Probably no one checks this blog anymore. I nearly forgot it existed myself! Most of my public thoughts are on Facebook or sometimes Twitter these days. But I've noticed that they are indeed brief thoughts. Skimming and skipping over the surface. Blogging may not be much better, but it might be thought of as paragraphs as opposed to 140-character soundbytes. Full-blown essays and chapters and book-length ruminations? A bit beyond that. My mind, however, needs stretching and a bit of calisthenics to get it back into sustained thought. Perhaps blogging again can be a bridge from 'posting' to productivity.
This term I'm teaching via one-on-one tutorials (ah, the Oxford system!) Augustine (circling around the Confessions and topics of theological anthropology, marriage, sexuality--as per the student's request), and Medieval Philosophy. The latter has been a bit of a challenge, as I normally don't have any deep thoughts about much past 500. But... 'medieval philosophy' usually includes a sizeable bit of Augustine (hurray!), and the student was happy to do that. We'll spend the other half of the term on Aquinas, rather than surfing our way through a different philosopher/theologian each week. It's nice having the freedom to go 'off piste' (off trail skiing in the trees, as the locals would call it). Most Oxford tutorials have to follow a pretty strict curriculum based on the B.A. exams they take at the end of three years of undergraduate study. But the two students I have are with an American Junior Year Abroad program, so they have the freedom to study whatever they want--pending approval from their home universities. They are bright and capable, even the ones coming from less prestigious colleges, as they go through a vetting process, and sometimes must be in an honors program to begin with. And it challenges me to get down to academic reading (and gosh maybe writing!) again.
This afternoon I have a seminar on Stoic philosophy and patristic thought, particularly in reference to cosmology, being led by a friend. I have some reading to do for that--and I should be doing reading for my tutorials tomorrow. Or at least remember what I assigned!
