Haunted by Color, Soothed by Stitching

I turned in my last seminary paper on Saturday, and I turned in my last batch of grades a few days before that.  But yesterday, Thursday, was my first truly unscheduled day of this winter break.  On Sunday, I spent a good chunk of the day attending to my preaching job, on Monday I went to Columbia, on Tuesday I came home, and on Wednesday, I had a holiday lunch with the local church quilt group and an evening Zoom session.  At one point, my spouse said, "Did the Little Engine Who Could have a name?  Because you remind me of an Energizer Bunny in the way that you keep going."

It's a mix of metaphors, but I understand what he was saying.  Even when I'm on break, I'm not really on break.  I still have my part-time preaching job, and there are upcoming classes that start on January 7, onground classes where I need to create syllabi still.  And even though I know that I'm done with the fall semester responsibilities, both as teacher and student, I still wake up in the middle of the night feeling fretful.

I still did a bit of chugging along; I wanted to get to Michael's to get new sketchbooks while they were on sale.  So after rounding up the last of the recycling before the arrival of the trash collectors, I headed out to run some errands.  We did a bit of cooking, and then settled in to watch some plays by way of the National Theatre at Home.  I had to subscribe for a class, and we've been enjoying watching good theatre.  Yesterday we watched two plays.

I still felt fidgety, so I pulled out my basket of fabric.  I've been creating a quilt out of scraps of fabric--you may say, "Yes, that's the very nature of quilting, correct?  Scraps of fabric?"  But I began this project by thinking I would put the scraps together in a less organized way.  I thought I could pay no attention to size or color of each scrap and just put them together as I pulled them out of the basket.  Here's what I have so far:

Clearly, I'm not putting this quilt together in the random way I first envisioned.  But I'm having fun assembling my scraps into longer strips.  Here's the one I worked on last night:

And then I did a few quick sketches for notecards that I'm always creating.  You can see one nestled in the cloth:

Today I'll do a bit more writing than yesterday, a bit more shopping than yesterday (4 x the fuel points at Ingles!).  But I plan to keep doing some sewing each day.  It reminds me of this quote that I saw on the wall of the museum on Tuesday:

When We Became Modern

While I was in Columbia for a brief 30 hours, I wanted to get to the Columbia Museum of Art for their special exhibit.

I wasn't sure what to expect--would it be works I've already seen?  Would I discover new artists?  Do I want to discover new artists?

The advertising said it would be over 50 works on loan from the Brooklyn Museum.  I have been there once, but I remember it for "The Dinner Party" by Judy Chicago, not for seeing Impressionists.  So, it didn't feel like the once in a lifetime opportunity to see rare works from France.  But still, I'm in a part of the world where it feels like I should seize a chance to see these works while they're close.

So, off I went, and I'm glad I did.  I was only familiar with one work; I gasped when I turned a corner and saw it on the wall, by itself:

But I loved the rest of the exhibit, even if it wasn't familiar.  I took this picture, because I thought it would be fun to try to sketch, this cottage on a hill by the sea:

I took this picture because I wanted to have a meal or tea in a setting like this one:

I took lots of pictures, in part because I liked the work, in part to capture the range of it all, in part because I wondered if I could create something similar.

I also explored the rest of the museum, the second floor.

It was a bit bewildering, with one entrance and various galleries leading to other galleries, and much of the work arranged by theme, with two or three galleries containing art because it was made by people still living.

There were groups of school children, being led through the museum by a guide who asked lots of questions and everyone seemed enthusiastic.  That was delightful.

And then I went back to see the special exhibit one more time.

I am so intrigued by the wide variety of picture frames--not intrigued enough to do research, but still:

I didn't stay long--I was in the museum about an hour.  I was worried about parking.  I fed coins into a meter, but the meter didn't tell me how much time I had.  I think the meters were designed for people paying by smart phone.

I'm glad I went, parking aggravations and all.  The space is wonderful.  When I was in grad school, the museum was much smaller and closer to the USC campus.  I'm glad that the community supports art in this way.

Conversation in Song

Yesterday, I went to visit a friend who had a massive stroke in July.  She's in a skilled nursing unit still, with lots of physical therapy each day.  I knew that she had improved, but I wasn't sure what to expect.

We had a long chat. As we tried to speak in sentences, there was frustration, but we carried on.  She would get a sentence out, but then it was like something got stuck.  Then she gestured at me and looked expectant, which I took to mean, "Tell me about your life."  So I did.

Here's what was interesting. At one point, my friend said, "Sing me a word." Unsure of what to sing, I went back to that old standard from "Sound of Music"--I sang "Doe, a deer"--and my friend picked right up, and we sang the whole thing, word for word, all the way up the musical notes, back to "That will bring us back to doe, doe, doe, doe"--she knew every word.  Not only that, she could sing them, still, perfectly hitting each note.

That seemed to make her happiest, singing together. We tried, "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," but we weren't singing the same version--and then it was like all other Christmas music left my head.

Then we went back to trying to talk in traditional ways.  I do wonder what would have happened if we had tried singing our conversation.  But I'm only just now wondering it.  Something to think about for next time!  I could try singing a conversation in familiar music or just something I make up as I go along.  I'm a drama school kid--I'm game!

I hope our visit wasn't more exhausting for her than happy--but she seemed happy.

I know the brain can heal itself in amazing ways, and I know that she is still doing as much as she can.  I can only imagine how frustrating it is, so many magnitudes larger than my own occasional inability to recall a word or a name.

I need to think about songs we might be able to sing together.  I know she loved Les Mis, but I don't remember much about that musical.  Hmm.  Time to put on my thinking cap.

Writing Goals in the Waning Year

Soon, I hope to return to more regular blogging--this week, in fact.  Over the week-end, I turned in my last papers for seminary classes for fall semester 2024.  My grades are done and turned in.  So far, I have not caught all the colds and viruses that seem to be affecting others.

I not only want to get back to blogging, but also some poetry writing and submitting.  The places where I submit are getting fewer and fewer--submission windows are open and closed more quickly, and there are fees I'm not willing to pay (and more and more journals asking for more and more money).

Let me record some of the poetry ideas I've had.

--I've thought of my series of poems about Noah's wife who has made life changes after the Flood (that flood that required Biblical Noah to build an arc); one of my favorites, "Higher Ground," appeared in Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States, and you can read it in this blog post.  I have also written poems about Cassandra, as a way to talk about climate change, and one of the more recent ones I've written imagines Cassandra living in the mountains.

Revisiting these characters in light of Hurricane Helene seems promising.

--I've also been contemplating my Facebook feed, which is full of people constructing gingerbread houses alongside people rebuilding houses wiped out by Hurricane Helene floodwaters.  My commute to church in Bristol, TN takes me through some severely devastated areas, where nothing is left of homes but rubble, and I can't imagine they will be rebuilt.  It seems there should be a poem there, but I'm not sure I can pull it off.

--I'd also like to get back to a daily practice of shorter poems and observations.  I need to train my attention again.  Happily, I'm teaching literature classes this coming term, which always helps me return to poetry roots.

--I also enjoyed writing for one of my seminary classes--it was mostly memoir, a very short piece.  I'd like to do more of that, more fiction writing.

--In short, I want to get back to the writing that feeds my soul, even if it never gets published, never leads to larger work.  I've been doing a lot of seminary writing, which feeds my soul in a different way, and so much grading, which doesn't feed my soul at all.  It's time to remember the reasons I wanted a teaching job in a 4 year, liberal arts school--time to read and write.

The Feast Day of Santa Lucia

Today is the feast day of Santa Lucia, a woman in 4th century Rome during a time of horrible persecution of Christians and much of the rest of the population, and she was martyred.  The reasons for her martyrdom vary:   Did she really gouge out her eyes because a suitor commented on their beauty? Did she die because she had promised her virginity to Christ? Was she killed because the evil emperor had ordered her to be taken to a brothel because she was giving away the family wealth? Was she killed because a rejected suitor outed her for being a Christian?  We don’t really know.  

She is most often pictured with a crown of candles on her head, and tradition says that she wore a candle crown into the catacombs when she took provisions to the Christians hiding there.  With a candle crown, she freed up a hand to carry more supplies.  I love this idea, but it wouldn't surprise me to find out that it isn't true.

Truth often doesn't matter with these popular saints like Lucia, Nicholas, and Valentine.  We love the traditions, and that means we often know more about the traditions than we do about the saints behind them, if we know anything at all about the saints behind these popular days.

This feast day still seems relevant for two reasons.  First, Lucia shows us the struggle that women face in daily existence in a patriarchal culture, the culture that most of us still must endure.  It’s worth remembering that many women in many countries today don’t have any more control over their bodies or their destinies than these long-ago virgin saints did. In this time of Advent waiting, we can remember that God chose to come to a virgin mother who lived in a culture that wasn’t much different than Santa Lucia’s culture: highly stratified, with power concentrated at the top, power in the hands of white men, which made life exceeding different for everyone who wasn't a powerful, wealthy, white man. It's a society that sounds familiar, doesn't it?

On this feast day of Santa Lucia, we can spend some time thinking about women, about repression, about what it means to control our destiny.  We can think about how to spread freedom.

It's also an important feast day because of the time of year when we celebrate.  Even though we're still in the season of late autumn, in terms of how much sunlight we get, those of us in the northern hemisphere are in the darkest time of the year.  It's great to have a festival that celebrates the comforts of this time of year:  candles and baked goods and hot beverages.

I love our various festivals to get us through the dark of winter. In these colder, darker days, I wish that the early church fathers had put Christmas further into winter, so that we can have more weeks of twinkly lights and candles to enjoy. Christmas in February makes more sense to me, even though I understand how Christmas ended up near the Winter Solstice.

I always thought that if I had a more flexible schedule, I'd spend December 13 making special breads, but that will have to wait.  My schedule is flexible, but much of today and tomorrow will be spent working on my final papers/presentations for three seminary classes.  

You could do baking though! If you’d like to try, this blog post will guide you through it. If you’re the type who needs pictures, it’s got a link to a blog post with pictures.  Enjoy.

Fall Teaching Tasks Complete, but Writing Yet to Do

I have posted my last set of grades.  I am not done with all of the work from Fall semester, but all my grading is done:  5 Spartanburg Methodist College classes and 4 online classes for Broward College.  For the online classes, I don't have to do some of the more time consuming work:  the curriculum is created and standard for online classes, and the course shell is the same from term to term--in many ways, I am the grader and the person who answers questions and encourages and sends reminders.  Still, it takes time, and it takes up a lot of space in my head at certain points of the term, like the end. 

Tuesday I uploaded all of the components of the final project for my Preaching class: Race, Gender, and the Religious Imagination.  I had to write an academic paper, then I had to create an event that would address some of the material the paper revealed, and I had to create/preach/record a sermon that I would preach for the event, along with a sermon manuscript.  It was one of the more complicated final projects, with lots of parts.

I still have three papers to write, but they feel doable:  one is due on Friday, one on Saturday, and one on Sunday.  The end is in sight!  I want to get as much done Thursday as possible.  My spouse has been fighting off a cold, and I worry that I'll wake up sick.

I thought I would get more done yesterday, but after getting up early to get grading done and get the Rogue in for new tires, I was tired by afternoon.  I took a nap and then got up to finish the gingerbread in the late afternoon.  I started the recipe in the morning, but the dough needs time to chill.  They were wonderful fresh out of the oven, but this morning, they are a bit crisper around the edges than I'd like.

As I look at my history in gingerbread, I am realizing that this is one cookie that almost never turns out the way I want:  soft on the inside, but with some resistance (but not overly crispness) on the outside.  It's usually a delicious cookie, if I didn't have my preconceived idea of what it should feel like when I bite into it.  And yes, I do see the life lesson there.

Let me bring this blog post to a close and actually post it.  I first started writing it yesterday and got sidetracked by the day's tasks.  And then let me get to my seminary writing.  

Sermon Recording and Remembering Nikki Giovanni

I was sad to hear of the death of Nikki Giovanni.  The Washington Post has a great article celebrating her life;  you can read it here, and this link should be the gift article link that gets you behind the paywall.  Even if you know the outline of her life, it's worth a read, because she's had such a rich and varied life.

I have had a fondness for Nikki Giovanni for most of my adult life.  She's one of the first living poets I ever read, one of the first poets I discovered on my own.  It was the summer after my first year at college, where I was a counselor at Congaree Girl Scout Camp.  We had a staff cabin which had a small bookshelf, and it was there that I found a copy of Giovanni's My House.  I read it, and because it was in the staff cabin, I came back to it several times throughout the summer.

I had been experimenting with writing my own poetry for several years before reading Giovanni, and others who were part of her generation, like Marge Piercy, Alice Walker, Lucille Clifton, and so many others.  It was that Giovanni book that made me want to do more with my poetry, which was fairly simple and short.

Those were the days when poets could be visiting poets on campus and make a decent chunk of money; those days are long gone.  I knew that Giovanni had been at Virginia Tech for a long time, and I wonder if her students had any idea who was leading their classroom.  From everything I've read, she was the kind of professor that anyone would want to have.  She's an inspiration.

I'd love to spend the day rereading her work, but I have a noon deadline for a project for my seminary class, Race, Gender, and Religious Imagination.  Part of that project involves recording a sermon, and it's a sermon that's supposed to be part of an event that I would create (if I had money, time, place, support) in response to my critical reflection paper.  Yesterday, I did that part of the project, the video sermon.

I had written about the event, a retreat on the nameless women who helped shape the ministry of Jesus, a retreat to remind us that if nameless women can have this kind of influence, maybe we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss our own agency and power.

Since I live at a retreat center, I thought about all the places where I might record my sermon.  Yesterday was fairly warm for December, and the rain had held off, so I decided that an outdoor location wasn't an issue.  Plus I knew I wouldn't be in the way, as I might if I tried to use one of the indoor spaces around camp.  My spouse was willing to be the controller of the camera.

We went over to the lake, where there's a gorgeous outdoor space, and it's fairly quiet.  We experimented with filming several sentences, a few times, and then we made the recording.  You can view it here.

I thought about doing several more takes, but I know that this attempt is probably as good as some of the other attempts we might make.  I don't have fancy editing software or the knowledge of how to take the best bits and pieces of recordings to make a seamless whole.

Once I uploaded the video to my YouTube channel, I uploaded the video to the dropbox for my class.  And now I need to make the final polishings to my paper.  I am to the point where I need to do some final revisions and call it done.  I've been immersed in this project for days, and I'm probably not able to see it clearly, at least not before the noon due date.

I am always aware that I might be able to create something better, but my experiences as a writer, or as any kind of creative, reminds me that it's always the case.  And what else is always the case:  even if it could be better, my efforts are likely good enough.

Seeing the trajectory of a life like Nikki Giovanni's reminds me of this point.  Our best work in one year will not be the best work in a different year.  The important thing is to keep doing the work.

Semester's End: Now and Not Yet

A quick note here to say that I have not forgotten this blog.  The semester's end is here, and yet it's not quite here.  How very Advent, it's now and not yet.

I have had grading to do.  This morning, I turned in my grades at Spartanburg Methodist College--hurrah!  I have one more online class to get done, in terms of grading and turning in grades, but that can happen tomorrow.

Over the week-end, I looked up due dates, as I always do, just to be sure, and one of my bigger projects is due at noon tomorrow, not 11:59 p.m. tomorrow.  Happily, I figured this out on Saturday, not today.  I have most of the paper written, but I still have to create an event, a sermon manuscript, and a video of me preaching the sermon.  Happily, I have most of today free to work on that.

However, I do have class tonight, so I wrote myself notes so that I would remember.

In later years, when I wonder why I was doing less writing, less reading, less baking, less creative work of all kinds, let me remember. 

Friday Fragments: End of Semester, Beginning of Christmas

I feel a bit scattered this morning.  Let me record a few bits on this day, the Feast Day of Saint Nicholas (if you wanted a more focused meditation on the Feast Day of Saint Nicholas, go to this post on my theology blog). 

--One reason why I'm feeling scattered:  I need to be working on some of my larger seminary papers that are due soon, but I'm working on shorter assignments and grading.  It's work that needs to be done, so part of me thinks that it's fine.  I'll feel better when I actually get some pages out of my head and onto paper.  That's my goal for today:  get some work done on the paper that's due Tuesday.

--Yesterday I went back to the church that's hosting Return to Bethlehem.  I created the Inn, the stop just before the stable.  It is probably more luxurious feeling than an inn in first century Palestine would have been.  

--Throughout yesterday's work session, I kept reminding myself that we just wanted people to suspend their disbelief, not to be schooled in first century history and to be impressed with our verisimilitude.

--The above pictures don't show the roof of the inn.  It took some "engineering," since this space is bigger than many of the others.

--I'd really like to walk through with the lighting the way it will be in the evening, just to see it as others will.  But I don't want that enough to actually go back to do the immersive part.

--I have been looking at old blog posts and thinking about past decorations and trying not to feel sad.  Our Christmas decorations, minimal though they are, have been in boxes for years.  In part, we've been unsettled for the first half of that time.  In part, we're keeping them protected.  In part, it's because we celebrate differently now.  But I do miss having seasonal decorations, even as I do admit that we have a few table top trees and some lights.

--I try to enjoy the seasonal decorations of others.  But they aren't mine.

--I'd like a finished house so that we could actually start establishing some traditions, among other reasons.  But at least this year, we do have interior walls.

--It's that time of day when all concentration is shot--too many hours staring at the screen already, even though it's only 7:40.  Might as well do the grocery shopping:  4 times the fuel points on Friday!

Sorting the Fabrics

Yesterday I made it back to the quilt group at my local church.  Until this fall semester, I had been going every Wednesday.  My teaching schedule this fall made me get there just as the group was finishing, but it did help me feel connected, even if I didn't do much quilting work.  In the upcoming Spring semester, I won't get there at all.

We have just finished a yearly cycle, which means that just before Christmas, all the quilts were boxed and taken to the drop off location where Lutheran World Relief will pick them up.  Instead of leaping right in to making new quilts, we are taking advantage of the empty tables where quilts usually get stacked and we're organizing all the cloth by color.

It's a HUGE task.  For years, when people have donated cloth, we've just put the box on the shelf or added the cloth to the bins that we have.  In the past two years, I've spent a lot of time rummaging through boxes, so I have an idea of what's where, but that's clearly not a good solution for the long term.

We have plenty of bins, so that's a plus.  Most of the cloth is fairly easy to sort by color--most of it does have a single dominant color.  I started a bin labeled "multi" for those that truly do not.

As we sort, I notice how hard it is to throw away fabric.  Some of it is too small for us--but it seems a shame to throw it away, particularly those small squares that were cut for some past project.  It's easier to throw away some of the polyester, particularly the springy knits.  Some of it is heavy duty upholstery fabric, most of which we are keeping for now.  I did throw away a velvet-esque on one side, upholstery fabric on the other side piece, since I just couldn't see how we would use it with anything else we have.

It's also hard to throw away fabric because I know that even if I don't like it, someone else will.  And I feel a sense of the person who owned the fabric there in the room with me.  We often get donated fabric when a quilter has died.  Throwing away the fabric feels like we're not honoring the person, even when I know that's not how most people would perceive it.

We have so much cloth that we could sew for 8 hours a day for the next few years and still have plenty of cloth.  In some ways, it's wonderful--our own cloth shop, right on site.  In some ways, it's overwhelming.

I have a vision of a future generation of quilters, 30 years from now, wondering why on earth we kept what we did.  What fabric now will seem quintessentially 2020's era fabric, the way that some of our fabric is so 1970's?  Will they delight in calico the way that I do or will that be only for women who grew up reading Laura Ingalls Wilder?  Will people still be quilting and sending those quilts overseas?  How will the world be different in 2054?  What will we have held on to?

The Best Kind of Snow Day, with a Return to Return to Bethlehem

In future years, maybe I'll look back and wonder why I didn't write more about a variety of political stuff:  the situation in Gaza, President Biden pardoning his son, the attempted coup in South Korea (South Korea?  Coup?  Not words I thought I would be using this year or any year).

Instead, I moved through the day yesterday in a state of wonder.  When I got up and sat in darkness, I saw a friend's Facebook post about snow that they got overnight, which made me wonder if we had gotten snow.  I could see white patches on the deck, and sure enough, when there was enough light, I could see that we had gotten snow.

It was the best kind of snow, the kind that looks pretty, but didn't stick to the road or turn to ice or even last into the later hours of the morning.  I knew that it would be that kind of snow, so I took a walk in the morning, hoping for some good sunrise shots.  I was successful:

I got some grading done between my walk and my dentist appointment.  The dentist will never be my favorite doctor, but we've found a good one here, with gentle hygienists.  It makes me realize how many non-gentle hygienists I've had, how often I left the dentist's office bleeding and feeling ill for the rest of the day.  And I'm impressed with our dental insurance, which makes me realize how often I've had worthless dental insurance.

In the afternoon, I helped set up for the immersive Return to Bethlehem experience.  I helped last year and really enjoyed it (for more, see this blog post).  Yesterday was easier because I understood what we were being asked to do.  I helped set up the bread stall and the fruit stall:

I remembered really liking the exhibits on the other side of the exhibit space, so I went over to set up the dyemaker's stall.  For this one, I worked alone, which in some ways was easier, as there's not much space in each stall, and the ladder takes up so much space.

I am happy that someone got these pictures of me, even as I feel bad about the weight I've gained. I'm trying to focus on the fact that I could get up and down the ladder and use the industrial staple gun to attach all the cloth to the stage flats.  I'm trying to focus on how happy this prep work made me:

And I'm happy with the outcome.  

Here's last year's dyemakers stall.

Both set ups are different than the picture.  And I realize someone may come along and change things.  The man in charge, whom I've never seen, has strong opinions, and we get to hear about them.  I refrain from pointing out that we're volunteers and that the people coming are not paying admission fees to see the volunteer offering.  I might feel differently if people paid over ten dollars to see our work.  But I might not, because I'm a volunteer.

I am not as sore today as I thought I would be when I told the woman in charge of set up that I would not be able to come today.  I had also hoped to get started on my biggest paper that's due on Tuesday, but I looked at the assignment, and I might need to rethink my approach slightly.  Part of me thinks I should just start and see where it goes.  

Part of me wants to go back to help with set up while these ideas are percolating.  Part of me thinks that I will go tomorrow, and that's plenty of help.  Plus I want to go to the quilt group at the church, so I don't really have as much time as I think that I do. There's other course work that I can do without prep time to free up more time once I'm ready to write the big paper.

Part of me just wants to bake.  

So, future Kristin, if you wonder why I'm not writing about politics, it's because I want to record the things that bring me joy.

Storytelling, Biblical and Otherwise

Yesterday I did storytelling assignments for two of my seminary classes.  I began the day by driving down to Spartanburg Methodist College for one last meeting.  In fact, I drove down early because one of my department colleagues suggested that we meet for lunch--lunch was hard, but breakfast worked out for most of us.  It was a delight.

I came home just in time to wish my spouse good luck as he headed to the dentist.  I knew he would be gone for awhile; it was a fix the cavities visit, not a cleaning.  I decided to go ahead and experiment with filming my final project for the Biblical Storytelling class.  We did our first storytelling during the onground intensive.  For the final project, we had to choose two other stories to go with it (one from the Bible, one from any source that made sense).  We had to memorize them so that we could inhabit them and tell them, rather than reading them.

If the above sentence confuses you, you can see my final recording by going to my YouTube channel.  The project is here.

I did so many recordings.  I had several that would have been fine.  When I make recordings, I get to a point where I say, "Well, it's probably not going to get much better than what I have."  I did this recording by telling the story in front of my laptop with the video camera running.  I learned a lot by doing it this way.  I could watch the filming as it happened, which shortened the learning curve.

There would have been both advantages and disadvantages to having someone else hold the camera, but in the end, I don't think I would have ended up with a better version, just a different version.  The other aspect of a class project is that there is a deadline, and I do have lots of other projects coming due, along with final grading.

I went for a walk, and then I came home and got ready for my Stories of Power class.  We've looked at a variety of stories for the class, and for our final project, we had to write a story of our own.  We did a class of writing prompts, which I wrote about in this blog post.  Even though I had already started to create my story, I found the writing prompts helpful in enriching the story; in fact, I probably had a stronger ending that I wouldn't have had without that drafting work.

Last night, we read our stories.  We had 10 minutes to read, and then there would be 10 minutes of feedback, "generous dialogue" by our classmates, with the author remaining silent.  

I was part of the group that read last night.  I was happy with my story, and I was satisfied with the feedback.  Once grades are in, perhaps I'll post parts of it here.  I'm not sure it's a story that would ever be published; it's not likely that kind of story.

It reminds me a bit of the sketching that I do and a bit like the blogging that I do.  They are both valuable, very valuable to me.  But in terms of anything that's immediately money making, nope.  

I had the story in my head for a few weeks, and when I finally sat down to write it on Saturday, it flowed smoothly.  I did some revising on Sunday--took out a chunk and tightened it a bit.  It was so enjoyable, it made me wonder why I don't do it more often.

I may do more story telling in the coming years, when I'm not close to overextended with seminary work, preaching work, and teaching.  For now, though, I'm happy to have these opportunities that give me MDiv class credit--hurrah for this program that lets me think about creative juxtapositions with theology. 

Poem Fragments from April

Yesterday, I was printing on what I thought was the back of old handouts, a bit of recycling, rough drafts on discarded paper.  When I saw handwriting, I pulled out the sheet of paper.  Much to my surprise, it was a poem fragment.  Even more surprising, I have no memory of writing it, and the sheet of paper had no date on it.  

It was with another sheet of paper which helped me solve the mystery.  On that sheet of paper, I had written a letter to myself.  On one side, was a letter from my 87 year old self; on the other, a letter from my 18 year old self.  These weren't dated either, but the reference to a new watch that counts steps helped me figure out that it was from this past April.

I was leading a workshop at a retreat; I wrote this blog post about it.  I think that I just found the poem fragments that the blog post mentions.  I'm relieved that they are fragments, since they don't really go together.  Or do they?

It's been awhile since I've posted a poem, and even longer since I posted a fragment.  Let me do that today, since my writing time grows short.

Fragments from April

Gears grind and the bass

beats on, rumble of a subway beneath

merry go round of mood swings

bake me a pie

Sad snow melts into the sand 

as the piano plays a melody

Old socks and sweet potato pie

Pitcher holding a dogwood branch

Leaves weigh nothing, acorns even less

Mud mask of injustice

Old scales falling off our eyes

Old swingset and a refrigerator full of apples

one bite taken out of each

Fermenting earth and sour milk

a pile of pecan shells to mark your passing

Black Friday Recap

Black Friday has come and gone.  Let me write a blog post to summarize:

--Our Friday after Thanksgiving was not particularly black, although there was a black and white kitten that was determined to get into the house (we persisted--but why would people let their cats roam the neighborhood).  

--There was not much shopping, although I did go to a local grocery store to get mushrooms to stuff later.

--We didn't have much in the way of leftovers, but we did have pie for breakfast.

--As with past Black Fridays, we did play games.  This year, we played round after round of Euchre, a card game beloved by my spouse's side of the family.

--There was not football.  This year's family reunion was in a house full of Memphis Grizzlies fans, so we watched a basketball game in the late afternoon.  Long, long ago, as a teenager, I followed college basketball, back when UVa had a championship team--that last bit tells you how long ago it was.

--I got a draft of Sunday's sermon written--hurrah!  I also got some grading done.

The Morning After Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving, just the way I love the holiday:  full of cooking and good food.  There were other elements, too, like family members who were happy to be together.  This one feels luckier to me, because I know it's not always this way for many people, and it can be much harder to make the family piece come together.  

My spouse and I got up early to head to his dad and stepmom's house.  We had an apple pie to create and bake, before the cooking of the 20 pound turkey.  My spouse peeled and sliced the apples, and later in the morning, I took over as assistant to the main course cooking.  We got the turkey ready and in the oven.  We created casseroles and pans of dressing.  I made a gravy out of drippings.

Eventually, others came, and we got ready for the feast.  First, we went around the circle to tell what we're grateful for, and the lists were not surprising:  friends, family, good fortune, moving 1000 miles away to escape hurricanes and surviving the one that found us in the North Carolina mountains (O.K., that last one was surprising).  And then, the real surprise:  a marriage proposal!  Our only niece said yes to her significant other who got down on one knee after taking a ring box out of his pocket.

We settled in to enjoy good food and good wishes and even more gratitude.  The clean up was surprisingly easy, and there will be leftovers later today, after pie for breakfast.

It has been an autumn of disruptions, in one way, an autumn of wreckage and ruin.  But there is beauty in this brokenness.  It has been good to have a chance to celebrate this holiday with a different set of family members.  It has been good to remember that if we're lucky, wreckage can prompt resilience.

Having said that, I'm ready for a season that doesn't fall apart, a season that doesn't require a constant shifting of my attitude.

Thanksgiving Morning

We had an easy trip across the mountain yesterday.  I had worried about traffic:  it was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and I 40, the other route across the mountain from North Carolina to Tennessee, remains closed (or more accurately, gone, slid right off the mountain).  We took US 74, a route we had taken back in June, when everything was lush and green.

It was an even easier trip yesterday:  no busses of rafters, no groups of hikers, and surprisingly, very few cars and trucks.  I've heard from other family members going in a variety of directions, and I know we were lucky.

We are staying at a hotel close to my in-laws, and when we got there, we found out that I made the reservation for last week.  Happily, there were rooms available, and at the same rate.  The innkeeper was very kind; it probably helps to be dealing with humans who own the franchise and not the corporate overlords.  I spent a bit of time in self-recrimination, but kept reminding myself that I've had a lot on my plate this fall.  It does make me worry about what I may be forgetting.

We unloaded the car and then headed over to the family gathering, the day before Thanksgiving family gathering.  There was a bit of cooking:  pecan pie bars, along with last night's dinner.  Today there will be more cooking:  an apple pie, the various kinds of dressing and gravies, and of course, the turkey.

Speaking of cooking, let me wrap up this blog post and get ready for the day ahead.  I'll try to remember to take some pictures.

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving has often been my favorite day of the year.  I love the years when we've done the travel on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, we can have mixes of relaxing and getting ready for the Thanksgiving feast.  I have such great memories of Thanksgiving Wednesdays of past years, when I was surrounded by children who are so happy to with the larger family (more people to read the favorite books or play games).

Our Thanksgiving break this year will be different:  different travel plans, different destinations, time with my spouse's family, not my family.  I feel fortunate that I have almost as many years being part of my spouse's family as with my family of origin, so I'm happy to spend time with them.  There's always the melancholy tinge that comes with knowing that we're all getting older.  We don't have unlimited time in the future to be together.

It was always an illusion, though, the idea that we would have countless holidays together.  So in many ways, I welcome the bittersweet insight, the chance to cherish the chance to be together in a way that I haven't always.

This blog post has been interrupted by packing, and now it's time to bring it to a close.  I should go get a walk in before the various activities start.  The weather in the coming days is unsettled, and I'm not sure what our vacation rhythms will be.  But I never regret going for a walk.

Planting Daffodils

Yesterday, I made this Facebook post with the picture below:  "Weather forecast for today and tomorrow predicted gorgeous weather before colder and wetter weather this week. With the help of spouse Carl, a battery powered drill, and a special augur bit, we planted daffodil bulbs along the front yard fence line. Spring Kristin will thank me!"

But there's more to this story of planting daffodils.

Back in the spring, a friend wanted daffodils in her yard.  She's relatively new to homeownership, relatively new to having a yard.  I said, "Well, it's too late for this year, but we could plan for next spring."  We agreed to buy a batch of bulbs together, and we'd put some of them in her yard, some in mine.  Buying in bulk didn't save us money, but it was fun to plan together.

In May, I ordered 35 bulbs which would be shipped in the fall.  By the time the bulbs arrived, my friend was recovering from a medical crisis and would not be planting this year; her situation has added to the variety of grief I've been feeling this fall (hurricanes and changed plans and the changed health of so many around me).

I've been staring at the package for a few weeks now.  It's been part of a list of tasks that I wanted to get done before the cold weather settles in to stay.  I've moved the paint inside; no sense losing hundreds of dollars worth of paint.  I've thought about firewood, but unlike past years, we have enough downed wood that we won't likely need to worry about wood for years.  I've pulled out the winter clothes.

Sunday's forecast was for sunshine and warmth; today will likely be the last day of sunshine and warmth.  So we headed out to plant the daffodil bulbs by the front fence line by the road.  Last year when I first planted bulbs, I got a $6.00 augur bit for the electric drill, which makes planting much easier.  Even so, we were both achy and sore afterward.  My spouse has been nursing injuries since working with a chainsaw back in October, so he laid down on a heating pad after taking some pain relievers.  I stayed up to watch the sunset, but was asleep soon after.

I have always loved daffodils, and I'm so happy to have a chance to plant them.  I do worry a bit about the animals that may dig them up, but it didn't happen last year.  This year, hopefully the squirrels will be more interested in the pumpkins; in fact, I'll leave them at the front fence post for just that very reason.  I put them there as autumnal decoration, but this year, unlike last year, the squirrels took an early interest in them, which is fine with me.

I am thinking about the planting of bulbs as evidence of faith in the future; for me, it's more than just wanting pretty flowers in the spring.  In the spring, bunches of daffodils come up long after the people who planted them have come and gone.  

Hopefully, my daffodils will do the same.

Humdinger of an Autumn

Way back in August, a friend and I discussed the upcoming autumn.  My friend said, "It sounds like you've put a lot more on your plate without taking anything off."  I agreed, and I said that it should be doable, as long as nothing went wrong.

Back then, when I thought of the things that might go wrong, I thought about illness or a death in the family.  I thought about the ways that events might keep me from getting to campus for the online intensive, like illness or car trouble.  I thought that I might get hopelessly behind in my grading and never catch up--truthfully, I have been less worried about this possibility, since I've been teaching for 35 years, and that's never happened.

I did not think about a hurricane making it this far inland and doing so much damage over the mountains of North Carolina.  I did not think that I wouldn't be able to get to the retreat I agreed to help lead, and I did not think that the synod event would be cancelled.  I did not think that my spouse would hurt his back and leg helping with hurricane clean up and need so much help to get through the day, as he did last week.  I did not anticipate that my seminary would have more demand for housing for the onground intensive than they had space. 

So far, though, we have managed to pivot and punt and keep everything going. I am grateful for that.  More than that, our various struggles have revealed strengths.  Our community came together to help each other after the storm--both my neighborhood and the larger western North Carolina community.  My seminary professors were supportive as were my employers, in terms of post-storm internet access difficulties.  My spouse had very good sessions with various parts of the medical community on Friday.  I had to miss a day at Spartanburg Methodist College, which wasn't a problem--how refreshing to work for a school where faculty are treated like professionals, not like troublesome children who need to be punished, and how sad to think about how rare it is to be treated like a professional.

As we shift to Thanksgiving, let me remember all that makes me grateful.  And let me remember to be thankful for how much there is that makes me grateful.

Literary Greats Leaving Us

I was saddened today to learn of the death of Sandra Gilbert, and then I was surprised to find out how old she was when she died (87!).  Don't get me wrong--I'm happy that she had a long life.  But in my head, she's been a young scholar, the way she was when I first read about her and Susan Gubar becoming friends during their first teaching jobs at Indiana University in the early 1970's.

I remember how electrified I was when I first read The Madwoman in the Attic, back when I was first in grad school; I will always be grateful to Gilbert and Gubar for that book, along with their editing of the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women:  The Tradition in English.  I also loved Gilbert's poetry.

And while I'm on the subject of losing literary greats, let me also note the passing of Dorothy Allison, who was 75 when she died.  I was familiar with her work even before Bastard Out of Carolina; I'll always think of her as the young writer, struggling to figure out how to make a way in the world that didn't particularly care about voices like hers:  poor, female, lesbian, Southerner moved to San Francisco. Her voice seemed important for the reason that there hadn't many voices like hers that won awards before she came along.

And even now, there aren't many voices like hers getting published through traditional publishing venues and winning awards.

What Is Government Good For?

In the past weeks since the election, I've been surrounded by news of the incoming administration and all the people who hope to take charge of government, many of them hoping to change it profoundly.  At the same time, I've been seeing so much evidence of how government can work well:

--Last night I went to the public library.  I have lived in a variety of places across the southeast U.S., and the public library is always such a delight.  I have saved a bundle on books I would have otherwise bought, but the public library is so much more than books.  There are meeting spaces and presentations and English language classes happening.  Every so often, there's voting.  There are lots of children, who are so happy to be in the presence of so many books.  There are computers that anyone can use, and there are often people to help those who need to use a computer but don't know how.

--The city of Asheville restored potable water a month before expected.  This happened in part because of local experts who work for city government and also because of the Army Corps of Engineers.  The government experts gave daily briefings to explain what was happening and the progress of restoration.  I now know so much about what it takes to give us safe and clean drinking water, and I am grateful for government water projects that have made it possible.

--The devastation of the water treatment plants is hard to fathom.  It could have been much worse.  At the North River water treatment site, there was a shut off feature that was installed, a shut off feature that didn't rely on a human to hit a switch.  If that hadn't been there or if it had failed, the dam would have failed, and everything and everyone in the thirty miles between Black Mountain and Asheville would have been destroyed by water.  It was the government that approved the money to add that shut off feature.

--I know that it is government agencies that keep our food safe, as well as our water.  I am planning my American Lit survey class, and the Norton Anthology has a selection from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which I'll probably assign.  My students need to remember/learn what it was like before we declared food safety as a common good, worthy of regulation. 

--I am thinking of my years of public schooling.  With the announcement of the death of the man who invented the BASIC computer programming language, I thought about my own experience programming a computer in the 7th grade, about the computer that took up a small room, and our delight in learning how to write simple code.  I'm thinking of the shop classes I took and the home ec classrooms that had stoves and refrigerators and equipment of all sorts.  I'm thinking of the pottery studio that had a kiln.  I'm thinking of band rooms and instruments and all sorts of sports.

--Public schools and other public programs keep children fed.  Summer camps run by local governments keep children safe.  I realize how much can go wrong and how much does go wrong.  But so much goes right, in community and community, across the U.S.

I will conclude by saying that I am hopeful, even in the face of a new administration that has vowed to cut government.  Maybe they will get rid of waste, and that can be a good thing.  Maybe they will create new approaches, and that can be a good thing.

I've been alive long enough to know that if an administration tries to get rid of an institution that enough of us value, it won't happen.  Let that continue to be so!

Writing Prompts, Poem Beginnings

In seminary class on Monday night, we did a series of writing prompts to help us think about the final story we are going to write/tell.  We have been exploring "stories of power," the title of the course, stories like Frankenstein (Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, not all the other incarnations), Hesiod's Theogony, Hamilton (the Broadway musical), certain Bible passages, Encanto (the Disney movie), and certain secondary sources that analyze some of the primary sources.   We've looked at these stories as origin/founding stories, stories of belonging, stories that tell where we're going, and stories of authority.

For our final project/paper, we have to write or tell a story that's been powerful in our own lives--taking a story from our life to tell a story.  I immediately thought of many possibilities, but I've been doing this my whole life.  Most of my classmates have not, and some of them have been feeling stymied.

We spent the whole class Monday night doing some free writing, talking about what we wrote, and writing some more.  We wrote in three blocks of time, three prompts per block.  We divided into groups of 3 to discuss, and then we discussed in the whole class.  I found it a valuable exercise, so I thought I'd preserve the prompts here:

Writing Block 1  Founding Stories

-- Where do we come from?

--Here's what we overcame, to be who we are

-- A story about "us" I struggle with is . . .

Writing Block 2  Belonging

-- When Others Ask Me Who We are, I tell them . . .

--Here's what we don't do

--We have made it this far because . . .

Writing Block 3  Mission/Destiny

-- At our best, we would . . .

--The mission that binds us together is . . .

--To fulfill our destiny, the sacrifices that we have to make are . . .

I found the writing that I did for Block 2 to be most evocative--not so much for the final writing I'll do for this class, but in terms of making me feel like a poet again.  Here's what I wrote for the prompt of "When Others Ask Me Who We Are, I Tell Them":

We are a nation of quilters, of people who patch things together out of frayed scraps. We are a nation of people who can take junk parts and make a car or a computer. We are people who don't want to share our scraps or junk parts, even though they're not really worth very much. We are a nation of victory gardens and burning forests. We are a nation that's not smart enough to keep an eye to the east, from where the storms will come. We are full of pockets of people who stretched food by adding starchy bits, who took the parts that no one else wanted to cook and figured out how to make them feed the whole community. We are a nation that doesn't want to share our food, even though it's full of worms and weevils. We are people who have made a way out of no way, but can we keep doing that and make a way?

What We Fight For

One of my friends was reflecting on the past year, and she made a statement that church camps are worth fighting for.  I immediately thought about her words as a framing device, as a question, "Is ______ worth fighting for?"

I thought of how often I don't frame my thoughts this way:  my thoughts about decisions, about paths forward, about relationships, about creative pursuits, about the future.  I am more often asking different questions.  Am I any good at this?  Does this nourish me?  Am I wasting time here?  How impossible is this outcome?  Am I doing the right thing?

If it's a decision about a group, change the I to we.  I'm thinking of larger communities too, like higher ed, like the ELCA (the more inclusive Lutheran expression of church that I have committed to), like the U.S.  I'm thinking of decisions about ideas and ideals too:  democracy, being a poet/artist in the world, education, and yes, summer camp.

If I think about what makes monetary sense, I may make different decisions.  Those may be the right decisions, and I'm not advocating that we throw all of those practical considerations away.  But those questions don't always get at a deeper importance.  

If I come away having kept my bank account intact, but I've lost my soul, what/where is the profit?  

It's a question as old as time, and not one unfamiliar to many of us.  But I like my friend's formulation.  It's worth fighting for--so it's worth continuing, worth the struggle, and worth the joy.

Good News, Bad News Hurricane Recovery

Yesterday was the first day in over 45 days where we didn't get multiple phone calls from the City of Asheville telling us to boil the water that was coming out of our taps.  Yesterday we got the word that the boil water notice is lifted.  I emptied the last of the boiled water into the pitcher, my daily ritual.  Yesterday, I didn't boil more water.  It's been interesting to find out how much water we use for cooking and drinking--about a gallon or two a day, depending on whether or not we're home, whether or not we're cooking.

Some people went online to proclaim their jubilation.  I am tired, and part of me is always waiting for the other shoe to drop.  I try to do the things that help me maintain mental equilibrium.  On Sunday, I went for a walk, up to the chapel, to the outdoor altar where I planned to sit and breathe for a bit.

I saw smoke as I walked up the hill, and I expected to gaze out to see smoke drifting from a distant mountain.  Instead, I saw flames on the other side of the hill where the Quiet Way path would take hikers up to the chapel, flames not too far away from where I stood.  

I called the camp director before I called 911--in retrospect, that was stupid, but I wanted to make sure they weren't doing a controlled burn.  Nope, and he had called for help.  I walked quickly back down the hill, and then went down to a fork in the camp road to make sure to flag the trucks to the fire, should they come in the back entrance.

Happily, the response was quick.  I walked back up to make sure there was nothing more I needed to do.  The very kind fire fighter I chatted with briefly told me that I should never hesitate to call 911, that they often arrived to find fires under control, and those were happy days.

I have been worried about fire since the early days of hurricane recovery--so many trees down, and such a dry October and November.  I am glad the fire was contained, but worried about what would have happened if no one had been around/awake to see the smoke and flames, as several of us did.

I am also worried about the health of my spouse.  A few weeks ago, he did something to his back while helping with the chainsaw to get trees cleared.  It comes and goes, and just when I think we've turned a corner, he has a flare, a sciatica kind of pain.  Yesterday was a very bad flare.  Luckily, he has a doctor's appointment for his annual physical on Friday, so maybe we will discover that there's something that can be done.  

My spouse's experience makes me worry about the future. We do not live in a country that has lots of options for people who need more care than I can give--and with Trump in charge, I don't foresee our nation ever evolving that direction.  The long term outlook might terrify me, if I really let myself think about it.

But I don't have time to think about that now.  I have grading to do and then there will be more grading to do, and I have seminary work that must be done, and then final papers and projects for seminary.  Let me get that work underway before driving down the mountain to teach in person at Spartanburg Methodist College.

Feast Day of Saint Hilda of Whitby

Today is the feast day of Saint Hilda of Whitby (614-680). We know of her primarily through the writings of the Venerable Bede, who said, "her wisdom was so great that even kings and princes sought her counsel," and "all who knew her called her Mother, because of her distinctive piety and grace."

Whitby is on the east coast of England in North Yorkshire. Whitby is famous for many things, but in church history, perhaps most famous for the Synod of Whitby in 664, which ironed out some differences between Celtic and Roman practices in Christianity, including how to figure out the date for Easter. Hilda was a Celtic Christian, and yet, when ordered to do so, she began to adopt Roman ways. She is remembered as a reconciler of the two traditions.

She founded several monasteries and was trained five men who later went on to become bishops. The monasteries that she founded were centers of education and the arts, and through the work done there, the monasteries also preserved knowledge.

For those of us who are English majors, we might be most grateful to Saint Hilda for her encouragement of Caedmon, one of the earliest English poets who makes it into anthologies; some call him the first British poet. Many give her credit for encouraging the stories from the Bible put into song and spoken stories in ordinary language of the people who would hear it.

Hilda is one of the patron saints of learning and culture, including poetry. We remember her as being of key importance in the shift from paganism to Christianity in England.

As with many of these ancient Christians, I am in awe of what they both created and preserved in times that must have been more difficult than ours, in harsh landscapes. With Saint Hilda, there's the added aspect of her gender--she accomplished so much in a time when women weren't given much in the way of opportunity.

And these days, when the U.S. seems so bitterly divided, I find my brain returning to her ability to reconcile and also lead. Modern people might not realize the depth of these church divisions, like the one between Roman Christians and Celtic Christians; indeed, one group left the Synod of Whitby and went to Iona and later Ireland, which at the time would have been even more savage landscapes.

These days, I think about Saint Hilda and remember that it is possible to reconcile huge differences. I remember Saint Hilda and hope that more of us can channel her.

For a more developed essay that has wonderful photos, I recommend this blog post.

Friday Gratitudes Two Weeks Before Thanksgiving

Two weeks from today, Thanksgiving will be over.  I feel that autumn has zoomed by too quickly--I always feel that way, regardless of whether or not we've had a hurricane to disrupt everything (and part of my brain is still reeling at the idea that we've had such a huge amount of storm damage in the mountains of North Carolina).  I have volunteered to bring a vegan main dish casserole to the family gathering, so this week-end, I will test my idea:  a casserole with barley, roasted butternut squash, roasted brussels sprouts, and mushrooms with brussels sprouts frizzles and toasted pecans for the topping.

We are traveling to the other side of the mountain this year to have Thanksgiving with my spouse's side of the family who are gathering at the home of my father-in-law and stepmom-in-law.  As with many families these days, we have several family members who find their diets restricted for a variety of reasons.  I first started experimenting with vegetarianism back in the early 80's.  I love cheese and butter too much to be a vegan, but I understand cooking principles that will make vegan foods taste good without butter and cheese.

I've been training my whole adult life for this moment!

The other night, I had a similar moment in the middle of the night.  I dreamed that Trump had asked me to be in charge of the Department of Education.  In my dream, I thought, I don't have the experience to do that.

I woke up thinking, well, I have been teaching since 1988, so there's that.  And in the days since that dream, as various cabinet candidates have been announced, I've thought of that dream and who has qualifications to lead which parts of our national government.  I still think that I don't have the right kind of qualifications to lead the Department of Education--that person should have K-12 teaching experience.

Of course, I will not be asked to be part of Donald Trump's cabinet, and if I was, I would say no.  I hope to avoid that kind of toxic workplace going forward.  I feel incredibly lucky to be responsible for teaching, not administration, and that's how I want to end my working days.  I am under no illusions that "I alone can fix it."

In fact, in moments of despair, I have doubts that anything can be fixed (see hurricane in North Carolina mountains).  But then, through the magic of technology, I see good theatre, and I am once again inspired to write.

Last night, we watched Arthur Miller's All My Sons, a play I read long ago in high school.  It was the 2019 London production with Sally Field and Bill Pullman, and what a performance!  The play, which was written in 1946, still feels fresh and also timeless. 

It also reminded me that I'm teaching the American survey class next term, and I am so looking forward to that.  In these days where there's so much happening to upset us, let me remember how much joy we can still have:  good literature, good teaching opportunities, good theatre, and vegan creations that give us autumn in a casserole!

A Gift of a Teaching Day

I had a good teaching day yesterday, which happily, is not unusual, but it is unusual for the class in which it happened.  It's a class that has unruly energy, an energy that I can refocus a bit, but not usually for the whole class period, which means I leave the class feeling like a failure.  

Let me stress that I am not actually failing them--their writing has improved.  I persevere in teaching the concepts and having them practice, despite the rolling of the eyes and the overly dramatic heavy sighs.  

Yesterday, I started the last module of the class, which will be one where we look at different ways to approach writing, ways which involve more creativity.  I had them write a description of a pine cone yesterday, and tomorrow, I'll have them sketch the pine cone and then write a description again, to see if there are other ways of training ourselves to see and then describe.

Then I gave them the standard definition of a haiku which irritates those who have mastered the form, the syllable counting form of haiku.  I had them try one of their own.  I modeled for them, counting syllables.  And then I talked about how a haiku could connect an element of nature with something that was happening in society or in one's life, about how linking the two could lead to something even more profound.

Yesterday I pulled up Dave Bonta's marvelous website of haiku, micropoems, and photos.   We talked about a few specific ones--the election one was an easy entry.

One of the students in the small group that has seemed most resistant to the work of the class noticed the poem about seeds and cracks and the light getting in.  He gave an interpretation, which the other members of the small group disparaged, which made him go deeper, which in turn made the other members of the group cheer for him.  I pulled up the Leonard Cohen song which wouldn't play, but then I was able to get the song lyrics at least.

We then talked about the ways that these poems and song lyrics take huge concepts and distill them into something smaller and perhaps pointed and piercing.  The energy in the room was electric, and when it was time to go, several of the students said, "Wait, aren't we gonna read our haiku?" 

These are not students who have clamored to stay in the past.  They are ready to leave from the moment that class begins.  I assured them that we would return to haiku on Thursday, and if they wanted to read, they could.

I had a successful morning class too, where we talked about three different approaches to Suzanne Simard's work on how trees communicate.  We watched her TED talk, looked at her scientific article, and read a newspaper article.  We will create an annotated Works Cited page with those sources, and next week we'll look at other sources.  Students will finish the work of the term by writing a paper which refers to some of these sources and talking about which one inspired the most wonder and trying to analyze why.

It's the rare teaching day when all of the classes go well, when I can see students making connections, or at the very least doing the work.  I usually feel lucky if just one class hums along.  Yesterday was a gift, the kind of day that makes me feel like I'm doing the work I was put on earth to do.  

Theatre Lessons

I am feeling a bit fragmented today--let me gather some fragments into a blog post:

--One of my seminary classes has been studying stories of power:  traditional stories like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, alongside the stories of power told to us by the Gospels.  Last night we discussed the stage adaptation of Macbeth.  What a great class it's been, both last night's class and the class overall.

--I have really enjoyed talking about all the literature, and as always, I wonder if God is trying to tell me something.

--What would that something be?  Something about teaching vs. pastoring?  Maybe something even more simple:  remember that you love to read.

--My spouse and I watched Macbeth on Sunday evening.  You could watch too, with just a one month subscription.  At 12-ish dollars, it's a heck of a deal.  Go here for more details.   

--We now have a month long subscription to the National Theatre at home, which means we will watch some great theatre.  We will also run out of time.

--Two weeks from today will be the last day of the semester at Spartanburg Methodist College--we get back from Thanksgiving, and students go right into exams.  Since I am giving an essay exam, an essay that they don't need to be in the classroom to write, I won't go back on campus until January.

--Maybe I will have some time to watch some of those plays.  Of course, what I'd most like to see, both halves of Angels in America, takes the longest amount of time.  But maybe that's what God is trying to tell me--why not spend time on stuff that matters, stuff that brings me joy?