"It's too early to get this emotional about Jesus"

Cue Better Than Ezra’s “This Time of Year,” which always comes to mind when there’s just a bit of autumnal nip in the air.

Breakfast on the balcony. If I sit in the chair on the right, I look into my next-door-neighbor’s living room. His dog, a big shaggy guy, is none too thrilled with this new human invading his airspace. There is much barking. Eventually his owner comes to calm him down. I wave at my neighbor, whom I haven’t met yet; the dog puts his forepaws on the guy’s shoulders and is content.

9:30 freshman seminar on Augustine’s Confessions. I’ve had trouble figuring out how to organize today’s material, which is on Book 7, in which Augustine encounters “some books of the Platonists” and finally comes to a satisfactory (-ish) understanding of God’s nature and his relation to the world he created. My plan does not survive contact with reality, and what I end up doing is far less organized—but far more interesting—than what I had planned.

I end up saying a lot of wild things:

“Y’all know I believe all this stuff. You don’t have to believe any of it, but I’m going to tell you the story as I understand it.”

[when I get all choked up reading the Prologue to John] “Sorry, it’s too early in the morning to be this emotional about Jesus.”

[a student says, “Growing up Methodist” and I interrupt] “Aha! I could tell there was Arminianism in the background there.”

[addressing my Methodist later, after going on a tangent about the significance of the Ascension and my apostolic namesake and so forth] “Here, I’ll indulge you by quoting a Charles Wesley hymn—though he never officially left the Church of England, so I get to claim him. Anyway, ‘Those dear tokens of his passion . . .’” [I get choked up again.]

In the last sixty seconds of class I take the liberty of warning my students that we’re going to get to the death of Augustine’s Mom at almost exactly the first anniversary of my own mother’s death. I will do my best to hold it together, but they should be prepared for some weirdness.

If I can’t even read aloud “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” without choking up, talking about the death of mothers who introduced their sons to the Lord Jesus is going to be . . . something.

Bonhams has a Scottish art auction coming up. The new condo has no trash cans, no sofa, no salt and pepper shakers . . . but surely it needs some Scottish art.

(The sofa, incidentally, is on order.)