Back to School

Here's a current picture of Sarah. For all of you who were excited to watch her grow up on the internet over the next three years, you'll be dismayed to learn that she has hit a camera-shy phase.

Sarah may be camera-shy, but we were just given a hand-me-down kids' digital camera for her, so you may start seeing some of her photos here ... like this one, of a scene from the kids' game show she and I like to watch together, "Fetch!" (Expect better photos when the weather warms up and we can get some natural light into the camera.)

Actually, the title of this blog is misleading. I have been in school for the past two weeks, taking week-long intensive classes on writing and structuring curriculum. It's a lot more interesting than it sounds. I even got to create my own pre-baptism curriculum for parents and godparents, which may get published on the Web somewhere soon; I'll let you know. But as of now, with that assignment emailed in, January term is over.

The spring semester begins on Monday. This quarter I will continue Church History, Old Testament, and Hebrew, while adding a class on Youth Ministry. ALL FOUR CLASSES meet for the first time this Monday. Yikes!

Already I can feel the panicked tug of that little voice saying, "You don't have time to do all this and still do it justice."

"OK, little voice," I reply. "Then I will either do it all, and not do it justice, or I will do most of it pretty well. Last semester worked out fine, and this semester will, too."

See? Perfectionist in recovery. It's easy to say NOW ... before things have really gotten rolling, and I can't sleep at night, or I wake up at 3:30 a.m.

Actually, the thing I'm looking forward to most is the February Conference on Ministry, which is a high-falutin' way of saying "prospective students weekend." I've always been enamored of newcomers and potential newcomers in every situation, so I'll be right there in the cheering section, showing people around and encouraging them to come to VTS.

Included in that weekend is the big Variety Show. Now, I'll be honest: When Christy and I visited VTS two years ago, it was the Variety Show that really clinched it for me. This is a student body that knows how to have fun. Among many other things, a game show called Episcopal Idol and a Madonna spoof called "Episcopal Girl" made that year's show fantabulous. And this year, I get to contribute something myself, with the help of a few friends. Mwa-ha-ha-ha!!!

I don't think I blogged about this, but in November, we had a variety show just for ourselves ... no prospective students. Inspired by a recent trend in some churches to render the Eucharistic prayer into Dr. Seuss-ian rhyme (and yes, to channel Dave Barry, I SWEAR I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP), a few of us called in the Spanish Inquisition to do away with these heretics.