After the Williams family visit ended yesterday, what have we been up to?
Unfortunately K has been ill (heavy cold) so that has curtailed activity somewhat, but there has been plenty of washing up, laundry, wiping surfaces and tidying!
We are reading The Purpose-Driven Life together, aiming for a chapter a day for 40 days. We read chapter 2 today and are thus on course for victory. The opening chapters, "It all starts with God" and "You are not an accident" were much better than we expected. The great variety of reviews on Amazon.co.uk, as usual, reveal more about the reviewers than the book...
We are also reading Peter Leithart's A House For My Name, a guide to the Old Testament. It is typical Leithart - fascinating, entertaining, provocative - with clear affinities to James Jordan. A feast of biblical theology and theme-ology with wonderful discussion questions that open up new avenues of thought. In a few places he does not substantiate his story enough, but this book is truly superb. (Rev Cannata's review on Amazon.com says what I wanted to say, better!) Today we discussed the topography of the pre-fall world and how this plays out in the story of Scripture...
After bashing through some Dichterliebe and arias by Britten, Vaughan Williams, Mascagni and Gluck with LDW, "mega baritone", the three Williams boys went to see I Am Legend, in which Will Smith saves what's left of the world from a virus that's made everyone go 28 days later. Like The Purpose-Driven Life, it was better than I thought it would be. Unlike The Purpose-Driven Life it hasn't given me much useful teaching for spiritual living, other than the usual heroic self-sacrifice theme in a human hubris scenario (oh, and barricading your house against crazed albino killers isn't a long-term strategy).
Some idle time on the internet, reading the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog, stumbling on an interesting thoughtful Charismatic's blog (see especially his post on innerrancy) and playing through some old games on www.chessgames.com in preparation for meeting Charles tomorrow. I have lost my last 10 or so games against him (all correspondence) so I have to trust to my patter and other forms of psychological warfare for our over-the-board clashes!
