Common Day of Learning.

(Woo hoo! I hit 4 blogs last month, which accomplished my goal of one per week. We'll see how this month goes)
So the other day my wife and I went to APU's common day of learning, a day of speakers and seminars when all the classes are canceled and most of the students bail and go to the beach. A friend of mine referred to it fondly as the common day of leaving. Well one of my favorite writers was the key note speaker so I took a "development day" off work to go see him.

We left Bennett with Grammie and made our way to Azusa, eating cold pizza and drinking hot chai. For the first session we split up. I went to a (to me at least) interesting class on the theological and philosophical ramifications of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics taught by two physicists and a philosopher/theologian. (Click the link, I dare you :) We watched a pretty awesome movie with "Dr Quantum" in it that takes a slightly simpler approach to the concepts.

Sarah went to a class on Culinary Leadership that was taught by her old R.D when she was an R.A. at APU. I liked my class but hers sounded pretty cool too. They talked about food, and what passes as food for most people today, and gave tangible small steps to take towards food health and independence. Every garden starts with one plant, eat only meals you can recognize ingredients in, fast meat for one meal a week. I think this class lead to my wife's desire to start a food garden and her revelation that she would be okay living on a farm. There was an amazing Ted Talks (an amazing site if you have never been - ted.com) with Jamie Oliver (of the Naked Chef) on teaching people about food. If you don't follow any other links,  invest the 15 minutes to watch the video. Its amazingly convicting and change inspiring. At one point he goes to a school where kids cant even identify basic fruits and veggies. 




After that we went and saw Dallas Willard who talked about knowledge informing faith, and what it looks like for Christians when we give up knowledge to "just have faith"


It was hard to pay attention, not because he was boring, but rather it was, as Sarah put it, rather like reading one of his books. He speaks clearly and succinctly, and every word matters to his ultimate point. Its worth watching if you have 40 minutes or so. Its on iTunesU so if you click this link it will open up iTunes to download it.

Click here to download some D. Willard.

We then went and had lunch at The Hat. Split a pastrami and an order of fries.

Then we went to a panel on the differences and commonalities between the Catholic and Protestant views of the Sacraments. There was a Protestant English professor, a Catholic English professor, a Protestant theology professor, and a Catholic priest on hand for discussion. Pretty much every one agreed that though most Protestant churches acknowledges 2 (and some times three) sacraments and the Catholic church acknowledges seven, the Christian life is supposed to be a sacrament of constantly turning towards God. And two of them confessed to taking the Eucharist at a catholic church without being catholic (though one eventually became Catholic)

We skipped out on the last session to beat the traffic, but stopped at Kelly's for some iced chai before we left. We made it home in pretty good time. All in all a pretty nice day.