A Look Back: 2025

I've been thinking about my approach to the new year; I have been keeping a blog since 2008, so I also have a fairly easy way to see what I do each year.  Some years, I set intentions or adopt resolutions.  Some years I have a word/phrase.  Most years in the waning days of December, I look back.  So, for today's blog post, let's look back.

My Intentions for 2025

On January 1, 2025, I wrote a blog post where I had three specific intentions for 2025.  Up until the moment that I wrote that post, I had no plans to adopt these intentions.  Let's start with these intentions, as I look back on 2025:

--"I want to do strength training 20 days out of every month, 10 minutes over an exercise session."  Most weeks, I did a day or two of strength training, either with weights, or with the weigh of my body.  That means that most months, I did 6 days of strength training, not 20.  

--"I want to end the year with 52 poems written, finished poems. They may not be worth sending out, but they need to be finished."  I did much better with this goal during the first three months of 2025.  I did end up with somewhere between 15 and 25 finished poems, which is more than I would have had without that intention.

For both of the above intentions, the good thing about those intentions is that I remembered that I had the intention, and throughout the year, the intention called me back, tugged me back to the behavior I wanted to cultivate.

--"I want to concentrate on faces (both from the front and profile) and hands, and not in isolation, but as part of the figures that I draw."  Here, too, I did much better with this intention in the first months of the year than in the last 9 months of the year.  I drew much better faces, when I was concentrating.  I still have trouble drawing hands if they're connected to the rest of the body.

Other Aspects of 2025

--I continue to enjoy teaching.  It was great to teach literature survey classes again.  I revisited some classic texts, which is always interesting, especially as I revisit them at very different times of my life.

--I finished my MDiv degree at Wesley Theological Seminary.  I find it interesting that when I thought about the high points of 2025, the teaching was what came to mind before finishing the MDiv degree.  I'm not reading too much into that.  I finished the MDiv in May and my brain tends to work back in chronology--so since I've been teaching more recently than finishing the MDiv, that's what came to mind first.  It's also because I had such a good fall semester teaching such great students and classes.

--When I went back and counted my non-drinking days, I've been very successful.  I still drink, but I did have a long stretch in the summer where I drank no alcohol.  Stay tuned for my 2026 intention in terms of health.

--I haven't read as many books this year (only 50, if my list can be believed), but at the end of the year, I've been on a reading binge, and I'm always happy to find my powers of concentration still allow me to read a book from beginning to end.

--I finished a quilt top, which I used with an old quilt that I created twenty years ago to create something new.  The old quilt had a back that was in good shape, so I quilted the new top to the old quilt and created a binding/border.  I've continued to put fabric together in ways that delight me.

--My job as a Synod Appointed Minister continues at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee.  They like me, and I like them, and although they've tried to find a full-time pastor, those attempts haven't led them to a viable candidate.  Periodically, I remind us all that if the congregation finds a great candidate and decides to offer them a job, I'll understand.  Similarly, we don't know what my Candidacy Committee will decide at various stages.

--In terms of candidacy, I have made some progress on the road to ordination.  I finished my MDiv which some people might think would mean I should be ordained by now.  But I went to a Methodist seminary, so that's not the way that ordination works at this point in the ELCA, the more progressive expression of Lutheran churches in the US.  Over the summer, I did the required CPE training at the Asheville VA Hospital, but I have had to wait until Spring 2026 semester to take the Lutheran Foundations course that I need.  Will I need more classes?  Will I also have to do an internship?  Stay tuned.

Going to a Magic Show

Last night, we did something completely different:  several generations of family went to a live magic show, at the Wagsters Magic Theatre in Williamsburg, VA.   It was more a Vegas style show than a birthday party magician kind of show.  But it's a much smaller space, with 126 seats, than most spaces in Vegas (I assume, having never researched the size of theatres in Vegas).

It was a sold out show, and the audience was more engaged than almost any audience I've seen, outside of my congregation where I'm the minister.  We may have been the only audience members who came without small children (the youngest members of our group are 18 years old).  Every child in my vicinity (I had a seat in the middle of the back row) leaned forward, had gasps of surprise and delight, and the one in front of us said "Wow" every so often.

It was great to be in a room of people who put their phones away and watched the stage.  Because of the small size of the theatre, though, it felt much more interactive--as the performing duo, Brandon and Hannah Wagster prepped the audience to be at the start of the show.

The energy level of the duo and their attention to detail kept me awake, which is saying something these days.  My spouse has studied/watched magic shows for many more years than I have, and he was impressed by their skill in illusion.  It was a great way to spend an evening--much easier than trying to find a movie we would all enjoy.  And it was wonderful to support local, live performances.

The theatre is part of a newer shopping development, an outparcel of shops and restaurants.    My spouse and I have done theatre work in college, both onstage and as part of tech crews, and we were impressed by the lights and the sound, by the way they took a retail space and transformed it into a small theatre.

For a brief moment, I felt overwhelmed by nostalgia and grief, thinking of the small, local theatres in south Florida that have all gone away as their founders moved out of the area or real estate developers swooped in.  I saw some of the best performances of plays I ever expect to see at the small Sol Theatre in Ft. Lauderdale.  It seated about 60, and last night's venue felt similar.  

Happily, the show started, and my nostalgia melted away into gratitude that people are still following their performing arts dreams--and that audiences are still willing to seek out this more specialized kind of live performance.

Reading in the Waning Days of 2025

It's been a great month for reading--less so for writing, but I'll get back to a more regular writing schedule in January.  I've found myself wishing I could go back and repeat some of the reading, most particularly Ian McEwan's What We Can Know.  

Would I wish that I could reread it if I hadn't heard this New York Times Book Club podcast about the book?  Probably.  I knew at the time I was reading it that I would want to reread it.  I zoomed through it the first time just to find out what happened, and I knew I would want an additional read to appreciate some of the other aspects of the novel, outside of the propulsive plot.

My last read of 2025 will be Kristin Hannah's The Women, which I found in the community library where my folks live and where I'm visiting.  I had heard such good things about it, and it, too, is a propulsive novel.  But I can't see myself reading it again, once I'm done.  It made me think about the TV shows M*A*S*H and China Beach.  I've only read 100 pages, so I'm interested if Hannah goes in any unexpected directions or adds some depth to the characters.  So far, there's lots of exploring of the place of Vietnam and the surgical procedures that nurses did under intense pressure during the Vietnam war.

My mom and I spent some time in the community library in the afternoon.  She is always on the hunt for good books, and I had this momentary hope that we might find the McEwan book.  After all, the Hannah book is recent--but it's one of the few in the library published in this century.  We found a John Jakes novel, Charleston, along with another book. 

As I have been doing more intense reading in December, I've remembered my own writing impulses, particularly the novels I thought I would write.  I've been thinking about my writing goals for 2026.  I'm not sure I want to commit to writing a novel in 2026, but I'm not sure I don't.  Let me continue to think:  if I was writing a novel that wasn't going to be intertwined stories, what would the plot be?

Slaughter of Innocents and Non-Compliance with Tyrants

Today is one of those church commemoration days that doesn't get observed in a big way, at least not often.  December 28 is the day when we remember the Holy Innocents, those babies under the age of 2 who lived in Bethlehem, the babies that Herod killed when the wise sages from the east brought news of the arrival of a new ruler, heralded by a new star.  

Some might see it as a strange day in the midst of the Christmas season. Others might see modern corollaries, scared despots who will do anything to maintain their stranglehold on power.  Sadly, we have no shortage of twenty-first century rulers who would slaughter the innocent in their quest to maintain power or gain more.

This morning I'm thinking about the wise sages who inadvertently created this crisis, by visiting Herod and telling him what they saw in the sky.  Herod asks that they come back so that he, too, can go and pay homage.  They are warned in a dream not to go back to Herod.  They return home a different way.  Here's a carving in a European cathedral (Autun Cathedral in France) that depicts the moment of warning:

This morning I am thinking of all the ways that ordinary people can disrupt evil.  There are all sorts of ways of non-compliance.

This train of thought leads me back to a poem I wrote in 2019, a poem with multiple strands: Epiphany, the ongoing debates/actions concerning immigration, the crisis between east and west that ultimately led to the taking down of the wall between East and West Germany, a bit of the underground railroad. Ultimately, this poem arrived, and Sojourners published it in late 2019 or 2020. It fits my mood for today.


Border Lands


I am the border agent who looks
the other way. I am the one
who leaves bottled water in caches
in the harsh border lands I patrol.

I am the one who doesn’t shoot.
I let the people assemble,
with their flickering candles a shimmering
river in the dark. “Let them pray,”
I tell my comrades. “What harm
can come of that?” We holster
our guns, and open a bottle to share.

I am the superior
officer who loses the paperwork
or makes up the statistics.
I am the one who ignores
your e-mails, who cannot be reached
by text or phone, the one
with a full inbox.

When the wise ones
come, as they do, full of dreams,
babbling about the stars
that lead them or messages
from gods or angels,
I open the gates. I don’t alert
the authorities up the road.
Let the kings and emperors
pay for their own intelligence.

I should scan the horizons,
but I tend the garden
I have planted by the shed
where we keep the extra
barbed wires. I grow a variety
of holy trinities: tomatoes, onions,
peppers, beans, squashes of all sorts.
I plant a hedge of sunflowers,
each bright head a north star.

Melanoma Removal Report

I am happy to report that my melanoma removal seems to have gone well.  In fact, in some ways, it couldn't have been much better, if one must have a melanoma that has to be removed by surgery in a hospital.

My melanoma was shallow (.3 mm) but wide, so it couldn't be removed in the office--the amount of anesthetic in an in-office procedure would be toxic.  So off we went to the hospital yesterday morning for our 5:30 a.m. check in.

The check in went quickly, and by check in, I mean the getting ready for surgery, all the stuff that happens before the actual surgery.  There were lots of health questions and meeting the various people who would be part of the surgery.  There was the hooking up of various machines to my body.  It all went fairly quickly, and I had an hour to sit and wait.

I was impressed by all the people who seemed both professional and kind.  I was struck by how many people it takes to do a surgery that's not very complicated.  I was also struck by how many items were thrown away after the surgery.  In a way, of course that's good in terms of so much less possibility for disease.  But wow, this removal cost a lot of money.

It also cost a lot of literal money.  It may end up being more covered by insurance than it seems to be right now.  The cost was just under $7,000, but I paid in advance for a 20% discount.  In the past, when we've had procedures done at the hospital, like my colonoscopy, and then got all the money refunded (I assume when the insurance paid).

When I got the phone call about the cost, I was flabbergasted a bit--the cost was more than the $1700 colonoscopy cost.  The hospital employee on the phone said that it might be priced differently because the colonoscopy was diagnostic, not taking care of a health problem.  It was not the first time that I said out loud, "Our health care system is so broken."

I came home and wrote to everyone who was waiting for an update.  I drank some coffee so that I didn't get a caffeine withdrawal headache, ate some pumpkin roll, and then I decided it was time for a nap.  I slept for several hours, the deep sleep that I rarely get these days.

I woke up and had several bowls of cauliflower cheese soup that I made on Christmas Day.  We watched Shark Tank and a few episodes of NYPD Blue.  I sewed a bit, but a very little bit.  The day had taken it out of me.

But I was relieved overall.  For a procedure which felt a bit more major for being done in a hospital, I was relieved that all went well.

Christmas Morning, Christmas Eve Report, and Sermon Recording

It is Christmas morning, 2025, and through the decades, I've had a wide variety of Christmas mornings.  By choice, I had no children of my own, but I have spent Christmas mornings with little children, and I understand how wonderful it is to have that enchanted kind of morning.  I am also a fan of a leisurely morning, even if it ends up feeling like a regular morning.  I've had Christmas mornings in my own house and Christmas mornings in the houses of relatives, along with the occasional Christmas morning at a vacation property.  I love them all.

This morning, I unwrapped the pumpkin roll that had been waiting for me in the church freezer.  I thought we took home the pumpkin roll intended for us, back in the fall, but there was another, in the upstairs refrigerator.  The woman who baked it assured me that it was mine, and so I brought it home.  It makes a delicious breakfast.

I thought about rolled cakes, about my one attempt to make a Buche de Noel.  It was back in my teenage days, when I subscribed to Bon Appetit magazine and actually attempted to make some of the recipes, if the ingredients were ones I could find in Charlottesville, VA and Knoxville, TN, back in the days (1980's) when grocery stores didn't have the wide range of products that they have now.

It was a tasty enough cake, that long ago Buche de Noel, but we all agreed that it was an awful lot of effort for a cake that tasted like, well, cake.  My pumpkin roll breakfast was also delicious, but it doesn't really taste like regular cake.  It does taste like autumn, so it's a bit out of place on Christmas morning, but since I love both autumn and Christmas, that's fine.

Yesterday was a delightful day which revolved mostly around our trip across the mountain to Bristol, TN, Christmas Eve service, and the trip back.  It was unseasonably warm for December, which I no longer complain about; I took advantage of the warm weather and took a longer walk.

I love the Christmas Eve service; it will always be my favorite.  Everyone is in a good mood, and all the hymns are familiar.  The central message of Christmas is easy to preach, unlike many other texts.

Speaking of sermons, my Christmas Eve sermon was recorded, and you can view it here on my YouTube channel.  If you want to read along (or read instead of watching the recording), I posted the sermon manuscript as a post on my theology blog.

Christmas Eve Morning 2025

It's Christmas Eve, and we will leave to go to Bristol at 2:30.  I don't anticipate heavy holiday traffic, but we'll build in a bit of extra time nonetheless.  I've written my Christmas Eve sermon (go to this post on my theology blog to read it), and I've said some extra prayers for parishioners who are sick.  It looks cold outside, but the thermostat tells me that we're already close to 60 degrees.  We're going to get close to record breaking high temps today and tomorrow.

I've been feeling a bit anxious each day this week, but I don't think it's about Christmas Eve worship.  I think I'm feeling anxious about my surgery on Friday to remove the melanoma on my arm.  I thought I might be feeling anxious about the prep work, particularly making sure I got my pain meds.  But yesterday, I took care of that, and this morning, I'm still a bit anxious.

Yesterday was a day of taking care of all sorts of pre-Christmas tasks.  I went to the library and did a bit of grocery shopping.  My spouse did the bigger grocery shopping, using the mini-grant for the local food pantry.  We had to park in the outer parking lot, but everyone in the grocery store was happy.  I think I got more "Merry Christmas" greetings in one hour than I usually do in a whole season.

I had a container of yogurt that needed to be used up and lots of chicken in the freezer, so I decided to make a paprikash.  I used this recipe, which was surprisingly delicious.  I say surprisingly because I didn't have Hungarian paprika, so I used smoked paprika.  I used yogurt, not sour cream, and it was nonfat yogurt.

Let me go for a walk--maybe movement will help me with my tug of anxiety.

Advent Labyrinth and Dreams of Deans and Fiber Liturgies

A few items that I want to record so that they don't slip away:

--Because this blog is a repository of ideas that I may or may not use in the future, I wanted to record this picture that a Facebook friend posted; I edited it so that a child is not part of the picture.  It's an Advent labyrinth from an Advent Quiet Day at a local Episcopal church:

It would be a very easy labyrinth to set up, if one had enough greenery--it's a big spiral with candles throughout.

The person who posted the picture talked about this labyrinth in the context of a church that offered an Advent experience in mid-December, with the above labyrinth, and some interactive stations in Sunday School classrooms, like a "praying in color" station, which looked like coloring sheets.

It seems like the kind of idea that has a lot of potential.  But I do wonder if it would work at a smaller place, a country church like the kind where I am now.  December is a busy month after all.

But I wanted to record it.  I wonder if a Spring event has potential.  A Lenten Labyrinth experience?

--Last week I had a vivid dream.  I was pastor of a church, and I had created some sort of weekly worship based around quilting and other fabric arts.  It was a worship service, not a craft time.  

It had a catchy name, like the Mimosa Mass that I created for my idea of a worship service that combines liturgy and an actual brunch.  Unfortunately, I can't remember the catchy name that my dream self came up with.  I want to think it started with an F.

I also don't remember any details about worship.  But I remember that I was having a conversation with fellow pastors and Synod folks about the worship and what a surprise it was that it continued to be so filled with seekers who went on to become members.

--Yesterday, Wesley Theological Seminary, my seminary where I earned my MDiv, announced that Dr. Carla Works would be the new president.  I never took a class with her, but I never heard anything but wonderful things about her teaching.  I had a few brief encounters with her when I lived on campus, back before she was appointed dean.  She became dean in the summer of 2023, and now, in the summer of 2026, she'll be president.

I immediately wondered who would be dean.  Will they hire from within?  Will any of the faculty be interested in this kind of promotion?

My spouse and I had a bit of interesting conversation about being a dean of a seminary, about whether or not I'd say yes if they called and offered me the job.  I am not remotely qualified, so my first thought was no, I wouldn't say yes.  Then I thought about how many people in my work life have been in charge, and they weren't qualified and they didn't realize it or they thought they could rise to the occasion.  Of course, that's hardly a ringing endorsement--so many of those people blundered ahead and hoped for the best, and maybe it would have been a disaster regardless.

I am always happy (SO HAPPY) to be out of administration, so it was intriguing to me to realize that if Wesley called me with an offer, I wouldn't say no right away.

Christmas Pageants, Modern and Medieval

Yesterday's sermon about Joseph had a bit of pondering about Christmas pageants.  I began by thinking about the traditional Christmas pageant, where the starring role is Mary, while the rambunctious boys get cast as farm animals.  Yesterday's sermon was about Joseph, the part of the story that we rarely see in Christmas pageants:  Joseph who has one future mapped out, only to find out that his betrothed is pregnant with someone else's baby.

No, not pageant material--as I wrote in the sermon:  "it would make me deeply uncomfortable to see elementary school kids acting out today’s Gospel. But as an adult, I find this part of the Nativity story may have more to say to us in our non-Christmas lives than the rest of the incarnation story."

Here's what I posted on Facebook:  "If you are feeling a bit like Joseph, feeling like you had solid plans that have dissolved into a huge mess, perhaps my sermon that I preached this morning at Faith Lutheran Church (in Bristol, TN) would have meaning for you."

You can find the recording of my sermon here on my YouTube channel.  You can read along here and count the times I go off-script.

As I was preaching, I was thinking of a poem that I wrote, about being part of the angel choir and not realizing how much more powerful an angel would be than Mary.  I wrote it a long time ago, and my theology around Mary has changed.  I now see her as much more powerful.  But still, I wanted to revisit the poem, and I'm happy that my blog makes it much easier than digging through computer files, trying to remember the name of the poem.

It was first published in The South Carolina Review, and then I included it in my first chapbook, Whistling Past the Graveyard.  It does make me wonder if people even have Christmas pageants anymore.  My church has not in the time that I've been there, although they once did.  We just don't have enough children to do a pageant.

If we had a pageant, I'd try to make it different than the ones I was part of as a child.  I'm not sure how I would do that, so I'm glad I haven't been forced to come up with a plan.  But I wouldn't want today's children to have the experience I had and try to capture in this poem:

Medieval Christmas Pageants


The Sunday School pageant director embraced
the medieval ideals. Mary would have dark
hair and a pure soul. Joseph, a mousy
man who knew how to fade into the background.
Every angel must be haloed with golden
hair, and I, the greatest girl, the head
angel, standing shoulders above the others.

It could have been worse. Ugly and unruly
children had to slide into the heads and tails
of other creatures, subdued by the weight
of their costumes, while I got to lead
the processional. But I, unworldly foolish,
longed to be Mary. I cursed
my blond hair, my Slavic looks which damned
me to the realm of the angels.

I didn’t see Mary’s role for what it was: bit
player, vessel for the holy, keeper of the cosmic.
I didn’t understand the power of my position.
I could have led an angel uprising, although the history
of angel uprisings suggests that though whole new
worlds emerge, so do new tortures with the triumph.
I could have imparted messages of God’s plan,
spoiled all the surprises. I could just appear,
scaring mere mortals into submission.

Instead, I smoldered, smarting
at the indignities of mother-made wings
and long robes to ruin my long legged run.
I internalized the message of the culture
which didn’t offer starring roles for girls,
no head angel power for us.
Instead, the slender, the meek, the submissive
girl got the prize, the spotlight focused
on her kneeling knees, her bowed head.
I tried not to sing too loudly, to shrink
my Teutonic bones into the Mary model.

Winter Solstice Fragments

Let me take a moment and record a few bits and pieces from the past few days.

--This morning, I had my eye on the Amazon delivery schedule, which I almost never do, and I noticed that the tracker on the map was in the shape of a sleigh.  It made me smile.

--I was tracking some new fabric scissors.  I used my fabric scissors over Thanksgiving to cut Steam-a-Seam, and I won't be doing that again.  My scissors were a bit duller, and then my spouse tried to sharpen them the way one does knives.  Now the old fabric scissors don't cut at all.  I have a pair of 50 year old fabric scissors, which also aren't as sharp as I'd like, and a rotary cutter that also is not as sharp as it needs to be.  Yesterday I thought, this is ridiculous and ordered more scissors.

--I have not been doing a great job going for a daily walk.  I have managed to walk 2-3 times a week, which once upon a time (50 years ago) would have been the recommended amount.  I will get back on track in the new year.

--We watched A Muppet Christmas Movie, which is different than A Muppet Christmas Carol.  I like A Muppet Christmas Movie better--lots of funny allusions to all sorts of Christmas movies and themes.

--When I look back on this winter break, I want to remember that I did a lot of sewing, a lot of reconnecting with friends, a lot of reading of real books!  I didn't do as much walking or writing, but that's O.K.

--Today is the winter solstice.  After today, more light!  

Melanoma Consult

Yesterday was a day of strange contrasts.  I headed off for my morning appointment with the melanoma specialist.  I was the first appointment, but it's still always a surprise to me when doctors are running on schedule--that rarely happened in South Florida.  In fact, they were so on schedule that I didn't have time to fill in the forms completely.

I filled in the forms, which then get entered into the computer.  It's a new-to-me health system, so once again, I answered all the questions.  Despite my extra weight and the melanoma, I'm fairly healthy, and for my age, I may be extremely healthy.  Or maybe the surprise of health care professionals upon hearing that I take no medications isn't an indicator of my health.

So, the good news is that my .3 mm melanoma and other biopsy results made the melanoma specialist decide that he doesn't need to examine/biopsy a lymph node.  The bad news is that there is still a 2-4% chance that the cancer has traveled.  As I wrote in an e-mail to family members, "I do realize that I don't really understand percentages the way that people who understand statistics do. So, if the melanoma doctor isn't worried, I'll try not to be."

I didn't know that a melanoma means that I now have a higher risk of other kinds of cancers which have nothing to do with skin cancers.  So it's important to keep up with all my scans, like colonoscopies and mammograms.  But it doesn't mean I need to increase the frequency of those scans.

The necessary melanoma extraction means that it can't be done in the office with a local anesthetic--the amount of local anesthetic needed would be toxic.  So I'll go to the hospital, and I scheduled the earliest appointment available, December 26.  

My melanoma consult was at 8:30, and my hair appointment was at 10.  As I suspected, I had enough time to get home, go to the bathroom, and head back out again.  But that was O.K., as I was also able to take my hearing aids out.

I got highlights and a cut--I decided not to talk about my melanoma.  We had surface level conversation about Christmas traditions, which was what I needed.  I came home by way of the public library and then settled in for the afternoon.

I was surprised to get the phone call from Mission Hospital, where the melanoma surgery will happen on Dec. 26, surprised that they called so quickly, and surprised because I just had a colonoscopy there in May.  Still, much can change, and so I diligently answered the questions.

I got a lot of hand stitching done while we watched mostly mindless, but fun TV:  Kitchen Nightmares, The Drew Carey Show, and old Saturday Night Live sketches.  Along the way, we ate some filet mignons that we got as an Omaha Steaks gift box--what a delicious Christmas present!  We also took a late afternoon nap, which I almost never do.  I am on holiday, so if I get off my sleep schedule, it's not as big a deal.

Of course, I'm not completely on holiday, so this morning I need to get a rough draft of my sermon done.  And before I do that, I'll go for a walk.  I need to spend some time thinking about healthier habits for 2026.  It's too easy for me to get off my walking schedule.

Mid-Winter Break Report

I don't have much time before leaving for the melanoma doctor.  Let me record some thoughts.

--I am happy that my holiday experience is mostly stress-free (for more, see this post on my theology blog).  Occasionally I do wish I had a few more decorations out.  Yesterday I went over to a neighborhood friend's house for morning coffee, and everywhere I looked was a holiday feast for the eyes.  I reminded myself that the disadvantage to this level of decorating was the need to put everything away at some point.

--It has been a joy to be with the neighborhood church quilters who make quilts for Lutheran World Relief.  My spouse has even worked on some quilt tops, although at home, not in person.

--Today I hope to return to my own hand piecing.  The last few days have felt busy outside of the house, and they have been.

--Three weeks from today I report back to work.  How amazing it has been to have such a long break, even if I am never really completely on a break.  I've done some grading, done some planning for next semester, and of course, my preaching work continues.

--Three weeks from today, I report back to work for a day of faculty workshops, complete with meals.  It's still a joy to me to work at a place that feeds us.  I know that many people are not so lucky:  I am hearing/reading story after story about higher ed financial shortages and cut backs.  I feel so fortunate to be at one of the seemingly rare schools with growing enrollment.

--But is it rare?  Maybe it's just that age old story that good news doesn't make for compelling headlines.

--In addition to feeling grateful, I'm also a bit astonished at how I came to be here.  Three years ago I was still reeling a bit from the news that my seminary housing would be demolished, and we'd all have to move out by summer.  I planned accordingly.  The seminary housing is still not demolished, but I am happy about the outcomes:  I have better jobs that I wouldn't have had otherwise, and we've saved money, and it's been better for my spouse and our marriage to be together than apart. 

--I am feeling grateful and lucky, and I realize how fortunate I am to feel this way.

Visits with Friends, from Long Ago and More Recent

I made a quick trip to Columbia, SC on Monday.  One of my grad school friends had a catastrophic stroke in summer of 2024, and she's in a skilled nursing unit.  I try to see her regularly, although it's difficult because of my schedule and her health issues.  She still hasn't regained all of her powers of speech, so I worry that my visits are frustrating.  But I also know how much people in care facilities need visits from their friends and family, and so I am determined to keep making the effort.  It's what I think I would want my friends to do for me.

We had a good visit.  We looked at some of the ornaments on her tree.  She's made counted cross stitch ornaments through the years, and the most beautiful and elegant ones are on the tree and hung on across the window.  We had a discussion of sorts about Jane Austen.  I thought of my grad school friend yesterday as I drove home and listened to a discussion of Jane Austen, on her 250th birthday; it was a great conversation on the NPR show 1A, which you can enjoy here.

After the visit with that grad school friend, I went to visit another grad school friend.  We went to our favorite pizza place for a very late lunch/very early dinner.  Zorba's on St. Andrews Road does an amazing job with their Greek pizza.  We also drove around the Shandon area to look at holiday lights.

Long ago, in our grad school days, we lived in a run down apartment building near Five Points, and we often drive by to see it.  Well, we won't be doing that again.  It's been bulldozed.  It was disconcerting to see a construction site where our apartment quadplex used to be.

I left yesterday morning and stopped by the new Trader Joe's out in Harbison--at last, a Trader Joe's with enough parking!  I stocked up on cheeses and other appetizer like snacks, along with a variety of stuffed pastas.  We had some neighborhood friends coming over for happy hour last night, so I wanted to get food on my way home.

I took a walk yesterday afternoon--the weather has gone from record breaking cold Monday morning to a high in the low 60's.   I took this picture because the blueness of the sky took my breath away.

And the photo makes me think that maybe my phone camera is more O.K. than I thought it was.  Maybe the washed out quality of some of the photos I've been taking is about the fluorescent light. 

After my walk and before the happy hour guests, I got a call from the melanoma doctor.  It was last Thursday when I got the phone call from my dermatologist.  I'd been keeping my eye on a spot that we all thought was a bug bite, but it didn't go away or fade, so we decided on a biopsy.  I was expecting it to be a cancer, but not a melanoma.

After the biopsy

My dermatologist refers melanomas to a specialist, so I was instructed to wait, which I did.  The melanoma doctor passed the first test, by calling me within days.  And I will go tomorrow for the consult.

The prospects are good for me.  The melanoma isn't deep:  .3 mm (.3, not 3.).  There's a 5 level scale of seriousness, and from what I can tell, .3 isn't even a stage 1.  The biopsy site looks like a deep cut, but who knows--I am sure there will be additional flesh removed.

But for today, let me focus on the pleasant:  coffee with a retreat friend, quilt group at the local Lutheran church, and a Zoom session with folks/friends who have been meeting to discuss books and the contemplative life.

Cold Weather, Cozy Evenings, and the Relentless Drip of Bad News

For the past several weeks, I've gotten up on Sunday mornings and studied weather reports.  I've enlarged screens to better study the radar and try to figure out where precipitation is falling.  Last week the forecast was for freezing fog, but we didn't see any impact on road conditions.  

Yesterday I knew we would encounter some precipitation between Arden, NC and Bristol, TN, but I was surprised by how much was falling.  The roads were mostly wet, but at the highest point, there was more snow sticking to the pavement than I expected.  I felt a bit of panic and wondered if we should turn around.  But I also knew that road conditions on the way back were likely to be just fine, and once we headed down the mountain, the road conditions went back to being wet, not white.

To view the recording of yesterday's sermon, head here to my YouTube site.  To read the manuscript, head over to yesterday's blog post.

I'm glad I had a chance to be with the congregation of Faith Lutheran yesterday.  My sermon went well, as did the rest of the service and Confirmation class.  The trip back was fairly easy, and we had a restful end of our Sunday.

We spent the majority of our time watching YouTube videos of Josh Johnson, a comedian whom my spouse first noticed on The Daily Show.  We didn't see any news reports about the death of Rob and Michele Singer Reiner.  I woke up yesterday morning to the news of the shootings at Brown University and Bondi Beach, Australia, but by the end of the day, those shootings were not foremost in my mind.   I can't decide whether or not to be worried about my ability to synthesize the news of shootings and just move on.  I'm not numb, exactly.  I'm certainly not jaded and blasé.   But I am aware that the issue of guns and mass violence is vaster and harder to solve than most people want to think about, and I don't have much in the way of solutions.  I remember a time when there was less regulation of guns and less gun violence at the same time.  I think of my high school in Knoxville, TN, where kids drove to school in trucks that had gun racks with guns in them, and we didn't shoot each other.  So I'm one of those strange people who doesn't think that guns are the problem, but there is some sort of other problem that's rooted in alienation and isolation and lack of rootedness in institutions that keep us from killing each other.

Happily, last night I didn't spend time on those thoughts about gun violence.  

I sorted Christmas fabrics and made another log cabin patch and read a bit of Adam Haslett's Mother and Sons--what a wonderful book!  The 3 books I've read over Christmas break so far (this one, Ian McEwan's What We Can Know, and Joe Mungo Reed's Terrestrial History) bear re-reading, a reading where I'm not racing through the book anxious to know how the plot turns out.

Today I will leave my spouse at home, tending to the pipes for a night, while I go to South Carolina to catch up with some grad school friends.  I'm leaving the computer behind--it's that rare moment when I don't need to monitor classes, plus I'm not going to be gone long.  It will be good to be away from the relentless drips and drumbeat of bad news.

Winter Weather and Sunday Drives

The wind howls outside, and it is forecast to keep howling.  I've been awake for hours, working on my sermon and looking at maps and radar and weather forecasts, trying to figure out if it's safe to make our way across the mountain.  It's been snowing in Bristol, where we're headed, but the forecast calls for no accumulation.  We will make the attempt to get to Faith Lutheran in Bristol, where I preach and preside every Sunday. 

As always, I send the sermon manuscript ahead of us--that way, if something happens, much of worship can still continue.

There are drawbacks and limitations to this Synod Appointed Minister position--for both me and for the congregation.  I can't do much quality pastoral care from a distance.  The weather can make it impossible for me to do the main work, the preaching and presiding (and leading Confirmation class) on Sunday mornings--and wintry weather is the culprit, not summer weather.

I know that people who live much further north, say in Minneapolis, would laugh at my weather concerns.  A bit of wind, a bit of snow--what is the big deal?  But we are still essentially in the U.S. South, where we don't get much wintry weather.

Let me bring this brief blog post to a close and start strategizing a warm outfit for the drive.

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 made my traditional Santa Lucia bread last week, for a gathering where I wanted one slightly healthier treat to be available.  Today, I'm baking a different bread, but you could make a more traditional offering.  If you’d like to try, this blog post will guide you through it.  You could end with bread braids cooling on racks in just a few hours:

If you’re the type who needs pictures, it’s got a link to a blog post with pictures.  Enjoy.

Happy Santa Lucia day! Have some special bread, drink a bracing hot beverage, and light the candles against the darkness.

Teaching Insights from a Great Semester

Before I get too far away from Fall semester, I want to record some teaching insights that I want to remember.  I've just gotten teaching evaluations and I spent last week reading final exams, which have students reflect on the semester, so I want to be sure to remember some of those insights, along with my own.

--I've been intrigued by how many students enjoyed peer editing.  If I was a student, peer editing would be one of my least favorite things because I hate group work, and I wouldn't be getting much feedback that was useful.  But students who did comment on peer editing talked about how much they enjoyed seeing what other students were writing about, and some of them talked about how peer editing helped them get to know their fellow students.  Duly noted--I'll continue peer editing and experiment with peer editing in my 102 classes.

--I had far fewer students complain about my no cell phones policy.  A few said they appreciated having a time when they were less plugged in.  I am much more committed to my no cell phones policy than I was 2 years ago.  I've gone even further in that I rarely allow students to use laptops or tablets.  Students have plenty of time to use their devices.  In my classes, I want them to use their brains and their hands to record notes.

--Many students liked my adopt-a-tree assignment, which I used in both English 100 and 101 classes.  They may have been telling me what they thought I wanted to hear, but their assessments seemed genuine.  They talked about being mystified at first, or even angry about how the tree assignments have nothing to do with college--but then they talked about the skills that they honed (description, writing directions, deep observation), and a few talked about how those skills were useful beyond the assignment.

--I put creative writing assignments in every class, regardless of whether or not it's a creative writing class.  The students who commented on these assignments talked about how much they liked them both for the sake of creativity and for doing something different and for inspiring them to think about writing differently.  Again, they may have been telling me what they thought I wanted to hear, but for the most part, I don't think so.

--I am surprised by how many students I have had this term who want to be writers--not content creators, not influencers, not TikTok stars, but writers like the ones we've studied.  You might say, "Sure, of course, you teach creative writing."  But the creative writing students were just a small number of the total students who talked about wanting to be stronger writers, not just to be better writers so that they could get better grades.  Many of them wanted to continue their creative writing.

--One of my creative writing students wrote about how I had reignited her interest in being an English teacher.  She wrote passionately about her desire to teach in middle school or high school.  I felt happy about that, about being an inspiration as a teacher, not just as a writer.

--I want to remember that I occasionally would leave a class thinking that it had been a failure (especially with peer editing, which never goes as smoothly as I'd like) only to find out that students had a very different experience.

--I have become even more committed to having a daily writing grade, most of it done by hand.  It's a practical way to end the class, and it lets me know what students are learning.  I've created larger projects that have them revise the daily writings.  It helps us talk about AI, about how it might be useful and how it's not.  It ensures that students are doing at least some writing on their own.

I feel very lucky to have had such a great semester with so many students who seemed so open minded and happy to be in class together.  I feel fortunate beyond words to be at a small, liberal arts college with increasing enrollment.  May this good fortune continue!

Returning to Bethlehem Again

I spent much of yesterday doing volunteer work, but not the traditional kind.  I haven't been stocking the food pantry or knitting scarves.  Yesterday I went over to a local Methodist church that allows its gym to be transformed into ancient Bethlehem for a walk-through, immersive experience, Return to Bethlehem.  All proceeds go to Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry (ABCCM), an interfaith group which works on hunger and homelessness issues in Buncombe county, the county which contains Asheville.

I first started doing this volunteer work in December of 2023, and I wrote a blog post about it, which I'll quote here:   "I thought it might be something like a living Nativity scene, maybe with a few extra scenes. I was wrong. It's a whole living Nativity village. One of the supervisors walked me through the space, telling me about how the visitors would stop at each station to hear actors tell about the space. For example, there's a weaver's house, and the Temple, and a place where a person dyes cloth. Eventually the tour ends up at the inn and the stable outside of the inn."

It takes a lot of work to make this transformation:  lots of hanging and draping of fabric, LOTS of industrial stapling, lots of arranging of baskets and chairs and potted plants and such.  I love doing it, and I'm happy to help.  It hits a weird combination of my interests:  the illusions of stagecraft, theatre, fabric, color and texture--creating illusions and believability.

Here's a 2023 picture, when the theatre flats were first being assembled.

Eventually each station gets its own furniture and tubs of supplies.  We have other tubs of fabric we can use, all sorts of fabrics.

And then, finally, a finished product, in this case, the Temple (this is a 2023 picture--I forgot to take pictures of  yesterday's creation, where I used more blue fabrics and velvets).

It's more standing on a ladder than I'd like, but I'm happy I can still do it.  I expected to be much more sore this morning than I am.

After a morning working on the Return to Bethlehem sets, I went over to the local Lutheran church to work on Lutheran World Relief quilts.  We assembled 4 quilts to get them ready for knotting.  I prefer to assemble quilt tops out of all the fabric we have, but by assembling those quilts, one of our members could take them home to get the knotting done.  I did bring some fabric home in the hopes that I/we can assemble a quilt top or two in the next week.  And then I made some repairs to a quilt top that my spouse had been assembling before he got frustrated and made ill-advised cuts.

Today I'll go back to the Methodist church--we're racing against the clock, since Return to Bethlehem opens at 6 tonight.  When I left yesterday at 1, we had made good progress, and more volunteers were expected.  Many of us have some experience now, which makes it easier to get things done.  And we seem to have enough ladders and enough staplers, lacks which have slowed us down in the past.

And now it is time to shift my morning into a different gear, to get ready for another day of volunteering in this way.

Publication Ponderings in Mid-December

I woke up this morning thinking about publication opportunities as the year draws to a close.  There are book contests that seem interesting still, like the Wilder Prize at Two Sylvias Press.  At one point in the last few months (see this blog post), I thought about revising the last manuscript of poems that I created in 2019.  I even printed the table of contents to see which poems have been published since I last sent out the manuscript, and I made a list of new poems to include.  I put question marks by the poems I might take out to make room for the new.  I thought I would change the title and have the manuscript ready by mid-December, so I could send it to a few contests.

But this morning, I have a different vision.  I'm going to wait until summer to do a deeper dive into manuscript assembly.  I'm going to create a new manuscript called Higher Ground.  The title works on several levels with the climate change poems along with spirituality poems.  I'm going to let the idea percolate as I send out poems for publication and think about the larger themes of my body of poems.  I think it will be a much stronger manuscript if I take this different approach of creating something new, not grafting onto the old.

I am aware that I may only have a chance to publish one book with a spine when it comes to poetry, given my age and how long it takes to move a poetry book manuscript from submission to publication.  So I want it to be good work on several levels:  the best poetry that I have written, the poems that work as a cohesive whole in the best way.

This morning I decided to submit some individual poems to journals whose submission windows close soon.  As I do this, I update my submission log, which I don't always do when the rejections come in, which means I miss a few.  Today, along with a rejection, a request to submit during the narrow window in December when the journal is open for submissions.

Happily, I hadn't missed the opportunity, so I submitted right away, before I lost momentum.

And now it's off for a very full day of volunteer work.  I'm going to help the group that builds the set for "Return to Bethlehem," zip over for quilt group from 1:30 -3:30 or so, and then back to the Bethlehem set.

Noah's Wife Reads the Realtor.com Listings

It's a climate change/catastrophe winter break, in terms of my reading.  I zoomed through Ian McEwin's What We Can Know--in some ways, it's a literary mystery, but it's set in the future, after various climate catastrophes have changed the coming 100 years.  Yesterday, I started Joe Mungo Reed's Terrestrial History, which also travels back and forth in future years.  Both books are compelling in so many ways, and I'm so happy to find myself consumed by real reading again, not just doomscrolling.

Of course, the doomscrolling habits are hard to quit.

Those of you who know me, either in person or through this blog, know that climate change/catastrophe is never far from my brain.  This morning I read this article about German scientists sound the alarm about the apparent speeding up of warming--we might be to 3 degrees of increased temperature by 2050, not by the end of the century.

You might say, "Wait, I thought we had agreements that would allow us to avoid these outcomes."  Well, yes, if we actually did what we all had agreed to do.  And frankly, even with those agreements, followed to the letter, we'd have been cutting it close.

This morning, I found myself entering our South Florida zip code into Realtor.com, and scrolling through.  I'm always on the lookout for our old house to reappear.  This morning, it wasn't that house, but two houses across the street from our old house.  Hmm.  

And then I searched for the house itself, which is listed as a place we could rent for just $5,295 a month.  Are there really renters who can afford such a rent?  It's an apartment.com listing, so not a short term rental site from what I can tell.

Perhaps there are not renters who can/want to afford this rent.  It's been vacant since August--and probably before that.  It's been off and on the market since we sold it, and I don't think anyone has stayed there much.  It was listed as a short-term rental, then for sale, and now as a longer term rental.  I scrolled through the pictures and felt a bit of sadness at all the updates that we did that have been ripped out or covered over.  I have fallen into this pit of despair before, and always, there is this voice in my head saying, "Honestly, Kristin, you were lucky to escape with most of your possessions and a profit on the house sale."

And along with that voice of reason this morning, my muse chimed in, with her gentle reminder that I am writing a series of poems in the voice of Noah's wife (yes, the Biblical Noah who built an ark).  I am still working on it, but I am pleased with this vision of Noah's wife consulting the realtor sites and wondering if they made a mistake even as she is sure that they are safer now.

What a lovely way to salvage the spiral that the Realtor.com site often inspires!

Week-End Update: Cooking and Other Types of Mood Management

In some ways, it was a good week-end.  Sunday at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee went well, the kind of Sunday where I find myself wishing this position as a Synod Appointed Minister could continue for several more years.  It might, but much of that decision will not be up to me.

It was the kind of week-end where I hear about the travel plans of neighbors and feel a weird sense of emotion.  It's not envy, exactly.  They're taking a 10 day walk across England, 7-8 miles a day, carrying everything they need on their backs, following the same path that the pilgrim's in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales traveled.  They are at least 10 years older than I am, maybe 15.  It's the kind of plan that makes me wonder if I should retire/work less now rather than later.  But I am not sure we could make this kind of trek now.  For one thing, the long airline flight to get there is a dealbreaker for me.  And my spouse would need a very flat route, and he would need to do some training to be ready for even a flat route.

So, not envy, but the kind of feeling I have had so often in my life, wondering what is wrong with me that I don't want what so many other people seem to want.  In the above paragraph, it's vacation plans and bucket lists.  I look at the larger culture, particularly the desire to have the latest cell phone and hours to spend scrolling, and I don't feel like something is wrong with me.  I do worry about the health of the larger culture, particularly when I stumble across particularly disturbing information about what tech is doing to our brains.

I organized a cookie tasting for our neighborhood group, and I tried to make a recipe, pecan sandies, from childhood.  As with the chocolate chip cookies I've tried to make, the butter seemed to melt outside the cookie and fry it.  Not untasty, but not the memory of the cookie.  And there was that distressing moment when I said, "I can't cook anymore."  A ridiculous thought, but a distressing one.

Yesterday, though, we had great success making pizza with cast iron pans.  Before putting them in the oven, I turned the burner to medium heat for 3 minutes, as recommended by this blog post from King Arthur Baking Company.  It was the first time since being in this house when we've had a good homemade pizza.  My usual experience is to go through all the effort to make homemade pizza, only to be left with a mess of a kitchen and a blah pizza and a yearning for pizza from somewhere else. 

Yesterday as we ate pizza, we watched the recording of the Sunday worship service at the National Cathedral.  The service was beautiful, and once again, I found myself observing a strange mood evolving in me.  There was some nostalgia for the year I spent in seminary, where I went to the Cathedral occasionally.  I felt nostalgia and wistfulness and sadness for a time that is gone and won't be coming back.  I felt fortunate to have had the experiences and the opportunities and at the same time, I know what I had planned to do with that time in the city and the ways I fell short.  I tried to keep focused on what I did manage to do.  

When the worship service was over, we switched to Saturday Night Live snippets, so it was easier to manage my mood.  And then it was off to bed; I've been going to sleep increasingly earlier, and I feel like I need to get back on a more reasonable track.

The Feast Day of Saint Nicholas

Today, all over Europe, the gift-giving season begins. I had a friend in grad school who celebrated Saint Nicholas Day by having each family member open one present on the night of Dec. 6. It was the first I had heard of the feast day, but I was enchanted.

Still, I don't do much with this feast day--if I had children or gift-giving friends, I might, but most years, I simply pause to remember the historical origins of the saint and the day.

This year, my neighborhood group is having a cookie/treat tasting.  It's not a cookie swap, which requires people to bring several dozen cookies to exchange.  No, we will bring a batch of cookies or treats of some sort and enjoy some time together, with treats to eat if we want.  We're doing it at one of the Lutheridge buildings, which means no host who had to clean their house.  

In different years, I might have spent some time looking at my own Santa objects, but they are all packed away while the house renovation continues.   Happily, I have pictures!

One year, my step-mom in law and my father in law gave me these as Christmas presents:

They're actually cookie presses, and the Santa figures are the handles of the press. I've never used them as a cookie press, but I love them as decorations that are faithful to the European country of origin.

It's always a bit of a surprise to realize that Saint Nicholas was a real person. But indeed he was. In the fourth century, he lived in Myra, then part of Greece, now part of Turkey; eventually, he became Bishop of Myra. He became known for his habit of gift giving and miracle working, although it's hard to know what really happened and what's become folklore. Some of his gift giving is minor, like leaving coins in shoes that were left out for him. Some were more major, like resurrecting three boys killed by a butcher.

My favorite story is the one of the poor man with three children who had no dowry for them. No dowry meant no marriage, and so, they were going to have to become prostitutes. In the dead of night, Nicholas threw a bag of gold into the house. Some legends have that he left a bag of gold for each daughter that night, while some say that he gave the gold on successive nights, while some say that he gave the gold as each girl came to marrying age.

Through the centuries, the image of Saint Nicholas has morphed into Santa Claus, but as with many modern customs, one doesn't have to dig far to find the ancient root.

I don't have as many Santa images in my Christmas decorations. Here's my favorite Santa ornament:

I picked it up in May of 1994 or so. I was visiting my parents, and I went with them on a trip to Pennsylvania where my dad was attending a conference. I picked this ornament up in a gift shop that had baskets of ornaments on sale. I love that it uses twine as joints to hold Santa together.

In the past decade, I've been on the lookout for more modern Saint Nicholas images. A few years ago, one of my friends posted this photo of her Santa display to her Facebook page:

I love the ecumenical nature of this picture of Santa: Santa statues coexisting peacefully with Buddha statues. And then I thought, how perfect for the Feast Day of St. Nicholas!

More recently, I have a new favorite Saint Nicholas image, courtesy of my cousin's wife:

In this image, Santa communicates by way of American Sign Language. As I looked at the background of the photo, I realized Santa sits in a school--the sign on the bulletin board announces free breakfast and lunch.

The photo seems both modern and ancient to me: a saint who can communicate in the language we will hear, the promise that the hungry will be filled.

In our time, when ancient customs seem in danger of being taken over by consumerist frenzy, let us pause for a moment to reflect on gifts of all kinds. Let us remember those who don't have the money that gifts so often require. Let us invite the gifts of communication and generosity into our lives.

Reading: Books, Skin, Weather Forecasts

Yesterday was an unexpected reading day.  I took Ian McEwan's What We Can Know with me to the dermatologist's office, and I did have time to start reading it.  It hooked me very early--it's a great concept, a book that takes place both in our time and a hundred years forward, with a literary mystery (a great poem that has disappeared).  It reminds me of A. S. Byatt's Possession, which I loved when I first read it but have never been able to make my way through again.

My dermatologist declared me to have passed my annual exam with flying colors, even as she zapped me with nitrogen for spot after spot and biopsied a spot.  She said I have beautiful skin, and I'm happy for compliments in my increasingly aging body.  I see all the splotches and stray hairs and scaly bits of my skin.

I got back home and still felt a bit off kilter, as I often do after a doctor or dentist visit.  So I sat at the computer, but I realized I still wanted to be reading, reading a book, not articles about our current time of politics on the computer.  So I switched.

My spouse was happy to be watching his Cops-like show, so I kept going.  I had bought some Peppermint Creme coffee at the Fresh Market on my way to the dermatologist.  The day was overcast, with the hope of afternoon snow.

Well, I had hope, even though the system was scheduled to come through later in the evening/overnight hours.  I got up this morning to cold rain instead, and I'm trying not to feel depressed about it.  I was looking forward to wintry weather on a day when I didn't have to be anywhere.  I can still cook the pot roast I bought yesterday, of course.  It will be just as good on a rainy day as it would be on a day with a wintry mix.

And there should be more time to read today--bliss!

Moonset and Midwinters

I often cannot see the night sky, here in the mountains of North Carolina.  There's usually too many trees that obscure the view, which seems a fair trade most nights.  But in the winter months of no leaves on the trees, I get unexpected treats as I glimpse a star here and there.

This morning there was the delight of the setting moon.  I was working on a poem that I was writing, a poem inspired by an in-class writing experiment that led to some good student writing (see this blog post for details).  I thought I might write from the point of view of the saw mill blade, but instead, I focused on the door frame, the door frame that was once a tree, that sacrificed essential parts of itself to become a door frame.  Was it worth it?  The door frame feels sorrow, much like many adults I know who feel sorrow about the sacrifices made along the way.

As I was writing it, the poem seemed tired and trite to me.  Writing about it now, I think it has potential.  I'll put it away for a bit and see if anything new comes to me.

As I was writing, the setting moon caught my eye, and I thought, I'd probably see this beautiful moon better if I turned off the lights in this room.  And so, I did, and it was amazing, watching the moon set beyond the bare branches of the trees.  The moon was shrouded in haze, so it had more of a Halloween vibe than a December vibe.  I tried to summon a December feeling by thinking about the haunting Christmas hymn, "In the Deep Midwinter."  I thought about Christina Rossetti, author of the words.

I wrote this Facebook post:   "The moon is setting to the west, and I see it through the bare branches of the trees, and I hum a bit of "In the Bleak Midwinter," and think about Christina Rossetti's underappreciated brilliance, like the brilliance of the moon, reflecting the light of those Pre-Raphaelites, transforming that light into something far more focused and incisive."

I thought about trying to take a picture to go with the Facebook post, but my phone isn't as advanced as those that other people have.  The picture would have been more spooky than wintry, if it captured anything much at all.

And now the mountains are the rosy purple of reflected sunrise.  And now it is time to get back to grading, a constant for the next few days.

First Week of December Thoughts on Year End Lists and More

I had every intention of writing yesterday; after all, I had a largely unstructured day, since my ear doctor appointment got moved from Tuesday to Monday.   I had every intention of walking too.  

And how did my day get away from me?  I should be more specific--my mornings are the times when I have plans for getting things done.  Yesterday I started baking because we had the idea of sending a care package to a nephew who is studying for final exams.  I kept baking, and when my spouse was at the dentist, I wanted to enjoy having the house to myself, so I didn't go for a walk.  I was making progress on the endless grading that is constant at the end of the term, so I kept going.

By later in the day, after I got back from the post office and the library, it was windy, so I decided to hunker down, watch T.V., and sew some quilt squares.

Let me record some thoughts from the past few days:

--I was sad to hear about the death of Tom Stoppard and astonished to realize that he was 88 years old.  I had forgotten that he wrote the screenplay to Shakespeare in Love.  If I ever get to teach the Brit Lit survey class again, I'll end by having us watch that movie in its entirety.  It's an interesting counterpoint to Waiting for Godot--in some sense, it's in the absurdist line of theatre, but it's also different in ways that make sense as a way to close the course.  It looks both forward and backward, and it's a work from 1999, which gets me closer to the 21st century than I got this year, when I ended with Waiting for Godot.  I feel vaguely guilty for ending the course in the 1950's, and showing a film that features a Stoppard screenplay would alleviate my guilt.

--I went to the post office yesterday expecting a big crowd--it is early December, after all.  Happily there was only one person already at the counter and then me in line.  I bought some holiday stamps, even though I already have plenty of stamps.  I thought of my grandfather, my mom's dad, who collected stamps and taught me how to do it.  I wondered if anyone still collects stamps.

--We've been binge watching NYPD Blue.  I am using the term binge watching perhaps differently than some do, especially when talking about a series that lasted from 1993 until 2005.  It's a show we return to, but it's easy to dip in and out.  There are enough story lines that go across episodes that make me want to return to it.  It's well written and well acted, and it seems as worthy of attention as any of the "prestige TV" shows that aired on HBO in the past decades.  I watched it for a few years when it first aired, but I don't remember much of it.  Because it was a weekly show that was on the air for so long, there's a lot to watch, and we are watching it on a channel that just runs the show, episode after episode, so we can't pause the series.

--I am looking at a variety of year-end Best of _____ lists.  I'm no longer surprised when I haven't heard of most of the movies on the list.  But this year I'm surprised how few of the books crossed my radar screen until landing on the year end list.  And many of the ones that are on the list that I've heard of are ones I didn't like.  Hmm.

--Yesterday I took our Thanksgiving hambone and turned it into a pot of bean soup--what alchemy!  For decades when I cooked vegetarian beans, there would always be someone who asked what gave them flavor without the pork.  I never understood the question until a few years ago when I got to take the hambone home.

Reading Day, 2025

If you came to this blog hoping that you'd find a meditation on World AIDS Day or the anniversary of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in 1955, head over this post on my theology blog.  I did some brief researching of AIDS statistics, which are sobering:   according to a UN Fact Sheet, 1.3 million people worldwide contracted AIDS in 2024 alone--that's just one year. Since the beginning of this epidemic, 91.4 million people have been infected, and 44.1 million have died of the disease.

Today will be a different work day for me.  My students at Spartanburg Methodist College have a reading day today, followed by several days of final exams, but I don't have to report to campus. Grades are due at SMC on Dec. 8, and Dec. 10 for my online classes. So I have lots of grading this week, but it will feel easy because there's no commuting to Spartanburg.

This morning felt luxurious in some ways:  I can put off my walk until later in the morning, so I've had a slower morning than most Mondays have been.  I'm trying not to think about next semester, where I'll have a class that starts at 9, so Mondays won't be slow-paced at all.  Maybe I will keep an extra pair of sneakers in my office and go for my walk later in the mornings on MWF.  I won't get much in the way of hill training, but it would be good to have that option.

I will start grading later.  Today is one of the few days where I don't have meetings or appointments scheduled, so I'm trying to savor the slowness.

I still have that hollow-brained feeling when it comes to composing poems, but I do have the capacity to read.  Earlier this semester, I heard the author Richard Osman interviewed on NPR, in advance of the Netflix version of his book, The Thursday Murder Club, the book which is now a series of books.  I hadn't heard of any of it before, but the interview whetted my appetite.  The book is just as delightful as I hoped it would be.

Yesterday my spouse was sewing on the machine, which meant that watching TV wasn't really possible.  I decided to put away my sewing, switch to Christmas music on Spotify, and sink into that book.  It was a wonderful part of the afternoon.

Tomorrow I'll go get the next batch of books that I've ordered from the public library--next up will be Ian McEwan's latest, which has gotten great reviews.  I'll read it first, since I suspect I won't be able to renew it.

A reading day, a holiday spent reading--delightful!