Well-Swept Yard

A couple of months ago I signed up for a MOOC ( Massive Open Online Course) offered by the Harvard Divinity School and taught by Laura S. Nasrallah , Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity. I was enthralled, pulled in, captivated. From the syllabus The letters of Paul are the earliest texts in the Christian scriptures, written by a Jew at a time when the word “Christian” hadn’t yet been coined. What is the religious and political context into which they emerged? How were they first interpreted? How and why do they make such an enormous impact in Christian communities and in politics today? Nasrallah's scholarly passion comes through again and again especially in the numerous videos in the class. The introductory video is a good example. I will not describe the full course. You may still visit the archived portions of the course. I want to stress the value of the MOOC as a learning platform and from my point of view a learning platform perfectly suited for

Eleventh grade. A tough one. Acne. So on. Eleventh grade: English and PE classes and other classes I don't remember at the moment. English class was into verb conjugation. PE class was not into exercise because it was my turn for locker room duty--caged room with baskets to hold student stuff. So. Back to English. We had a book with lots of examples of conjugations. Each example was presented in two columns, one singulars and one plurals. Hour after hour I stared at all the examples and tried to learn the conjugations. Memorizing all the examples was tough. I would stare, close my eyes and try to remember what the conjugations looked like, and then open my eyes to check. I wrote the examples over and over. I was making progress. But. Test. An English test over these conjugations was coming up. In fact, on the particular day I am remembering the test was later that day. While protecting the PE baskets I kept pouring over the illustrations and I knew that I was making progress