The Hebrew was (again) Greek to me...

"Father, give us courage to change what must be altered,
serenity to accept what cannot be helped,
and the insight to know the one from the other." (original "Serenity Prayer" by Reinhold Niebuhr, 1937) 

click to enlarge

Wow! Has it really been a week since my last post?! I surely intended to touch this blog at least once before now... Hmm. Must've been busy or something...

So. How have I been? Fair to middling, I'd say. There were a couple of low points since we last met-- three, actually, if we include Sunday night's debate... O where to begin?

My classes have been going very well here in the monastery; however, there was a slight burp in the force on Friday that left me in a foul mood that persisted until we got out on the patio, cranked up the grill, and relaxed in the cool of Fall's arrival. And, truthfully, I was still carrying a bad day hangover into Saturday morning's death march-- by Saturday evening's fire bowl on the patio, I was over myself.

Friday morning I had the first part of a midterm exam in my Pentateuch (Old Testament) class; it was a one-hour translation of selected texts from Genesis in Hebrew. As I've mentioned before, I'm the only guy with no Hebrew skills (well I know תהווה is Yahweh...), so my translation was from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew. No working aids. Plus parsing of more than a few words, verbs mostly. With 5 minutes left, I realized I hadn't even made it to the last page... It was a train wreck...

My last hour of the day was in Liturgics lab, during which time we were videoed performing a part of the worship service, reciting the words by heart-- the words we had to say I already had memorized, but in the brief pause between the two parts I skipped a groove or something and was prompted by the professor along the way to the end. It was a mess and I told the professor I didn't even want to see the replay (we were being videoed so we could see ourselves)... So I left for home feeling like a doofus, which just exacerbated my foul mood. Not my typical seminary day.

The cherry on the sundae Friday was watching the Rangers tank against Toronto.

After dueling repeatedly with the Tarrant County Elections Administration (in Texas) by phone, email, and letter mail, common sense finally prevailed and we both voted absentee in the coming November election. For the first time in our marriage, we cast split votes (it's nobody's business who votes how or for whom, but this campaign season has compelled one of us to break with tradition). I WILL say, for the record, that I cannot understand how any sentient being could cast a vote for Donald Trump in good conscious, or support the badly broken Republican Party, EXCEPT in good faith that electing such a blowhard-- who was nominated by Republicans after holding a Svengali-like sway over the decency and moral fiber of this country-- would signal a need for reformation and begin a repair and rebuilding process. I will also say that I cast my vote with a very heavy heart (but also with a solid faith that God knows what He's doing).

Sunday night, we could take neither the Rangers euthanasia, nor that display of playground bullying and posturing between the candidates (who treated one another like a bitter couple in the throes of hateful and messy divorce-- one of them is going to get custody of us, yikes), and so we hit the rack early. sigh sigh sigh

Yesterday morning I got up with a plan. I left early for the seminary and "broke into" the lab that's really the training chapel, flipped on the equipment, then videoed myself correctly completing the part of the service I tripped over on Friday. When that was done, I went looking for my Old Testament professor and we had a nice and fairly positive chat about my midterm exam. When that was done, I found a bench and sat down to contemplate the morning, the day ahead, life-- what's really important. And I thanked God for unwrapping me from my own axle. The image is the view from my bench at 8:40am.

So the ship is still afloat and still on course (in spite of Friday)...

Until next time...

С Богом, ya'll!

P.S. I thought I knew everything. Today I learned what a tuckpointer is. (So NOW I know everything.)

P.P.S. How 'bout them 'Boys! 4-1 without Romo!