Relaxing Day, Intensive Day

Yesterday was the first day of the onground intensive for the TEEM program.  We'll spend the first two days of the week learning about Lutheran Liturgy, then a Wednesday workshop on Lutheran polity, and we'll finish with a class on Old Testament prophets.  We begin each day with worship/devotion time at 8, and we go until 4 or 5, depending on how much time we take to eat lunch that is brought in for us.

It's an intensive, not a relaxive, and the contrast with Sunday is huge.  Sunday was a restorative day.  I did a lot of sewing and a lot of reading, both for intensive week and for pleasure.  I had a video call with my old Florida quilting group and a phone call with my spouse.

I didn't do any church livestreaming, so it was somewhat strange yesterday to hear people refer to the Bible readings we would have been hearing on Sunday--not the readings, but the recognition that almost everyone else had gone to church before traveling.  It reminded me of how far I travel, and how rare it is to travel 8 hours by car these days.  Or maybe it's only rare in the circles in which I move.

I'm glad I had Sunday to recover from my travels on Saturday, but I'm not sure that yesterday's transition would have been any harder if I had gone with my original plan to drive from North Carolina to Indiana.  I'd have just gone from one kind of intensive to another.

I continue to be happy to have joined this program; I'm impressed with the talents of my cohort.  I feel a bit sad about how far away I live from all of them.  This is my last intensive week, and it's hard to imagine how our paths might cross in the future.

Of course, the past decade has taught me that much can change, so I'm keeping doors and options open.  Maybe we'll have yearly reunions.  Maybe we'll travel.  At the very least, I'm hoping we can continue to pray for each other.