Taking a break from reading.

A couple weeks before fall break, my friend Susanna and I went to downtown Chicago on Friday afternoon. I skipped (gasp!) my natural disasters class, and we took the train into the city to tromp around in the rain for a few hours, share gelato, and sip a hot drink in a coffee shop.

This is the bean in Millennium Park. Taking a picture of it is probably a sure sign that you are a tourist. Oh well.

Susanna was an unofficial member of the suite last year. She, Sarah, and I were known as
"the littles" and Erin and Robin, who are tall, as "the bigs."

I can't remember the name of this fountain, but I think it's lovely.

Most of my professors seem to think that theirs is the only class I'm taking.

I think my least favorite part about weeks like this one when I am so ridiculously busy, is not the excessive busyness or exhaustion, but rather the fact that instead of doing a few things relatively competently, I end up doing a whole bunch of things in a half-baked manner. This is not so satisfying.

Downpayment

I promise that posts about fall break are coming. I am like Ivy when she doggie-paddles in the Puget Sound - just barely keeping my head above water.

Uncle Bert, laughing and watching David kayak with J.T. and Ivy.

A new favorite

One of my new favorite hymns is Blessed Be the Tie that Binds. I remember singing it in elementary school and high school and not particularly liking it very much (perhaps because I don't love the traditional melody for it), but it's more meaningful to me now, and I think it will continue to be so as I grow older.

Blessed be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like that to that above.

Before our Father's throne
We pour our ardent prayers;
Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one
Our comforts and our cares.

We share each other's woes,
Our mutual burdens bear;
And often for each other flows
The sympathizing tear.

When we asunder part,
It gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart,
And hope to meet again.

This glorious hope revives
Our courage by the way;
While each in expectation lives,
And longs to see the day.

From sorrow, toil and pain,
And sin, we shall be free,
And perfect love and friendship reign
Through all eternity.

(This seems like a good follow-up to my post of three weeks ago.)

If only.

I'm in the library, about to begin enough reading to make my eyes cross, and thinking about the approaching philosophy midterm for which the TA suggests studying 20 hours.

I'd rather by doing this:

Some day I will memorize this

Whenever I go for a walk on a particularly marvelously beautiful day, snippets of this Gerard Manley Hopkins poem get stuck in my head. I love the way each line rolls off the tongue. Every word is exactly right.

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Up, up, my friend, and quit your books

Beautiful autumn foliage has come to Wheaton at long last. I had almost given up hope and convinced myself that winter was coming without the glory of fall, but I'm glad to be proved wrong again.

I claim to be too busy usually, but when it's 70 degrees in October, nothing is going to stop me from dropping the books, picking up the leash, and heading out for a walk with Barnabas. My plan is to relax and think about something besides the quad class I picked up that seems to require about 300 pages of reading a week, plus a research paper due the day after a large project for my hermeneutics class is due. . . Tomorrow it'll be in the 50s and rainy. Then I can read.

Just following Scripture

As I was in the library this evening, studiously working on an outline of I Thessalonians for my hermeneutics class, it struck me that I Thess. 5:6 is a motto verse for Wheaton students, particularly at this time in the quad.

"So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober." I Thessalonians 5:6

Strength

Today I learned in philosophy class that "forte" is actually pronounced "fort."

I actually find this kind of disappointing. If you pronounce it right, then it impedes communication because people will be distracted by the odd pronunciation, and not understand or wish to correct you. And then you end up correcting them and sounding pretentious. I'd rather sound pretentious by using words other people don't know, rather than by pronouncing commonly mispronounced words properly, and deal with the nagging guilt. Maybe I err.

Plus, "Fort-ay" sounds cooler.

(Incidentally, I love when people accidentally say "pronounciation.")

Reflection

This year thirteen people left the College Group to do missions related work overseas. I know all of them; some of them are dear friends. Right now, for some reason, I'm missing them especially much. I'm struggling to find words to express it, but I think part of missing someone, a part I hadn't much reflected on before, is missing being easily understood. Sometimes, perhaps selfishly, more than missing the people I know, I miss being known.

So I'm thankful that I'm still here at Wheaton - thankful that though friends have left, there are still people who know me and whom I know, people with whom I have shared experiences and values. I'm thankful that I'm not always lonely and misunderstood.

But it's okay to miss friends sometimes.