Julia M. OBrien

I've just encountered powerful curriculum on Joshua.  It's entitled Joshua:  A Journey of Faith and is the 2009-2010 Horizons Bible Study for Presbyterian women.

The first of many unsettling experiences during the LTS West Bank/Israel trip was my introduction to the Wall.  While I had read much about the "separation wall" between Israel and the Occupied Territories and even seen photos from friends, I wasn't prepared for the reality.

From January 6 to January 25, I joined my colleague Anabel Proffitt in leading a group of 21 students from our institution through the West Bank and Israel.  I've recently returned, my camera full of pictures and my head full of realities to process and responses to formulate.  In the next few weeks, I'll be reporting on my evolving experience of the trip.

A lot will happen in the next six weeks. 

It's one thing to acknowledge that the book of Psalms is written as poetry.  It's quite another to consider what difference the poetic style makes to interpretation of the Psalms. What if we encountered Psalm 139's claim that "I am fearfully and wonderfully made" not in private devotion or from the mouth of a lector in church but in a context more like that of def jam?  This great piece is Marty McConnell's "Instructions for a Body."

This semester, my students in the Introduction to Hebrew Bible/Old Testament class at LTS are working with new textbooks:  John Collins, A Short Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (Fortress, 2007) and Johanna van Wijk-Bos, Making Wise the Simple: The Torah in Christian Faith and Practice (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005).  We also read from other sources (the Global Bible Commentary, the Women's Bible Commentary, the Eerdman's Dictionary of the Bible, and some internet pieces), but Collins and Bos have been our primary introductions to the Pentateuch.

In the spring 2010 semester at LTS, I'll be teaching a new course:  Violence and the Bible.

Thanks to all those who responded to my call for Psalms stuff. Here, I report on the array of objects we handled in our first Psalms class.

On Wednesday, I begin teaching a seminary course on the book of Psalms.  After months immersed in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, a turn to poetry/liturgy will take some adjustment.

The end of summer is always difficult for me.  My vegetable garden shrinks, in size and in its contribution to my physical and emotional well-being.  At some point, I'll have to break down and buy a store-bought tomato with the texture of cardboard and scramble to find fresh rosemary.  We won't roast vegetables or salmon on the grill.  And the spirituality of gardening will need to enter its dormant stage until May.

Summer's end also initiates Winter Dread, an affliction common to transplanted Southerners.