The sun is out; the weather is fine. Margaret’s visa application is in, and (although we take nothing for granted) that at least signifies progress toward her joining me here in Glasgow. I’ve had a relaxed morning, but full of thinky thoughts — an exhilarating feeling, one that had been rarer and rarer over the previous five to eight years (to be precise and fair to my hosts in Princeton and at Duke, the past three years have marked a kind of convalescence from the diminished vitality of the years before).
I am quite certain that a great portion of my exuberant feelings involves the sunshine, but I’m almost as sure that this past year in Glasgow has genuinely nurtured my capacities for thinking in exploratory, adventuresome ways. The sense that this is coming back to me, when I once felt uncertain that I’d be able to think that way again, fills me with the delight of a deep gasp of fresh air, the satisfying exhaustion of having stretched one’s body to its limits (and then pushed those limits a bit). I hope I’ll be able to wrangle my thinking into some sort of intelligible order for my keynote at the Christian New Media Conference — but with the excitement of thinking has come the assurance that if I allow the individual bits time to gestate, that they will come together in time. Now, off to tackle the world!