january notes
Published on January 12, 2026
- Tomorrow’s the first day of the new semester. The kids’ classes are blessedly clustered on Tuesday and Thursday, and L is far more independent, so I’ll only be helping him make his way downtown for the first week, then, Lord willing, he’ll be able to manage on his own. Something possessed him to register for the 8 AM section of one of his classes, so he’ll have a tough time of it for a while, especially during the winter months when he’ll have to get up even earlier to scrape his truck’s windshield. As for P, she still doesn’t want to drive places on her own, so I’ll still be taking her to school twice a week. Not too onerous.
- Speaking of P, for the first time in many long months, she expressed a desire to play something with me on one of her allotted evenings. We enjoyed a Mario Kart session (wherein I finished “only” 15 seconds or so behind her, in fourth place), and the following evening, we played Ticket to Ride for the first time, and enjoyed it—though she said she prefers the somewhat similar Carcassonne for its world-building aspects. Regardless, the fact that she wanted to play anything at all signals a kind of thaw in our relationship, one that I’m grateful for. I’m going to make the most of our times together, and pray that it continues.
- On the book front, I finished C.S. Lewis’s The Dark Tower & Other Stories, a collection of snippets of his unfinished fiction. The genres are primarily sci-fi, but the final fragment is a retelling of the fall of Troy from the perspective of Menelaus, starting with a striking scene from inside the Trojan Horse. I’ve resumed Jane Eyre, which I’ve never read before but am actually greatly enjoying. I love her introspective asides the most; I’ll post a fuller review in here when I’ve finished.
- My new year’s resolution on the church front was to starting staying for the weekly post-service lunch and getting to know the other congregants. It’s definitely stretching me outside my comfort zone, but it’s been a blessing in equal measure. The church is so small and intimate that it really does feel like a family, all the more since I’ve started to gel with the Friday evening book study guys in a way that I didn’t at my old church. It really helps one open up when the men across the table have similar questions and concerns about the institutional church, the Bible, practice, faith & politics, etc. I’m still on the fence about actually joining the church, though; I know there’s value in commitment, but I still find myself unsure about whether to commit to the little church I’ve been attending, or the larger Anglican congregation downtown, where I’ve been taking the Sunday evening theology classes and attending the (outstanding) Theology on Tap lectures. I feel a strong sense of personal loyalty to Greg, the pastor of my current church, and I align closely with his worldview, and it provides an opportunity for healthy growth in expanding my comfort zone and ministering more directly with the marginalized and disenfranchised BUT the church downtown has a much higher concentration of peers and potential friends with whom I feel an intellectual affinity. AND I appreciate their doctrinal stance AND they have a thriving ministry to the inner city community and beyond I could be involved in. It’s a tough choice.
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