Summer: Winding Down
Today we rose early and headed out to East Texas---which was surprisingly green for August--to pick up our girl, who has spent the past week at Pine Cove (camp). Hard to believe she starts high school in a few weeks. We asked if she'd like a new backpack to start the year, and she said politely, "I don't want to think about school yet." Who can blame her?
While we were in Oregon, she picked up a cold. And because we were sharing an RV for two weeks, I got it from her. Today my husband woke up with it. So I've been lying low this week in addition to slogging through the ridiculous stacks of email in the "requiring an answer" stack. One thing I did get finished: minor revisions to the manuscript of When Empty Arms Become a Heavy Burden. It was out of print for a number of years, but Kregel has picked it up and plans to re-release it in the spring.
In terms of upcoming events, any day now AMG expects to launch my two new Bible studies--Kona with Jonah and Frappe with Philippians. If you want to participate in an on-line group going through the Jonah study, head on over to SoulPerSuit and sign up. We start in September.
Next week I head back to Pine Cove, this time for the DTS faculty retreat (two days). Then we have new student orientation, where I'm slated to sit on a panel and address the topic of keeping the spiritual life from becoming completely academic. The following Monday, SCHOOL STARTS. Shocking, isn't it?
In September I'm headed to a fiction-writing conference in Denver--as a participant, not a speaker. And I've been invited to Israel as a guest of Israel's Tourism Ministry. Our next issue of Kindred Spirit is dedicated to Israel. So more travel to come. Makes me laugh. Oh, and speaking of the mag, our summer issue is out. You can read it here. The topic: God's Heart for the Arab World. I hope you'll give it a read on the web if you don't receive it in your snail mail box.
Our new word for the summer is “virga.” We learned it from my father-in-law, a meteorologist for NOAA. When we described to him what we saw near Monument Valley, he told us that in meteorology, “virga” is an observable streak or shaft of precipitation that falls from a cloud but evaporates before hitting the ground. At high altitudes precipitation falls mainly as ice crystals before melting and finally evaporating. The phenomenon is super common in the desert and across the Southern US. Scroll down to the most recent Wordless Wednesday photo and you see what I'm talking about. (I wouldn't want to you to leave here today without something that makes you think--even if today's nugget doesn't really fall under the aspire2 goal of "thinking that transforms.")