Even more scattered than usual

Every summer it seems to happen at least once: the Wilder family gets blasted in four or five directions at once. This is that week this summer. I'm writing in a coffee shop right around the corner from Westminster Theological Seminary, having dropped my oldest daughter off at a running camp near here yesterday. My two sons are at Scout camp this week and I just talked to my youngest daughter right before she boarded a plane to spend with her godmother and family in Alabama. Nicolien (my wife) is the only one left in Charlottesville.

The logistical feat (those of you with children will appreciate this) is all the more impressive when one considers... that we scattered in our various directions, not from home base, but from my parents' home in North Carolina, where we were celebrating my father's 65th birthday. As far as that goes, I should say that one of my goals is to reach my father's age with something of the same humor, grace, wisdom, and commitment to Christ which he has achieved--and this as the patriarch of a family that has sometimes mistaken its surname for a personal comparative adjective (see first post above).

I'm staying (one might say 'freeloading') now with Mark and Karyn Traphagen, very close friends of Nicolien's and mine from Charlottesville. Mark gave me the grand tour of Westminster Theological Seminary (outside Philadelphia) today. Since I've been an adjunct faculty member there for, oh, five years now, it seemed fitting that I should finally see the campus. I'll be here until Thursday morning and then it's back to North Carolina via the running camp. Before then I hope to get back to my review of Moore's The Kingdom of Christ, but first a bit on spaghetti westerns. The topics are not completely unrelated. But that's for tomorrow.

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