The Long Drive Home from a TEEM Week

Soon I will put the last of my stuff in the car. Sunrise comes later this much further north (at 7:57), so I'm not going to leave until 6:30 or 7. Gone are the days when I would leave at 4 a.m.; driving that many hours in the dark is just too tiring. Is this a sign of getting older or just a sign of being more cautious? Part of it is wanting to linger in a lovely hotel room a bit longer, which is always balanced by knowing how much driving lies ahead and wanting to get that over with.I've been in Indianapolis, taking the last required classes, another task done on the path to ordination in the Lutheran church (ELCA, the more progressive expression of the of Lutheranism in North America). We spent the first two days of the week studying Lutheran Liturgy, then a Wednesday workshop on Lutheran Polity, and we finished the week on Thursday and Friday studying Hebrew prophets, those prophets from the B.C.E. time period, the ones at the end of the Old Testament part of the Christian…