I am indebted to Duke Divinity School for a significant portion of my theological training and formation. I consider those three laborious years I experienced in Durham as some of the best years of my life. In particular, as a former law enforcement officer, I was challenged and equipped to think much more seriously and theologically than ever about Jesus' teachings about love of neighbor, including the neighbor who happens to be enemy--all of which is something I continue to ponder as a theologian.

Interestingly, also while I was at Duke, some additional (counter) formation occurred that still surfaces in my life when college basketball season rolls around. I must honestly confess that it is difficult for me to overcome my dislike--well, hatred--of the Tarheels of UNC-Chapel Hill. To be sure, Duke and UNC are next door neighbors, both on Tobacco Road. And yet, these are neighbors that, especially when it comes to hoops, really appear to regard the other as enemy. I've imbibed of this vitriolic cup, including when I occasionally participated in the "liturgy" performed at Cameron, hollering words I normally would not say publicly to another person (such as more or less telling Carolina to go to a certain place "where there will be weeping and nashing of teeth").

The first anniversary of the shootings in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, brought – as the night the day – predictable news industry incomprehension.   A report on National Public Radio (a news source which serves as my intellectual highway accident scene – so luridly awful in its middlebrow division of the universe into conservative and liberal, I just can’t turn away) used a novel angle to make its bourgeois point:  an Amish couple in which the wife started a pretzel company so her husband could learn to be a mental health counselor.  For NPR (as I heard it) this was all about opening to the comforts of modernity while holding on to individual beliefs.