(xaris and shalom)

A week or two ago, I wrote a statement of interest for Signum University's summit on teaching the humanities, and realized that in order to talk about why I was interested, I needed to start by talking about my education before college.  It always feels to me like a gross misrepresentation when job applications only give the option of reporting educational history beginning with college -- the years that came before were incredibly formative and what I did in college felt like a continuation of my previous education, not like the beginning of something new. I was talking with my friend Catie (currently getting her MA in Higher Education) about this and she made the point that college really should  be a capstone. And then I was talking with my mom about it all, and she said that it was encouraging and why didn't I publicly share what I had written, so that others who are deep in educating their kids might also be encouraged by the perspectiv

It's still humbling to recall how, when news of the covid-19 pandemic first broke, I didn't think it was going to be a problem here.  Months and thousands of deaths later, with friends who have suffered from sickness and loss, it's obvious that I was incredibly wrong in my assessment of the situation.  I couldn't have guessed at how the spring and summer would unfold, at the changes that were written in the next few pages and chapters of my life that I never would have seen coming. hiking at the end of March with housemates April went by in a blur of confusion and exhaustion and grief as the US scrambled and reeled and states staggered with making decisions about how to cope with an incoming wave of devastation.  Pennsylvania's governor instituted a stay-at-home order that was prolonged a couple of times for the county I live in, which brought a twist I had never imagined to Jason's and my season of engagement -- in the same country, even the same county, yet no

Some moments feel like not only ordinary moments, but bear a weight of being a moment in history .  Times that I want to remember in years to come, to look back and recall we were together  and what a time that was. Thursday evening a group of us tugged and lifted and hauled all of the furniture and accoutrements of the sanctuary back towards the spaces where they belong.  And we followed a seating map for how to group chairs, measuring the distance in between (and being thankful for once that humans are such creatures of habit that we mostly sit in the same spot week after week anyway.) I've been back in the US for a year and a lot of my life has flowed through that building -- Sunday mornings, confirmation classes on Tuesday afternoons, and most recently, my wedding.  It felt good to be back in it, to look around and think, These are the people who I get to figure out how to do church during a pandemic with.  Although we wouldn't have chosen a pandemic, there i