Confession: I’ve been putting off writing this post for a while, but here we are.

Apology: This blog has been on an unplanned hiatus for about a month. I’m sorry about that.

Declaration: Now it’s time for a planned hiatus.

The last month was eventful, especially because of my younger daughter’s wedding in June. (Congratulations, Rachael and Corey.) It’s also been full of normal summer things — a little bit of travel, some chores that were on hold during the academic year. It’s nice to see the shrubs in front of my house again. I adopted a couple of cats from the shelter. Some out-of-town visitors came. Good things, but before I knew it, a month came and went since my last RPM post. Hiatus by accident.

I’ve also been reading a lot. Nothing weird about that, except that in addition to the usual kind of summer reading — the want-to reads and the must-reads for my upcoming Milligan classes — much of my book time connects with the planned hiatus. I’m going back to school.

I’m starting work on a master of fine arts program in creative nonfiction at Goucher College in Baltimore. It’s a two-year, low-residency program, which works well for someone like me who wants and needs to keep working a day job, particularly one as fulfilling as teaching at Milligan College. I’ll spare you the details about the MFA, but you can go here if you’re curious.

It’s obvious that life is about to get more complicated, probably in ways I can’t even anticipate. (I’m not complaining; just stating a fact.) So I’ve been looking at my schedule and trying to find some glitch in the space-time continuum — the Higgs boson is no help here — to figure out how I can faithfully and intelligently blog about religion, politics and media while teaching full-time, pursuing this MFA, working on other writing projects, and taking care of other bits of life as they come. The bottom line is that something has to give, and it looks like it will have to be this blog, at least for the time being.

RPM isn’t shutting down, but it is scaling back. I don’t have a specific plan for it yet; I want to see how my schedule shakes down over the next few months, and we’ll take it from there. I hope to post something occasionally, and if you follow this blog or me personally on Twitter or Facebook, you’ll receive alerts when some new content goes up. (I encourage to follow me on Twitter if you don’t already. That will be easiest.) If there’s overlap with my MFA work — some piece we read that might interest you, for example, or some writing that might fit RPM — then I’ll post it.

I intend to one day reactivate RPM or a successor. I’ll let you know. In the meantime, be well and stay in touch. Grace and peace to you.