Anticipation

I have been very busy, but in a good way.

Last week I talked about prepping for a couple job applications which I am hoping will lead to a full time teaching position. Not teaching theology, but something that will be satisfying and make teaching theology part-time a sustainable enterprise. With a bit of back and forth between me and a friend, I think I have put my best foot forward. So now I wait (I’m also waiting on another application that I sent out months back, so much waiting.)

I did take a day to sharpen up my chisels. I inherited a bunch of chisels from my dad and they were in quite rough shape. My history with sharpening has not been the best. My first real attempt at sharpening was not very good, even though I used my buddy’s sharpening machine. I’ve since been watching tonnes of videos on sharpening and decided that stones and a diamond plate for polishing were the way I wanted to go. I sharpened about half of my chisels – I know they were sharp because when I was using one it slipped and had no trouble sticking right into my hand. It is possible to be proud as you go running for a band-aid. They are not perfect, but I am confident that I’ve got a technique that works for me and the more I use it the better it will get. I’ve also taken to sharpening my kitchen knives every time I use them, which makes them so much better to work with – this has convinced me that sharp tools are always better.

I took the newly sharpened chisels out for a spin cleaning up some practice dovetails. I have a bunch of drawers to join with dovetails and I had never done a dovetail joint before. I do have a jig for my router, which I plan to use to make half-blind dovetails on the drawer boxes. But mentally I was stuck trying to figure out how I could use a round router bit to make square dovetail slots. Doing the joint by hand let me work the problem out (the answer is that the jig rounds over the tenons so they should fit without a lot of chisel work). It is simply satisfying to shape a piece of wood and feel how the joint should go together. Note to self, ceder scraps smell great but they are crap for fine carpentry.

Apart from a few social events I have had my head down preparing my Christology course for the fall. Once I had the course completely laid out I was able to dig into individual lectures to prepare the slides and scripts. These will be pre-recorded (30 hours) lectures for a completely online course. I am using a synthesis of the gospel narrative to frame my course: pre-incarnation, incarnation, ministry and teaching, passion, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and promised return. I completed my introductory video decks and scripts first – I might tweak these as I go but it is good to have them ready and practiced as they are the first videos the students see and should give the students a sense of excitement about the course. The introduction to the subject was really fun as I explore the guiding creedal question: who do you say that I am? All I’ll say here is that the Nicene council figures large in that piece. Anyone who thinks the theology of worship songs isn’t important has not read enough church history, “damn your catchy jingles Arius!”

What has me most jazzed about my preparation is the doctrine of the preexistence of Christ. I stumbled upon an article by Douglas McCready that led me to his really good book on the subject He Came Down from Heaven. McCready starts his article with the idea that this doctrine is most often simply assumed to be true or it is challenged, but rarely is this doctrine adequately explored on its own merits. This explains why I was having trouble finding substantial discussions of preexistence in the usual suspects from my bookshelf. I encountered a bit of ideal preexistence in some of the readings, but this is quite unsatisfying, it is not the idea of Jesus that preexists, but Christ as God. If we go the other way you end up with an apotheosis of Jesus the Human becoming Jesus the God. But if we have a preexistence of Christ, then the Christ (fully God) takes on human flesh becoming fully human. I’m still processing the theological implications, it feels like I’ve stumbled upon the most delicious treasure.

So this is what has been keeping me busy, with the weather warming up I hope to get into my shop a bit more so I’ll try to do another video soon. I do have video footage to edit from Richard’s 50th celebration gaming day, just need time to edit it down. I have one full SD card and a bunch of stuff on my phone, yikes.

The image is from a late fall camping trip I took with some of my gaming friends. It was the image we used to promote our Dungeon World Encounter Deck Cards kickstarter. A project we are hoping to continue working on, but I think we flew too close to the sun the first time. Richard Dufault took the photo and added the text, he’s photographing cosplayers in Cornwall this weekend at CAPE.