Helcaraxë

To the north of our townhouse is a "secret pathway" as a friend of mine calls it. We can skirt alongside the car, between one fence and then over another, then walk between a row of trees and a 30 inch high concrete wall. We come out in a college-owned parking lot and the path is a nice shortcut when heading to campus. The parking lot and the ground on the other side of the short wall is a lower spot on campus and recently, when we had a lot of rain last weekend, became a thinly iced pond. The temperature dropped and the water froze. This made for a precarious walk across the parking lot, but what was really interesting was the way the deeper ice in the depression by the wall cracked and broke, with sheets of ice beginning to rise above another like the outcomes of miniature and frozen plate tectonics.

The sparrows keep singing though, and that makes me smile.

Free pizza

When one changes one's meal plan at the college dining hall, when lunches and suppers become more sporadic and need a little more planning than walking in and swiping a card in order to enjoy a banquet of Medieval proportions, then the words "free food" have more than just a passing allure.
I know it's been said "there's no such thing as a free meal" but there are ones that have less pecuniary payout on my end, even if I do contribute by cleaning up or some other way.
It is within my best interests not to chase after free meals like a ravenous, tight-pocketed fool. I would lose self-respect, for instance. Nonetheless, I cannot deny that I think twice about going to an informational meeting about digging ancient dust in a city where bombs are falling (aka Ashkelon) when they say "free pizza!" And by thinking twice I mean that I actually consider going to the meeting.

But even if I do go and stuff my face with hot, greasy, delicious pizza at no charge to myself, Kathryn would never allow me to spend the airfare money just to follow her around the whole summer and complain (which she knows I will).

Benefit of the doubt

I like to give people a little bit of leeway when I'm determining what their actions or words mean. I'm a rather trusting person and I hope for the best about a lot of people. I try not to jump to conclusions (though I do, I admit) and try to remember that I shouldn't assume things - there's so much about a situation that I don't know.

Things that I take for granted about what it means to be a Christian - that being a Christian is more than just going to church on Sunday but should be an all-encompassing rethinking and reordering of every aspect of our lives - I am learning aren't held by all the people around me calling themselves Christians.
Part of being a Christian means having integrity. I don't think that integrity is a nice by-product that some people may have, but is rather something we all need to strive for. Let our words and actions match up. If we say we will do something, do it. People watch us, in our lives, and we are a witness at every moment.
I'm not talking about a legalistic terror of mistakes or a strive to be perfect in a self-created way. I'm talking about intentionally working towards the integration of our words and actions and beliefs, being a whole person where all parts of our lives connect and support each other. Acknowledging our mistakes and being honest about our failings. Rejecting pretension and the compartmentalization of our lives.

We are forgiven people, but our redemption is not so that we can get lost in the wilderness. We were set free for a purpose, to be God's icons in this world. Our actions matter, our words matter. If we believe something, it needs to change us.

ASL

I'm taking an informal class on American Sign Language. The one rule is that there is no voice allowed. For an hour each Tuesday evening I exist in a semi-silent world (the only sounds being the natural ambient noises that I cannot shut out). My communication is truncated to rudimentary phrases and laborious finger-spelling. As our teacher prays (we don't close our eyes during prayer) I can comprehend generally that he is talking to our Lord and includes the class and our learning in his thanksgiving and supplication. Learning motions and signs for words makes me consider how I think - do I think in individual words or phrases? Do I hear the words in my head as I think? How does a deaf person contemplate? Do they see written words as they would when writing or typing? Do they envision signs?

After an hour, spoken words are an affront to the silence. We have labored together to communicate and at once give it all up for the ease of our native tongue. Perhaps the affront is actually guilt at the feelings of relief that I can speak once again.

Lame-o

what a lame blog! Why am I writing this? I feel so shallow about what I write, or so trivial, or trite, but it's only because I don't feel comfortable writing more seriously on a digital raft that floats out into the nebulous dark waters of the internet.
I would like to be able to express my thoughts and experiences in a cohesive and careful way, so perhaps I shall continue practicing that way. But in the mean time, my faithful or sporadic or unintended readers, my apologies.

Moving target

I want my center to be in Christ and I want to live in the reality that my identity is found in Him. Yet as soon as I center myself I allow myself to be distracted. What I need is a staple gun, to staple myself to Jesus, yet I'm afraid I'd just take out the binding ligatures. I run around in my life saying "Jesus help me" as if I'm playing tag with him, getting so close and then jumping just out of reach.

What I need is for Jesus to staple himself to me, 2 Tim. 2:13

Ashes to Ashes

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

But the steadfast love of the Lord never fails.

Merciful God, you call us forth from the dust of the earth and name each of us as your beloved children. Now look upon us as we enter these Forty Days bearing the mark of ashes:
sign of our mortality,
reminder of our end.
Bless our journey through the desert of Lent to the font of rebirth.
May our fasting be a hunger for justice, our acts of charity, a making of peace; our prayer, the chant of humble and grateful hearts. When we come to Easter and behold the empty cross, renew in us the certainty of your unfailing love; assure us again that neither life nor death
can separate us from you.

Strobe sight

I'm walking on water but it's the slushy kind. The wind's blowing the snow directly in my face. Soft kisses? Or perhaps tiny slaps? The snow induces rapid blinking and the shutters of my eyes open and close several times a second. I can just see enough not to run into another and to recognize familiar shapes and jackets. It's not cold enough to bring on fits of shivering and I can't help but grin as the words "hold your head high! Hold your head high!" play over in my mind. I don't even know the rest of the song.

Windsor

I played Scrabble tonight with Pauline, Winn, Louise, and Dee. Louise has a day-lily named after her. Pauline and Winn graduated from Wheaton in 1945 and knew my grandmother, Anna Hess Lander. What is it like to live at a nursing home with a college friend sixty-three years after graduation? As Simon and Garfunkel say "Can you imagine us years from today? How terribly strange to be seventy" let alone 85. We make choices in our lives and are responsible for those choices, but in a grand sense life just happens and we respond in a right way. These ladies have lived for so many years and have done so many things in their lives.
I'm only 22 and am so worried about what will happen in the next few months, the next few years. If my life isn't settled by the time I'm 30 I'm lost. But here they are, 85 years old. Life happens and you take it one day at a time.

Otto gave me three kisses, and he's 101.

The snow car

Yesterday after the snowfall our townhouse neighbors decided it would be fun to bury a car. We watched from our window, surmising that they were probably just playing a practical joke on a friend.

This afternoon a young lady was out there pushing all the snow from her car, so we went out to help. She said that she did know the guys but that they didn't know this was her car. Apparently they just chose the smallest car in the lot to turn into a giant snowball.

Natasha has said, previously, that she would like to go over and ask these fellows what goes on in their heads. They have done other unhelpful things like throwing broken furniture on our lawn, being inconsiderately loud late at night, etc. I should like to know as well.

The snake and the mouse

We have a little mouse in the kitchen - quite a cute one, in fact. I've seen it three times, which is three times more than anyone else.
We also have a pet snake and we joked about letting loose the snake to catch the mouse, so it was rather humorous when Sarah Davis came into my room with a sheepish grin on her face asking if I had her snake, Mayzie. Of course I didn't, but we looked briefly and assumed she would show up before too long.
Yesterday evening we had a bunch of people over because it was Groundhog Day and I didn't want to tell everyone that we had both a snake and a mouse loose in our townhouse, so I kept in on the D-L for quite a while, but towards the end of the movie Sarah Wilcox went upstairs and noticed a coiled "plastic snake" on the stairs. She thought we set it there to guard the stairs and keep anyone from going upstairs, but then remembered that we had had a snake last year (Sarah Wilcox found Mayzie when she escaped last year too).

Aside from a few shudders and unpleasant expressions, Mayzie's reception went quite well. That snake doesn't know how lucky she is: we're setting traps for the mouse.

Reading ahead

I really need to pay more attention to what the exact reading assignment is for each day. Twice now I have read information that is not needed for several days while neglecting the immediate assignment. It's all good stuff though; good stuff. I was reading a Catholic theologian talking about the need for racial reconciliation, and his treatment of the subject is quite good. He goes beyond mere insights or principles and seeks after concrete practices we can follow that emphasize, theologically, that we are the chosen people of God and part of that community. There were some aspects of the article that I was confused about and will continue to muse on those. Hopefully the class discussion in several days contributes to the elucidation. In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, Slave or free, but Christ is all and is in all.

But now I have no time to read Monday's stuff because it's Groundhog Day, believe it or not, and things are about to get hopping around here. I know everyone is really excited about this day, even though the hog saw his shadow again, of course. But despite the prediction here tonight we will bask in each others warm hearts and hearths.

Career Fest

Today Natasha and I went to a Career Fest, booyah. It was crazy. There were a lot of different employers there, but I was only really interested in the human and social services. It was good experience, definitely, and a couple of the employers seemed interested in my resume, so I guess I've got something going for me.

Mostly it was good experiential knowledge because I've only ever gone through a real interview process once, and that was with Teach For America. It can be a bit daunting to think about stepping out from my nice, sheltered enclave at Wheaton and merging with the work outside of here, so it was nice to feel like perhaps I do have good stuff to offer and can do good, meaningful work after I graduate.

Tomorrow's Groundhog Day, and the rodent will probably see his shadow because the forecast is sunny, but that's okay because we can eat the hog afterwards. ;)