critical engagement either, of course. So trying to strike a balance between praise and constructive critique is what I tend to try and achieve. We're all in the same church, after all, trying to live faithful lives and learning what it means to be members of one another. And that's always important to remember.

4) Finally, this has got to be the quote of the week:

"[T]hese riots were not about tension but boredom; not driven by anger but by a teenage nihilism that is the gray malaise of modern democracies."

- Sion Simon, writing about the recent youth riots 

in England in Newsweek (August 22/29, 2011)