The High Today is 62

My new laptop is supposed to come today. By 4:30. So if I don't wait around at the house until then it will end up at the FedEx shipping facility and I'll have to go pick it up. This will be my first new computer since I started college seven years ago.

My sleeping pattern has been fairly irregular of late. I've had many late nights--some for good reason, others not--and many groggy mornings. Today was weird, though, since I was in bed before 12 but still did not want to get up at 8:30. I've got out of the habit of starting with breakfast each day, so maybe some dietary rectifications will help the situation.

Now that I've quit my job, I've joined the school football team. It's an informal, low-budget, female and male, flag-tackle team, and we have practice only once (twice?) a week. My first was on Tuesday--the first team sports practice I've had since I was thirteen. It was good to do something physical with other people for a change, since so much of my exercise this past year has been alone. And it turns out that if you're on the line you get to just stand there and keep the other guy from coming through--or, defensively, you can rush and scare the QB. It's fun to do something brute when you spend so much time being cerebral.

Other than football, I wish that I had more to report besides the goings on of chapel, class and community, but that's all that's really going on right now. This has the effect that most of the developments I'm experiencing are internal, whether intellectual, emotional or spiritual--except maybe to reaffirm that I am making friends quickly up here and am putting down roots in at least 2 different social niches.

One thing that is cool about classes is that, at least a couple of times now, there are deep congruences between the subject material. For example, on Monday I both read Dallas Willard's The Spirit of the Disciplines and read about the crucial role monasticism has played in church history (these were readings for Spiritual Formation and Church History, respectively). So Willard provided a strong theology of grace, the body and discipline, while the monastics demonstrated the saving influence that disciplined lives can have on the world and history. After Monday, I decided that I would like to read something about St. Francis, and it turns out that Chesterton's book on him is one of the possible readings for Spiritual Formation. On another front, a Greek vocabulary word I've been having a hard time remembering showed up in an article for my Introduction to Mission to class. Not as cool as the monastic thing, but helpful nonetheless.

I've been asking people to pray for me to grow in discipline. And I've been asking God to grant me both his spiritual gifts and the fruit of the spirit (of which self-control is one).