My friend and former student, Ashley, dropped by recently for a visit. It’s been quite awhile since I’ve seen her, although we’ve been in touch periodically. She is an accomplished writer and speaker and knows more than one or two things about blogging. While we covered a lot of ground in her visit, she made it a point to say I made a kind of tactical error early on with this blog. Always being open to criticism from my students, I inquired “how is that?” She commented that my blogs are particularly long. This was not the first time I’d heard someone reflect that my writings have length. Hopefully, breadth and depths as well, on occasion. 🙂 Anyway, she wasn’t admonishing me because they are tedious to read; instead, she said I set myself up early with having to produce just a whole lot of stuff, establishing some kind of precedent. Oh. She does have a point. Fortunately, this isn’t a competition and I’m not in the mold of Charles Dickens who, I seem to recall, was paid by the word.

Which brings me to today and another interlude. Hopefully, I’ll be in a place in the next few days to follow up on some themes that have been bubbling around. A couple that I’ve put off that will be a challenge.

For now, I’ll just share that I pretty much powered down on Thursday and Friday, attending to this and that without diving in headfirst. Yesterday promised to be extremely busy and it was. Up early. Down at Clairemont Methodist Church at 7:30am to set up for an all day Emmaus training that went extremely well. Just plain terrific people. Diane worked with the couple of dozen women (she is an assistant director) while I worked with the great men’s team. As this year’s director, it’s been a challenge due to my health situation but they’re willing and able to step in and do whatever needs to be done. It’s tough to find a group with deeper servant’s hearts than you find in Emmaus.

The day capped off in the evening with one of my favorite activities: High school sports. Most of you know that I still have strong allegiances to Mission Hills, where I served as founding principal and eight years in that position. Well, my two very good friends and colleagues, Ken (Athletic Director) and Billy (my former AP and now an HR Director), picked me up to see if the MH basketball girls could pull off the amazing feat of a third straight CIF Championship in the top Open Division. Ranked sixth in the state, we took on private school La Jolla Country Day, ranked seventh in the state and state champion last year. What a game! I’ve never seen girls basketball played at that level. Everyone said the same thing. Back and forth, remarkable talent as the girls continued to sink impossible threes as if they played in the NBA. In the end, of course, all is right with the world as our girls brought home another championship. Threepeat, as they say!  It was great being back with Ken and Billy, two of the main reasons I used to love my job.

This morning, off to church where we have the blessing of serving communion, which we do once a month. Not a perfunctory act but deeply meaningful on so many levels.

We received word of the time and place for dear Shannon’s memorial service. I’m sure some hundreds of people will attend. At prayer on Friday, we spent more time laughing and weeping as we grappled with our huge loss. There is nothing like loving community and sharing the joys and sorrows of life.

Sorry that I’m not called to really deep places today. Feel free to seek a refund from the site administrator. 🙂  Kidding aside, thank you for taking the time out of your busy lives to check in!