Yesterday was filled with preparing and administering the final exam in Church History, and caring for the sweetest invalid in town. Pippa has a cold, so I’m coddling her as best I can. She’s been on a movie spree, and has otherwise been relaxing abed and on the couch; we’re hoping she’ll be up for the activities she has scheduled for the weekend (choir rehearsal, Nutcracker, and Lessons and Carols).
Among the movies she’s watched is an Agatha Christie “Tommy and Tuppence” feature that incorporates the line that constitutes the motto of my scholarship:
You go on muttering bits of the Bible in your bedroom for years, and then suddenly you go right over the line and become violent!
Got me dead to rights; watch out world, ’cause any day now I may snap.
The exam seems to have gone well; an unprecedented proportion of the class complimented me on the exam, and several even said it was “fun.” This unnerves me a bit, since the exam was less easy than it has been in years past, but evidently in this last year that I will ever teach Early Church History, I hit a golden mean of challenging and encouraging them. I’ll miss having an excuse for hanging out with the quite extraordinary array of characters in the early church, but this way I’ll have more time to concentrate on the New Testament and hermeneutics.
But now, classes are over, I have but a few exams and papers to mark, and the holidays lie ahead with prospects of a houseful of children and their dates/partners/intendeds/whatevers. And getting Pippa well, preparing a sermon for the 17th, and cleaning house.