Halftime

It's halftime of our journey west, and unfortunately I won't be able to bring you any of the interesting news of the trip, that is - Rachel related news.  Diane and I have re-located 60 miles south of her to the San Diego suburb of Santee and the home of my sister, Melinda, for some well-earned rest off-road.  Rachel has begun 'Torrieantation', the orientation into the Torrey Honors institute at Biola.  This is an intensive program that will largely replace her general education requirements with a classical curriculum based on texts such as the Odyssey and the Iliad, including a lot of time spent in discussion.  She has been assigned a 'house' (just like Harry Potter!) and a small group within that house of 10-12 students.  These students will be tied together their entire 4 years, learning how to challenge and support each other as they move through the curriculum.  She'll still study film, and have a few general classes to take, but most of her academic life at Biola will be tied to Torrey.

Yesterday, after move-in (I was nearly 'done in') we all gathered at the school chapel for a discussion between three of the Torrey faculty to give us parents a taste of what it'll be like.  They were very smart and funny people, and they spent 90 minutes giving us an example of the type of discussion Rachel might expect over the next 4 years. What excited Diane and I most about the program is it's focus on developing people who can not only think, but discern truth from falsehood.  One professor (the funniest theology prof I've ever heard) described it as learning a core value such as, in his case, the Trinity.  Then, allowing your mind to expand around that core value in ever widening spirals until you find yourself miles away from the core, but still tied too it.  This really resinated with me.  Begin with truth, then move away without fear.  So much of Christian life has become about identifying falsehood so we can disapprove of it, making sure everyone within earshot knows we disapprove.  The best statement to sum up our introduction to Torrey yesterday was, "Learn to love all things appropriately."

Enough of that.  Back to travelog!  After Torrey intro, we took Rachel and a new friend named Miranda out to the Chinese place just down the street from campus.  Miranda is from Albuquerque and, like Rachel, is a very motivated, smart kid.  We had a chance to meet her Dad and Grandma, but they had to head back to New Mexico early, hence our dinner invite.  After that, it was a strictly non-tearful goodbye (we'll see Rachel in three days) then another blessedly uneventful trip on the California freeways to Santee.  Since we'll be here for a couple of days, I'll write more about that later. 

Rachel, Miranda and Diane head to dinner.