And So It Begins . . .

Summer arrived today. I mark that neither by changes in temperature nor by the location of the sun in the sky, but by the shift of responsibilities. The spring semester ended in mid-May, followed immediately by a writing assignment and a trip to Portland, OR to present a paper at the College Theology Society/National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion Annual Meeting. The day after I returned I joined a colleague and six doctoral students in a two week, all-day seminar. That class ended yesterday. Today Melinda, Cole, and I headed for the farm, where we will remain for two months. Summer has arrived.

It has been only three weeks since we were here, but those three weeks in May were marked by frequent rains, and the grass on our place enjoyed it immensely. The wheat crop in the field did not benefit so much from all that water, however. Those storms hit just as the crop was ready for harvest, and it was beaten down by wind and rain. The field was too wet to harvest and the crop eventually was lost.

We engaged in the first of what will be several days of taming the place again. We have grass to mow, a garden to tend, flowerbeds to clear – the mornings will be full, I know. Melinda dug what potatoes remained and we gathered the first of the tomatoes.

After lunch friends came by. We hope that happens a lot this summer. We shared coffee with David and Diann Mobley and caught up on our intermittently separated lives. We had dinner at Lew’s in Floresville and returned to the farm where we were treated for an hour to a powerful display of wind, rain, and lightening. The electricity was out for most of that time, but fortunately not before we’d made another pot of coffee. And when the storm passed, we were treated to a bright, beautiful bow in the sky, a reminder of hope.

I  have hopes for the summer -- some finishing detail work on the remodeling we undertook almost two years ago, visits from family, friends, and students, being able to be here long enough to keep the garden going, a couple of brief writing assignments, reading and preparing three classes for the fall, reading James MacClendon’s 3 volume systematic theology, and working on Spanish. We’ll spend a couple of days next week at Neal’s Lodges in Concan, TX with Alan, Kat, Madison, and Austin. I have a one day trip to make to Waco in a couple of weeks. In late July I’ll preach in Houston and in August I’ll make a trip there to speak to a group of African-American pastors and to pick up grandkids to bring back to Floresville for a week. But the farm will be home base this summer, and that pleases me.