Dr. Platypus

Jeanie Miley has some very kind words to say about Formations adult Bible study curriculum, of which I am the editor:

For years we have used the FORMATIONS study material, written by moderate Baptists across the country.  The lessons are edited and printed by the publisher Smyth and Helwys.  I have been so impressed by these current commentaries on the prophets,  written by Brett Younger, that I ordered copies for each member of the class.  Brett has an unusual ability to peer into the biblical material and connect it with contemporary culture.  He has made the ancient material in Malachi, Micah, Habbakkuk and Zephaniah come alive for us.

I’m thankful for…

• A little girl who likes Homer and Louisa May Alcott for bedtime stories.
• A little girl who interrupts the bedtime story to ask about words or expressions she doesn’t understand.
• A freshly painted guest room—and all the people who will use it.
• Just enough time at the end of my day or week to learn something new.
• A very loving, very understanding wife.
• The Mercer University Children’s Choir.
• Churches that believe in adult Bible study—I’d be out of a job without them!
• The ability to get some money out of savings, load up the car, and go visit family far away.
• The Adult, Too Sunday school class.
• The book of Genesis.
• The Macon Symphony Orchestra.
• The ability to buy a couple extra cans of vegetables for my church’s Crisis Closet.
• The Beatles.
• GoogleBooks
• Students who smile at me when they “get it.”
• Phở
• Dr. Rick Wilson’s continued confidence in my suitability to serve as an adjunct professor at Mercer University.
• The alphabet.

What are you thankful for?

Today is my birthday, and I’ve been thinking about the kind of old guy I want to become, because it’s happening faster than I would have imagined 20 years ago! In chronological order, here are some cool old guys from whom I could stand to learn a thing or two:

1. Yoda. He’s short. He’s not that handsome. But he’s got that whole “power of the force” thing going, and could kick some serious πυγή  in his (relatively) younger days. Plus, I think I edited something he wrote once.

2. Melchizedek. According to rabbinic tradition, he is the patriarch Shem under an assumed name. In any case, he is the ultimate mysterious stranger, “without father or mother or genealogy, without beginning of life or end of days,” who arrives out of nowhere to bless Abram and show him hospitality.

3. Nicholas of Myra. Lover of children, giver of gifts, exiled and imprisoned for his faith. He once even punched out an Arian heretic. According to some, he spends his retirement years distributing toys to good little girls and boys.

4. Atticus Finch. Loving father, brilliant lawyer, champion of justice.

5. Sherman Tecumseh Potter. Ex-cavalryman and exemplary army surgeon. Beloved father-figure to everyone under his command.

6. Emmett Lathrop “Doc” Brown. Inspired though eccentric scientist and inventor. If you’re going to build a time machine, why not put it in a Delorean? He realized his dream of living in the Old West, where men were men and women looked like Mary Steenburgen.

7-8. Arva Sylvester Pursiful Jr. and Darrell Thurman Pursiful. What can I say? My father is and my paternal grandfather was a cool old guy. Devoted husbands, fathers, and grandfathers; among the top in their chosen professions; able to know when to be serious and when to joke around. They’ve given me some mighty big shoes to fill.

9. Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. Flawed yet honorable. He never stopped learning. He never stopped risking something big for something good.

10. Johnny Cash. An almost perfect synthesis of Saturday night and Sunday morning.

11. Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Just because I wish I could pull off that head slap thing he does and/or magically appear behind someone who’s talking about me.

Great Debate Series
First Baptist Church of Forsyth, Georgia (all meetings at 6:30 pm, childcare provided)

September 13: Mr. Bill Underwood, President, Mercer University. Issue: The Death Penalty.

September 20: Dr. Mark Douglas, Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, Columbia Theological Seminary. Issue: Stem Cell Research.

September 27: Dr. David Gushee, Distinguished Professor of Christian Ethics, Mercer University. Issue: Torture.

October 4: Dr. Paul Lewis, Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, Mercer University. Issue: Gay Marriage.

October 18: Dr. Stan Saunders, Associate Professor of New Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary. Issue: Climate Change.

October 25: Dr. Kirby Godsey, 17th President, Mercer University, currently Chancellor and University Professor. Issue: God’s Irresistible Grace.

November 1: Dr. Darrell Pursiful, Editor, Smyth & Helwys Publishing, and Adjunct Professor, Mercer University. Issue: Biblical Inerrancy / Authority.

November 15: Mr. David Hudson, Senior Partner in the Law Firm Hull, Towill, Norman, Barrett and Salley, Augusta, Georgia. Issue: Separation of Church and State.

The blog face lift has ended up a little ahead of schedule thanks to help from Paula Fether of DewDrop Webs. I hope you like it. All that’s left to do is give some of my pages a long-needed revision before re-posting them.

Last week was our church’s Vacation Bible School. Zach Kincaid, our church webmaster, put together this video:

Everybody had a great time. Thanks to Karen, Julie, and everybody else for giving us yet another banner year!

(PS: Rebecca shows up for the first time around 2:01. Connie [aka "the Craft Lady"] first appears at about 5:01.)

Browsing Amazon.com I discovered that Daniel J. Harrington devoted five paragraphs on pages 75-76 of What Are They Saying About the Letter to the Hebrews? (Paulist, 2005) to my published dissertation, thus proving—to my utter astonishment—that more than three people read the thing!

PS: It’s actually a pretty good summary!

The particular dialectal feature Eric Baković notes at Language Log is not confined to Louisville. My wife and I have somewhat frequent discussions about whether she’s looking for a “pen” to write with or a “pin” to sew with, and she’s not even from the same state. (She’s from Kentucky.) (And if you’ve ever lived in Louisville, you know what I mean.) It’s the same with my relatives in Bell County, Kentucky. I’ll have to double-check my parents, though. They’ve lived in Michigan so long their accent has drifted some—although not by much.

What I really wish Eric had explained, however, was how one manages linguistically to condense “Louisville” into two and a half syllables!

Six or seven Christmases ago, my mom bought me a Personal Digital Assistant; nothing fancy, just a basic model she thought I would like. It didn’t work, and I kept losing the data I entered into it. Likewise the replacement unit the company sent me. Likewise the replacement they sent after the second unit also failed. It just wasn’t meant for me to carry around a PDA. I stuck with my big old clunky organizer for another few years, and then I discovered the wonder that is the Hipster PDA. According to creator Merlin Mann,

The Hipster PDA (Parietal Disgorgement Aid) is a fully extensible system for coordinating incoming and outgoing data for any aspect of your life and work. It scales brilliantly, degrades gracefully, supports optional categories and “beaming,” and is configurable to an unlimited number of options. Best of all, the Hipster PDA fits into your hip pocket and costs practically nothing to purchase and maintain.

The basic model hPDA consists of a stack of index cards held together by a small binder clip. You can have your system up and running with an investment of about $1.35. Since shortly after the hPDA’s debut, a number of upgrade features have been available, including some printer-ready templates for to-do lists, calendars, and other specialty cards. D*I*Y Planner in particular has a good selection of hPDA templates, although I have generally been content to create a four-month calendar using iCal that, folded in quarters, fits perfectly. That and a couple of colored cards for quick data organization have given me a lightweight, versatile tool that I’ve been using for a couple of years now.

This weekend I finally took the plunge and updated to a more powerful and esthetically pleasing model, for a total investment of $18.92. (In fact, I had a $15 Staples coupon, so it really only cost me about $4.) Here’s what it is:

1. An M by Staples™ Black Leather Jotter. This leather card case is about the size of a large wallet. On the right side it has a place for a stack of 3×5 cards; on the left it has a pocket for additional cards plus a slot for business cards. There is additional card-storage available in a pocket behind the main card stack and on the case’s exterior.

2. A Zebra Telescopic ball point pen. This pen fits in the Jotter’s interior pen loop. It is collapsible; when you need to write with it, it telescopes to the size of a normal pen, but it collapses to a very manageable pocket size when you’re ready to put it away.

Now I store my blank cards in the stack on the right. On the left I keep a colored card as a divider. In front of the divider are cards with data I need to process later; behind the divider are “permanent” cards that are updated rather infrequently. These include my aforementioned fold-out calendar and the current card for my daily Bible reading schedule. When I’m away on long business trips, I can store extra blank cards in the outside pocket and tuck away receipts in the inside right pocket.

Do any of you use a do-it-yourself planner? How do you use it? What kinds of pages or cards have you found most helpful?

Also, are you aware of any good templates for Christian-themed pages or cards? Prayer list? Sermon notes? Worship planning?

… I was taking my entrance exam for the doctoral program at SBTS. I was sure Freddy Krueger would be proctoring the thing.