Monday my colleague Michael Lodahl gathered with us, and really helped. We spent 2 hours and 10 minutes reading 2 pages of an essay by John Milbank. Yesterday we ate breakfast as we ate (a to-order spinach and mushroom and cheese omlet : ) ), and my friend Charlie Pardue floated in from Kansas City. Of course, he should be here the whole time, but I'll take what I can get.

This morning my friend Kevin Timpe from the Department of Philosophy at the University of San Diego met with us as well -- and helped immensely with Augustine and Thomas to save them from those *#%@ modernist co-opters of their thought. But the real props (is that still a "cool" word to use?) go to Charlie Pardue, and especially my friend, Eric Lee. It had been years since I've seen Charlie fight to stay awake during a class, and the experience was refreshing for me! It brought back the old days of Introduction to Hebrew.

But Eric was extremely impressive!! Charlie and he went to see Star Wars Episode III last night -- and Eric, who is just reading along for 'fun', showed up and stayed alert and involved -- ingeniously linking at one point the agonistic ontology of immanence (ooo, that's fun to write -- I wonder what it means?) to the language of the sale's department at work.

What's interesting more interesting is that the class is helping me see even more deeply why God is not "the Force", and why Star Wars popularizes and expresses the deepest ontological convictions of the contemporary modern/post-modern liberal nation-state and its neo-liberal capitalist order, and thus, is so fun for people to see.

Of course, it looks like I'll be going to see the movie tomorrow -- if I get papers done. Maybe I report more on the movie than the fact that it made Charlie sleepy at 7:30 am, but didn't slow down Eric at all. It is obvious to me that the Force is strong with Eric, but not much in Charlie at all!