Sushi!

One of the things I miss greatly is hanging out with friends back in California, and eating sushi! While planning to move to St Andrews, Christian George optimistically said, "We'll find somewhere for sushi." Well, there is one place in St Andrews that has it, but I think I would rather have cat food than their overpriced, infinitesimally small portions.

Now, when Heidi and I saw the Phantom of the Opera in London 2 months ago, she ate at Yo! Sushi (one of the conveyor belt places - still overpriced, however), and LOVED it!

So I have been plotting & scheming on how to bring sushi into the Sexton household. And last week, it happened! While visiting the St Andrews fishmonger, we learned that they sell everything needed to make sushi. This was all the encouragement I needed. We promptly bought the seaweed wraps, rice, wasabi, little dishes for soy sauce, rice mirin, vinegar, cucumber, avocado, carrots, some fresh sword fish and Scottish salmon... and Voilà! Sexton family Sushi! Heidi made the first two batches and I made the next two.

Here's what it looked like last week:

Quick visit to Cambridge

The Sexton family took a trip to Cambridge last weekend, which was a super-fast trip. Here are some pics at the beginning of and during the drive (from the rental car)...
Heidi took some pics of rural Fife (Scotland) and England...


...we ate dinner at Pizza Hut in Cambridge (after the VERY TIRING 8 hr drive)...

...got balloons and saw a neat shot of the moon...

...and stayed in the YHA (where Jane ate black pudding, again - she loves it!)...

The main purpose of the trip was to hook up with Christiaan Mostert while he was in Cambridge on a study leave from University of Melbourne's United Theology Faculty, discussing a few matters related to my understanding of Pann and how Grenz was drawing from him. Chris is one of the recent interpreters of Pannenberg, knowing him better than perhaps anyone in the UK. He was very gracious, and gave me very helpful, encouraging and corrective insights (and coffee)...

While I was hangin' with Chris, Heidi & the kids were with Vanessa checking out some of the beautiful architecture in Cambridge...

...then we all went with Vanessa to lunch at the Eagle Pub (DNA code cracked in the back, as the story goes)...

Then we hooked up with Will and saw some of his college (St John's)...

...the kids played on the grass...

...got some ice cream...

...I hung out with my beauty behind King's College...

...Kendra pushed the stroller...

...Charlie got sick...
...Heidi, though warn out with the long day, kept smiling (and looking very pretty)...

Then we made the long trip back to Scotland. We saw some castles (good shot Heidi! at 90mph to boot!), the Welcome to Scotland sign, and the hairy cows to greet us...

Papers, papers, papers

Well, this is what I managed to present last year:

• “How Far Beyond Chicago? Assessing Recent Attempts to Reframe the Doctrine of Inerrancy,” paper presented at the 60th Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, November 20, 2008, Providence, RI, USA. (This thing just got published by Themelios, about 100 hrs worth of work later, which is a really great theological journal edited by some incredible guys.)

Here's what's been on the schedule so far earlier this year:

• “The Genesis of Stan Grenz’s Trinitarian Theology: A Pannenbergian Affair,” paper presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Theology, March 31, 2009, Utrecht, The Netherlands. (ended up being the first half of the first ch. in my thesis)
• “A Postmodern View of Inerrancy,” paper presented at the Mars Hill Forum, Howard Payne University, April 22, 2009, Brownwood, Texas. (a great guy Jay Smith [and Stan Grenz's former TA] threw me a bone and let me talk about the "shibboleth" among Baptists to his group of undergrad theology students, who had some great questions, and were some great folks)

And here's what's coming down the pike:

• “The Relatedness and Relevance of Stanley Grenz Program for Contemporary Evangelical Expressions in Britain,” paper scheduled for presentation at The Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in Britain Project, June 16-17, 2009, The Royal Foundation of St Katharine, London, England.
• “Stanley Grenz: A Theological Interpretation of Gen. 1:27,” paper scheduled for presentation at the Christian Doctrine group at the 2009 Triennial Conference of the Tyndale Fellowship, July 6-9, 2009, Tyndale House, Cambridge, England.
• “Genesis 1:26-27 in Light of Stanley Grenz's Communal Imago Dei,” paper scheduled for presentation at the Genesis and Christian Theology Conference, July 14-18, 2009, The University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland.
• “Stanley Grenz’s Telic and Trinitarian Ecclesiology,” paper scheduled for presentation at the Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference, August 24-27, 2009, The Rutherford House, Edinburgh, Scotland. (this is the only one I don't have confirmation on yet)
• “Trinitarian Theology in Action: The Shape of Stanley Grenz’s Trinitarian Ethics,” paper scheduled for presentation at the 61st Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, November 17, 2009, New Orleans, LA, USA.

It's going to be one heckuva year! Can we say, "Frequent Flyer Miles"? Or more like, get your PhD thesis written, stupid?! Well, nothing's wrong with trying to get two (or three! four! or five!) birds with one stone!

Makes me think a song like what follows is quite appropriate (some of our friends will love what Cash mentions at 1:47; unfortunately, Jonny Cash apparently hadn't been everywhere, for he doesn't mention making it to St Andrews; he missed out - though Bakersfield's not too aesthetically removed! Depends on one's interpretation, I guess... though if you doubt Bakersfield's beauty, just ask Chad Vegas!)

"Dad, I really liked this day"

I've actually been planning it for the last month. And tonight, X-Men Origins: Wolverine opened in Britain. So I bought the tickets this afternoon, and took Charlie out to the 8:25PM showing in the local St Andrews cinema (first time we had been, though Heidi went with Jane when HSM3 came out).

While in the States last week I also bought him a Wolverine action figure that we gave him tonight. He loved the film, and the time together (Skittles, Dr Pepper, and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to boot!). And while I am sure that there might have been many things other than watching Wolverine (waaaay after Charlie's bed time) that I could have done to disciple and cultivate masculinity in my son, tonight I couldn't think of anything better.

As I was helping him get his pjs on for bed and before praying with him, the last words he told me were, "Dad, I really liked this day."

Pann & Stan

Sounds like a comic strip title, I guess (I will ask Fred Sanders [aka, of Dr Doctrine's Christian Comix fame] if it has any hope next time I see him). Chris Mostert (who has done a really helpful work, God and the Future, on Pannenberg's eschatological theology) likes the ring of it, though, and mentioned today that he was suprised to see Pannenberg dressed so informally.

While I hope to blog through some of the highlights of my trip to Vancouver and Texas last week - which was the most amazing time imaginable (it could have only been better if Heidi and the kids were in tow) - I want to show a lovely picture that Edna showed to me last week while in Vancouver. This was from a recent trip to Germany that Stan and Edna had not too long before his death.

Heidi gets patriotic

Although we talk about this sometimes (i.e., patriotism, how it is overdone, is a poor substitute for religion, often romanticizes war, etc.), especially in light of our commitment to Jesus' lordship - which stands over and above every other form of allegience - the truth remains that my beautiful wife is the daughter of a WestPoint grad who served 23 years in the US Army and retired as luitenant colonel, and I'm sure that she's (as we all are) influenced in ways that are faintly understandable.

So, as I too am so grateful for the country in which we hold our citizenship, and the freedom (and inherent invitation) within which theological engagement may and must take place (though rarely does, I think, in ways that bring God glory and advance the church's mission, I'm afraid), I appreciate her highlighting the beauty of our kids, and their situatedness as distrinctly American kids. This makes the time in Scotland so different and, I think, very rich for them. So while I am thankful for the US, I am also so grateful for the UK government, which makes the sort of study we're embarking on at St Andrews possible. Thanks for having a grateful heart, Heids, and for helping me have one too. I love you.

GRO handed in

Not exactly sure what "GRO" stands for - but it's an initial piece of work to show that I haven't spent ALL my time in St Andrews on "the greens" or discussing theological topics in the pubs, without ever writing anything!

So 10,000-12,000 words has been surrendered, complete with a "preliminary" 18 page bibliography on nearly everything I could get my hands on that relates to Stan Grenz's work. Sort of anti-climactic, though. It really only amounts to about 7% of my total thesis. I've got so much more work to do! I'll leave the celebrating for later.

The work examines the "Origin" of Grenz's trinitarian development, reaching back to the late 70s and early 80s up until his death. It is basically a sketch comparison that shows key components of Pannenberg that are reflected in and adapted by Grenz. In short, where Grenz got most of his stuff from. I imagine that it might appear somewhere else before I finish the thesis.

Jedi-Master Dad

Our good friend Ali Cromey bought Charlie a X-mas present (a Star-Wars pop-out book, with figures that needed to be created) which took me about 10 weeks to complete for Charlie (note: this is apparently a necessary evil of parenting, but beware nevertheless you regret the hasty reception of gifts that entail, "some assembly required").

But with persistence (hopefully as will happen with my PhD project at the nearing of 3 years) I pressed-on. And finally graduated from "Padawan" to "Jedi-Knight" to the ultimate status: "JEDI MASTER!"

With perhaps a good 25 or so hours into the gig: here's what I (admittedly, with some help from Charlie) emerged with:



And one with Charlie's "fight" display:

London

We're so late on these posts. But here are a few pics of the Lovely Heidi and me riding on the Thames on a beautifully sunny London morning (Big Ben but missed the parliament shot!), and one of her Highness in front of Westminster Abby.



And one more from this interesting little church yard that was right next to the hotel we stayed in (which apparently is a church yard referred to in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales):



We liked the skulls so much that we bought Charlie a skeleton pen from a gift shop. Many thanks to Will Kynes for reminding me in a sermon last summer how preachers here used to have skulls in their studies (even on the desk!) as a reminder of life's brevity from James: "What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes" (James 4:14). I think I'm going to try to get me a skull.

Deadlines

Well, I'm about 10,000 words into a paper that is supposed to be 2,000 (I don't think I've ever done a sermon intro that's been that short!) at a conference that I'm off to Monday morning with Christian George and my PhD supervisor Steve Holmes. The conference is the annual meeting for the Society for the Study of Theology and you can peak at their program lineup here. The paper I'm doing looks at the origin of Stan Grenz's Trinitarian theology, as he picked it up from his mentor Wolfhart Pannenberg. The paper has been a beast, not to mention I'm only half way done with what I hoped to do in it! Coupled with this, I've been working on an article for Themelios on the current state of the debate about Scripture's inerrancy. Throw in a 4 day illness, 2 kids getting sick... yet the deadlines still approach! I will emerge victorious!

And hopefully after the PhD ordinance (April 15) and my trip to Canada and Texas is over at the end of April, we can get back to some semblance of normalcy with blogging. Heidi and I have both been WAY OUT OF THE LOOP. Sorry! We did have a nice visit from her folks earlier this month, though. And I snagged Heids away on a trip to London even to see Phantom!

I'll put some pics up of Amsterdam next week. No - there will not be any Phelps-esque shots! I put the bong down a long time ago!