Today's reading from Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours was the story of Jesus in the Temple overturning the tables of the moneychangers. She includes a special section for Holy Week, so that part is not as random as it might sound.
Because of where Easter falls this year, today is the day that taxes are due. In past years, I might not have noticed. This year, because I knew we were likely to owe money, I didn't do the taxes until later. I got our payments in the mail yesterday (we owe federal taxes and North Carolina taxes, and we will eventually get money back from South Carolina). It's astonishing to me that we owe federal taxes, but here we are. We owe because for 9 months, we had health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, and then my part time job teaching shifted to full time: good news for long term finances, bad news for taxes.
In the next two days, I need to write a Maundy Thursday sermon. Ordinarily, that wouldn't be a problem, but I want to make sure that my sermon is different than last year's sermon. Last year I talked a lot about foot washing. This year, I'll shift to something else, the idea of the sacrament and how it gives us strength. At least, that's what I'm thinking right now, before I've really started.
My brain is working on several writing projects. I have a paper due on Monday, with a presentation to class. I know what I plan to write. Unlike my sermon, I've done more thinking and research for that project. I also have a paper due two weeks from Thursday.
This morning, a happy surprise: a line of a possible poem floated through my brain, and I opened a blank Word document to write it down. In the past two hours, more lines have come to me, and I've written them down. Will they cohere into a poem? It's too soon to tell, but it's nice to feel that part of my brain click into gear again.
And, of course, there's the end of the semester grading that needs doing. I'm keeping up, but at times, I feel overwhelmed with all that will happen in the next 4 weeks. And then, I graduate with my MDiv. Hurrah!
I am amazed that I am graduating, four years after I started. It feels like no time at all, but of course, so much has happened. At one time, in the early days, I thought it might take me six or seven years, or longer. Of course, in the early days, I had a full-time administrator job, and I wasn't sure that the seminary would offer the classes I needed to take from a distance.
Let me shift gears one more time. Let me think about going for a walk. On Sunday, we had a freeze warning, and yesterday, we had record breaking heat. I'm glad to be able to walk in the beautiful spring blooms.
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