I’m showing the slideshow from a couple years ago to colleagues at the Center on Tuesday; right now I’m going over that, freshening it up in my recollection and fine-tuning it (also thinking about it in terms of an essay I owe to a Festschrift around midsummer). I need to wrap the slides up quickly, then to finalize a draft of the colloquium paper that I’ll present at the Center a week from Wednesday. Once I get the paper settled, I have to whip my sermons for the Triduum into shape.
Thanks for all the kind wishes and offers of help relative to the thing Seabury is doing that’s not-closing. I get the message from leadership that the “not closing” part is vitally important, and I understand that the Transition Committee is doing as much as it can as fast as it can toward having a plan in place by April. From the perspective of someone looking at what used to be a seminary that will not have students (and the income their tuition brings) any longer, however, I’m puzzled about what earthly use I would be to them as a professor. Hence, my expectation that I should be looking for a job very, very actively, especially considering that this is the off-season for academic hiring, and hence my sense that whatever “not-closing” looks like, it will functionally approximate “closing” with regard to its effect on me and on my students.
Between Margaret and me, I expect that we’ll turn up a job. I would just prefer knowing what that might be as soon as is possible. I’m anxious that way, I admit. Again, thanks for your support.
Now, time to see if I can devise a treat for the family, to help cheer up the atmosphere around here.
This is some new definition of “not closing” with which I am not previously familiar.
I grieve for the loss of the community and the position the faculty are in. I still hope some concrete information about how the seminary got into this state (and yes, I know it’s been in precarious financial straits for years) at this particular moment is distributed to stakeholders, especially alumni/ae and donors.