Writer's Blocked

The Pilgrim has been suffering from acute, sustained, acutely disgruntling writer's block. The absence of posts, and in fact the absence of any useful writing -- whether in the form or proposals, personal statements, or content-full e-mail -- may be attributed to this sad state of affairs.

Over the last few weeks, the "creative element" in the Pilgrim's life has dwindled dramatically. It's likely a phase -- or so one hopes -- and the Pilgrim is assiduously taking advantage of every small flicker of inspiration and interest, resulting in, e.g., a wat of home-made Thai soup and the accompanying insights into the nature of galangal and the reasons why large, Southern Californian Asian grocery stores do not carry Kaffir lime leaves ("no person need"). The Pilgrim is, further, reading an ungodly amount, most recently including the thrilling works of R.A. Markus and Oliver O'Donovan.

One further side-project has absorbed a bit of Pilgrim-time -- and a rather dear one at that: For the past three years, the Pilgrim's been part of a small but persistent group of seminarians from Jewish, Roman Catholic and Protestant schools and communities that have been gathering for 24 hours in February since 1970. In 2006, the undertaking finally got something of a web-presence.