the long obedience delayed

So, if all this happened in May 2011, if I enrolled in seminary and started taking a couple classes in September 2011, if I talked to my dear friend Patton F. Dodd about this blog in September, why is it now January 30, 2012 and nary a thing’s been written?

Well, sometimes the long obedience is delayed. In my case, the toll from brain surgery, radiation, chemo and such took a greater toll on my head than I expected. I found going to class for 8-10 hours over a weekend far more than my brain could endure. Reading was an endless chore where five minutes of pouring over even easy relatively easy texts felt like hours. To boot my retention didn’t exist.

I was frustrated. This was not how it was supposed to go. I was supposed to enroll in seminary and damn it things were supposed to go smoothly. It was where I’d waited 20 years to go… the classroom was supposed to feel like home.

Isn’t that the way God’s supposed to work? I may screw around for a long time but when I decide to do something… well. Well then its time for God to get with the program.

What’s with all this laboring? Toil? Who’s world is this anyway?

This wasn’t in my planning.

Now I’m behind!

That’s right, first semester, just two classes. I’ve dropped one and filed for two extensions on the other one. And my spring courses start in two weeks.

What a perfect time to blog.

It is actually. One of my assignments for my CH501 – Church history to the Reformation – is to keep an “application journal”on my readings to, “begin building for [my]self a ready guide to material that will be useful in [my] own spiritual life and [my] ministry.”

Away we go.

That was part of it.  There was though, is though, another part. I now know enough through my cursory reading of the