Its been back to work this week as I've been dealing with the jet lag of overseas travel. I have ended up with a head cold but could be worse. The downside is that I have to leave town again on Saturday evening and spend a week in Boise & Portland, half of the time beginning the doctorate program at George Fox University, and half of it spending with freinds from Allelon and getting to hang out with Dallas Willard. I'm traveling with K-Rains which of course will be awesome but I'm bumming to be leaving my family again so soon. Trying to get everything for school together before I leave cuz I have to get a substitute for myself the whole first week of classes. I have no idea if I can pull off being a full time teacher, full time correspondence doctorate student, full time missional community planter, full time Dad, full time husband, full time neighbor, full time friend etc. If this doctorate deal doesn't seem kosher, its the first to go. I am deathly afraid of failure and all these responsibilities seem destined for failure in more than a few of them. I know my only hope is to quiet myself and focus on the spiritual disciplines. (which reveals my ongoing immaturity, seeing the transformed life as a means to an end and not an end in themselves) Here are Merton's words that I'm shooting for: "It is part of a continuous whole, the entire unified life of the monk, conversatio monastica, his turning from the world to God." When will I turn from the trappings of the world and its performance treadmill and turn to the quiet submission of a life transformed before God? That is the life he is calling me to, it is the way of the Kingdom. What am I doing??????