1977: Between spring and fall semesters at the University of Toronto, I spent the summer in Madison WI where I was raised, and had my first taste of romance – and rejection. She went on to become a writer of children’s novels. At the time, I may have been the only one to see she had it in her. She passed on to me her love of Italian art and literature, which led to my decision, a few years later, to study in Rome.
1987: As a student pastor of the Waldensian church in a three-point charge - Udine, Gorizia, and Tramonti di Sopra - I put a lot of miles on my Fiat millecento and was plied with grappa and Picolit on pastoral visits. On the side, I wrote a paper for the Rivista biblica italiana on attestations of “Habakkuk” in Akkadian sources.
1997: While part of the pastoral team at the Sun Prairie WI United Methodist Church, I learned by being there for many people in death something of the meaning of life. At the Midwest meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Wheaton IL that year, I gave a paper on 2 Baruch – a Jewish apocalypse with notable affinities to 4 Ezra and the Apocalypse of John. It was later published in the Jewish Quarterly Review.
This meme arrived via Bob
MacDonald. I tag Angela
Roskop Erisman, Wayne Leman,
and Kevin Edgecomb.
Comments