Tonight to thank Geordan Hammond for his graciousness toward me, I took him to a "traditional Fish-n-Chips" joint, where I was asked if I wanted "mushed peas." Yes, they are peas that have been mushed, kind of like the equivalent of lumpy mashed potatoes, except green. Actual they were pretty good -- except they spread them over my chips and made them soggy. The non-soggy chips were great; but I thought the fish was a little greasy. I've been eating in my room so it was a treat to go and dine with someone.

Geordan is the head of the Wesley Research Centre here at NTC; his dissertation received the Wesleyan Theological Society award as the best dissertation last year. He is just beginning his full time appointment here. He actually graduated from PLNU in 2000 with a degree in history. He never had me for a class, but I guess back in the day he was in a Christian Ministry class with Janine Metcalf in which I guest "lectured." Janine and I put on a show in which we tried to get the students to see that ministry was not defined by unchecked, unexamined need, but by the sender. As Geordan said, it must have been effective (or at least affective) because he still remembered it! I've become a big Geordan Hammond fan.

The big excitement of the day was my run. Things got to a slow start; I couldn't get an electronic version of Wesley's works to pull up on my computer. So I went on my run early. I've been running down a main street (always a challenge because cars drive on the wrong side of the road and I have to get in the habit of looking differently!) to a path by a "river" (looks more like a canal to me), and then back again. Today I went a little longer on the canal path and saw a sign that suggested a way to loop back to Didsbury. The good news is that I kept my head and didn't take any "wrong" turns; the bad news was that West Didsbury is a different place from East Didsbury. I don't know how long I was out -- but I think it was the longest run that I've had for a while, with some anxious moments of not being sure or not if I was lost. For the record, I never was; I just wasn't sure if I was or not.

After reading all the other work of the last two days, I found reading Wesley today more intelligible than I ever have. It is like after over thirty years of study (I wrote a paper on him in high school, even), I finally have discovered the "key" that holds his works together. To follow along the path of this movement within the church catholic is a great gift. While I've basically worked for my research with his sermons, I also read some his "Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion."

Wesley writes in his 18th century English whose wording is more alien to us than what he describes. I think it describes, not fully in content, but what in end that we seek at Mid-City: "We see--and who does not?--the numberless follies and miseries of our fellow creatures. We see on every side either men of no religion at all or men of a lifeless, formal religion [and I should add, 'men' of a shallow, therapeutic self-serving religion]. We are grieved at the site, and should greatly rejoice if by any means we might convince some that there is a better religoin to be attained, a religion worthy of God that gave it. And this we conceive to be no other than love: the love of God and of all mankind; the loving God with all our heart and soul and strength, as have first loved us, as the fountain of all the good we have received, and of all we ever hope to enjoy; and the loving every soul which God hath made, every man on earth, as our own soul.

This love we believe to be the medicine of life, the never-failing remedy, for all the evils of a disordered world, for all the miseries and vices of men. Wherever this is, there are virtue and happiness, going hand in hand. .. . This if the religion we long to see established in the world, a religion of love and joy and peace, having its seat in the heart, in the inner most soul, but ever showing itself by its fruits, continually springing forth not only in all innocence -- for 'love worketh no ill in his neighbour'-- but likewise in every kind of beneficence, in spreading virtue and happiness all around it."

I hope that your weekend is good. Tomorrow I hope a train after going to the John Rylands library to "hang out" (I think that is how "it" is described, but I'm never sure what "hang out" means) with Ben Kautzer and Gaelan Gilbert (who has left his poor wife in So Cal or worse, Arizona to experience jet lag again) and maybe Emily Smith! Supposedly we are going to worship in York on Sunday. I got my train tickets this evening, and hope to get back to Manchester in time to see the second half of the World Cup final on a big screen in "city center" on Sunday. Go Holland!