Well, what a semester! My grades were great, but it cost me. I lost a lot of sleep, gained about 8 pounds, and definitely added to my collection of grey hairs. I met an awesome collection of students and professors and got one semester closer to the ultimate goal of... well. That'll come.

I've discovered Mary. And Queer Theology. And great Catholic queer theologians like Mark Jordan. And I've learned enough about the complicated, unknown, lost history of area now called Israel/Palestine/Southern Levant to know that any historical claim to a certain clearly bounded parcel of land is fraught with complication, exaggeration, and contradiction.

There's no archaeological evidence (yet) that there was a Kingdom of David that had borders resembling those that Israel wants today. There's no archaeological evidence that there was an ethnically cohesive, large population that migrated from Egypt to set up a nation in the "promised land".

The Biblical promise of a parcel of land to Israel is much older but no different in kind from the "Manifest Destiny" America used to justify its own annexation of land. The same is true, of course, of any divine promise of land to other religions or ethnic groups.

"God wants us to have it" is unjust to people and to God. It's the closest thing to Evil I can imagine, because it implicates God in humanity's greed and encourages slaughter in God's name. I invite people to consider that God isn't in the business of mapmaking.