This Blog

This blog always cracks me up. No one posts for days and days, and then there is a flurry all at once. Great minds think alike I guess.

Every now and then it sinks in that I'm in my last year here. Mostly it's just normal school busy, but then I think about all the things I don't know yet, and worry that I'll be done too soon. Then I look at all the reading I have to do and decide the soon I'm out of here the happier I'll be.

Classes are all quite interesting. The one with the most general interest would have to be "Opening the Hurt Locker: Religious and Spiritual Pedegogies of Pain". It's a course on how we look at and deal with pain, culturally and within various religious traditions (mostly looking at Christian, Jewish and Buddhist). Part of the idea is that pain can teach us something, or that at the least there is a positive aspect to pain, which we miss when we medicate it all away. One of the students is a medical doctor, so that makes for some interesting discussions. We have to do a presentation on a "practicable pedegogy of pain"; I've asked if I can do country music, or more specifically, John Wort Hannam. We'll see if I'm allowed!

On November 15 there is a religious trialog between a Rabbi, one of the profs from the school and a Muslim theologian, discussing the character of Job through the lens of the Cohen Brothers movie " A Serious Man". Should be pretty interesting if anyone is planning on being in Vancouver in November!