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. ;)