Two miles, plus reading.
I realised this morning while I was running that I’m trying to master pre-Reformation hermeneutics, and that’s not really the pivot of this essay. The difficulty (for me) is that when I study a topic and construct an argument, it’s the details that give me traction toward my conclusion. Again, the easy way forward of just rehearsing a series of thinkers — ‘he said X, that fellow said Y, this other said Z’ — doesn’t make much of a contribution. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for providing comfortably familiar material as a medium for introducing my distinct approach. (And that is more like what I suggested to my editor when we discussed my contribution.)
And time to read and think without the sense that an avalanche of obligations is about to descend on me in September would make it all sweeter and more readily imagined. Alas, that doesn’t make avalanches of obligations go away. It does conjure dreams of retirement, though.