On Sabbatical

My friends, Mr. Nichols, Mr. Goodman, Mr. Boettege and I are going to be leaving early on Sunday morning for our sabbatical in the beautiful mountains of Colorado. This is going to be about as laid back a trip as you could hope for. We will be doing some camping, reading (I plan on reading Vos' Aquinas, Calvin, and Contemporary Protestant Thought, as well as Budziszewski's Evangelicals in the Public Square) and hiking (nothing to strenuous in the hiking department; after all, we are the kind of people who read on vacation).

Now, I'm sure that any observant reader would point something out to me at this point; specifically that taking a "sabbatical" implies taking extended time off to accomplish some sort of career related goal such as writing a book, traveling, or doing research. It might also be pointed out that our week long summer excursion to Colorado does not meet this description. However, since I am envious of all of the academics and pastors who get to go to places like Cambridge on their sabbaticals, and since I do plan on at least accomplishing some reading, I am going to go ahead and call this trip a sabbatical. It's no Cambridge, but it's still going to be great.

Unfortunately, I haven't been posting as frequently over the summer as I told myself that I was going to (in all honesty, I think I knew that would happen) though not for lack of interesting material. When I get back I'll have to find some time to write a few thoughts about George Weigel's book Letters to a Young Catholic, as well as the nature of the sacraments.