Midway Points: Inspirations and Revelations

I am grateful to have been blogging for so long, grateful for many reasons.  I often go back to re-read old blog posts--by often, I mean at least two or three times a week.  I go back to see what I was thinking/doing, to find recipes, to find rough draft ideas and inspirations, to spark my brain when I feel I have nothing new to blog about.  This morning I found this blog post about a poem idea I forgot I had for a poem called "The Holy Spirit Takes a Holiday"; I haven't finished the poem, now, a year later, but I still have the rough draft.

This meandering made me think about a summer project, making a rough draft into a finished draft each week.  And yes, that's one of my new year's aspirations that has fallen apart as the year progressed (this January blog post has details about my specific intentions for 2026).  But that's the joy of early July--there's still time to adjust my trajectory.

Speaking of inspirations, during my driving to the grocery store yesterday, on NPR's Fresh Air, I heard an interview with romance writer Kennedy Ryan.  She's the first African American to win the RITA, the highest romance writing award.  I started thinking about romance novels and wish fulfillment and the voices and faces that aren't characters in romance novels.  I thought about older women characters who might get one last shot at their dreams coming true.  Romance novels need an obstacle, and the inability to see oneself as romance worthy could be that obstacle.  Another potent one would be that one dream is coming true, and the inability to believe that multiple dreams could come true at once.

If I wrote romance novels with older female protagonists, I'd approach it as alternate life Kristin explorations.  But I was also attracted to this idea, from yesterday's interview, about creating an imaginary town, a place that becomes an escape, like all those clergy novels of the 90's.

Before I head out on my morning walk to beat the coming heat, let me also record this snippet from last year's blog post on this day:  "I wonder where we will be at the halfway point of next summer. Hopefully I will be meeting with my candidacy committee to proceed to endorsement, which is usually a halfway point to ordination, but in my case, I'm doing things a bit out of order. At Lutheran seminaries, students would do CPE much earlier, often in the summer after the first year, and then they'd get to endorsement sometime in the following year, before internship (year 3 of seminary) and the last year of seminary."

Last year Kristin had no idea how much would have changed and for the better.  My candidacy has now transferred to a different synod, which means I can progress towards ordination more quickly.  A year ago, I was expecting to have to do a part-time internship which would last two years, in addition to needing additional seminary classes, which would mean that summer of 2028 would be the earliest I could be ordained.  Now I am on track to be ordained in the first half of 2027.

Last year Kristin had hopes that she might get a tenure track job at Spartanburg Methodist College, but she would have assumed that it probably couldn't happen soon.  And now I am an Associate professor on the tenure track.

This morning, I'm feeling a bit fretful about the electrical work happening at our S'burg house--we bought all sorts of fixtures thinking that the installation was included in the expensive cost to rewire the house, only to be told we'd get an update on Monday.  Does this mean a proposal/invoice, as it sounded on the phone with the scheduler?  Or just an update on timelines?  It's tiring.

Tiring, but fixable--let me remember the saying that I first heard in one of Anne Lamotte early books, when one of her friends said that a problem solved by an infusion of cash is not really an interesting problem. It's especially not a problem when one has the money.

The sun is up to begin the day's roasting--let me go for my walk.

TEEM Work and Other Anxieties

It has been a strange week in terms of home renovations.  We're at a point where it makes sense to wait until the work of next week is done.  Hopefully by this time next week, we'll have an HVAC system installed and the house rewired.  Then we'll do the painting and the hardwood floor restoration.

It feels weird knowing how much work needs to be done, but not doing it.  Of course, I have plenty of other work to be doing, primarily grading and encouraging students.

In a way, it has been a good week to be pulling back on fixer-upper tasks.  I've gotten information about the next part of my path to ordination.  I will take three classes through the TEEM program, and the first class is next week.

The TEEM program has 3 onground intensives a year where participants gather in Indianapolis and take 2 classes, one on Monday-Tuesday and one on Thursday-Friday, along with a workshop on Wednesday.  I will be taking the Thursday-Friday class on Paul's letters next week.  I'm happy to be able to patch up some holes in my knowledge; I had wanted to take a seminary class on Paul, but it never worked out.

I needed this week to order books and get started on the reading.  I had missed the deadline to get the discounted hotel price, but happily, when I called, I was able to get that price. 

It's been an up and down week in terms of anxiety.  When I'm at the house in Spartanburg, I feel that we made a good decision.  When I'm not there, there's a bit more self-doubt rattling in my brain.  I've never driven to Indianapolis from here, so I feel a bit of anxiety in terms of a car trip, while reminding myself that I have relatives along the way who could help me if need be.  I'm headed there by myself, because my spouse needs to be here to oversee the HVAC installation and rewiring.  I'm looking forward to being away, but also a bit anxious at the thought of all the new people I'll meet.  I feel a bit of anxiety at the thought of all the money we're spending on home repair--if it goes well, I'll be glad we spent the money. 

I have some course work to do besides showing up for class next week.  There's reading to do, and a movie about Paul to watch, which I've done, and a review of the movie to write, which I haven't, but will soon.

But it's nice to feel I have time to do that work.  The last time I was getting ready to go to an onground intensive, it was October of 2024, and we were still dealing with Hurricane Helene aftermaths.  I'm sure there's some residual anxiety that my body is dredging up.

Hopefully, in a week or two, I'll be able to look back on this anxiety and smile because all the moving parts came together so well.

Our Next Fixer-Upper

If such a thing exists as a regular reader of this blog, that reader would notice that my regular schedule of posting has been disrupted.  On Monday, we left town until Wednesday for a wedding.  Yesterday we headed down to Spartanburg because I scheduled a turn-on date for water and electric utilities at our new-to-us fixer upper-house in Spartanburg.

Yes, we bought another fixer-upper when we're not done fixing up the house we have at Lutheridge.  Let me be clear--we're not selling that house.  We are fortunate enough to be able to afford 2 small houses.  And one reason why we can is that each house needed work, and very few homebuyers these days want to put in that sweat equity.

In the spirit of full disclosure and complete honesty, I, too, would like a house where I didn't need to think about upgrades, where someone else had already made the decisions and installations.  But as we looked at houses, we kept saying, "Why would someone make the kitchen this way?  Why didn't they do the bathroom that way?"

I almost didn't look at the house we bought.  The pictures were just too scary, like this one of the kitchen:

Did they have a fire?  Some catastrophic plumbing issue?  But it was around the corner from a very cute house, so I swung by.  As I peered in the window, I thought, well this isn't as scary as it looks.

When we had our realtor show it to us, we all said, "This house is much better than it looks.  And more solid than it looks."  So we made an offer which was accepted.  We closed on the house May 8 and because of travel plans made a year ago, we are only now having time to make upgrades.

You might say, "Yes, but why 2 houses?"  In March, I accepted an offer of a tenure track Associate Professor position from Spartanburg Methodist College, which means more job stability--income to count on and a schedule to count on, a schedule which means I need to be on campus every weekday, during the 8 months of the year that school is in session.  I have done that kind of commuting for the past 2 years, and it's getting tiring.

I'm still a Synod Appointed Minister at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, so our thinking is that we'll be at the Lutheridge house on the week-end, in the Spartanburg house during the weekdays.  And I will want to spend the summer months in the Lutheridge house.

Of course, much could change, as much has changed.  It hasn't been that long since we bought our current fixer-upper, the Lutheridge house.  It was just 4 years ago, when I had only done a year of seminary, when I didn't even know that SMC existed.

Music Week Begins

It has been a week:  a week of getting ready for our first overnight house guests in this house, a week of attending to tasks we've been waiting to get to for too long, a week of moving furniture, a week of buying furniture, a week of sore muscles and a sprained finger, a week of moving tools back to the shed, a week of cleaning, a week of going back and forth to Lowe's.  Music Week at Lutheridge begins today, and I think we're ready.

Our house guests arrived last night, South Florida friends that we haven't seen since we moved two years ago.  We sat outside and chatted while the sun set.  One of them will be at Music Week, the reason for the trip, and one of them will explore area waterfalls and take pictures.  My spouse, too, will be at Music Week, as will my parents who are staying in camp lodging.  I will be the support and logistics team:  buying food, driving the car/golf cart, keeping an eye on the weather.

We've been planning this week for a long time, and I'm hoping it all works out.  Our Music Week participants will have a very full schedule, so it should be fine.  I've been thinking about how long it's been since we had house guests.  We used to have people come and stay with us for a week, but that was pre-Covid.  I feel like I've forgotten how to use these hosting muscles, but happily, it's coming back.  It helps not to have to plan activities.

And of course, my regular life activities will still be happening:  the seminary class that I'm taking, the online classes that I'm teaching, and the quilt group at the local Lutheran church.  But it will be a good week, full of friends old and new, family, and music.  It's just what I yearned for when I used to live much further away.

Saturday Scraps: June Winds Down

 It's been a whirlwind week, in some ways, a slow week in others.  Let me collect some scraps from the past week:

--I've completed some of the chores that come along with modern life.  I'm primarily thinking of the car registration, which requires a safety inspection.  I was able to get both cars inspected on Thursday afternoon, after I got annoyed with myself for wasting so much time during the day.

--I tell myself I've wasted time, but that's not true.  In any given day, there's a certain amount of mindless scrolling through social media and online newspapers.  But I don't waste as much time watching TV as I once did.

--This week, as we've watched TV of the mindless variety and TV of the well-written variety, I've gotten lots of sewing on my quilt done.

--I also went to quilt group on Wednesday.  I helped assemble two quilt tops; the Janome machine is a wonder.

--On Tuesday, I went to both our neighborhood happy hour at Sierra Nevada Brewing Company and my seminary class.  I'm looking forward to Mondays in August, where my neighborhood group will be exploring breweries in Mills River, and for most of the Mondays, I won't have a seminary class to attend.  On Tuesday, my time was tight, so I didn't drink, but it was good to see people and spend time together.

--Today is the two year anniversary of our purchase of this house.  I have no regrets.  It's been good to have a place to live that is paid for, even if it needs a lot of work.  It's a solid house, more solid than we knew when we bought it--a happy turn of events.  It's been a good investment.

--It's been interesting, living in a house in a residential community that's part of a church camp.  During 9 months of the year, it's fairly quiet, downright deserted.  During the summer, we don't hear noise from the camp at our house; the traffic noise from a major road nearby drowns out all other noise.  But my daily walk takes me through the camp, and it's a different experience during the summer, seeing groups of people doing camp things (swimming, walking to the dining hall, playing games in grassy areas).

--Despite the joys of summer, I'm yearning for autumn, even though autumn will be very busy with more teaching and more seminary classes to complete.  Let me continue to work on appreciating the present, even as I'm looking forward to seasons to come. 

Hearing "Beth" (Yes, that Song by KISS) in a New Context

It has been a strange week-end, a week-end where I've tried to work ahead on the writing that I do for my minister job at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee, while also trying to help my spouse with plumbing and the other tasks that need to happen before the dry wall installing team arrives tomorrow.  Yesterday, I made this Facebook post, which sums up the week-end in so many ways:

"I'm working on a sermon, and my spouse is listening to a KISS album while working on rerouting the plumbing, and I'm hearing the song "Beth" and thinking about how 11 year old Kristin heard this song and imagined a future life which didn't really involve plumbing or sermon writing or feeling nostalgia for men in make up."

When I was young, I saw that song as an achingly beautiful love song.  Now that I am older, I am seeing it as a song that shows how difficult it is to balance the needs of a creative life with the needs of a partner.  And as we listened to the album, it was a much softer kind of album than I remember it being.  Of course, KISS was never one of the bands that held my heart.  I found them scary, probably in the same way that many parents do.

I've been feeling a bit of despair about my lack of coherent poetry writing.  I jot down a line or two, or a stanza or two, but very little comes that feels worth revising and polishing.  Perhaps it's the state of the world we're in.  More likely, it's that my writing energy is being channeled in other ways right now.

Take the past three days for example.  I've written 3300 words for just my church job.  That doesn't count any of the writing that I've done as a student.  It's no wonder that there's not much wonder left for my poetry brain to feed on.

I've been in this writing state before.  Poetry has returned, often in a richer way than before.  I will be patient and keep the garden bed mulched.  At some point, sprouts will emerge.

Week-End Creativity Report

 It's been a week-end of creativity, which was great fun, and a week-end of home repairs, which led to both progress and irritation.  At long last, we have a washer and a dryer again:

I should clarify:  we have a working washer and dryer again.  These appliances were delivered July 21, where they have sat in the middle of the kitchen floor since, making working in the kitchen more of a challenge than it should be going forward.

To have a working washer and dryer, my spouse needed to transform the space which had once been a hallway.  We needed new plumbing and new electric.  Then, we needed to correct the new plumbing so that there could be a wall.  Then we needed walls and paint for the walls.

Finally, on Saturday, it was time.  We moved the washer into place and did a load of laundry, to be sure that the plumbing wasn't leaking.  Sunday it was time to heave the dryer into place.  My spouse did that work while I drove across the mountains to preach at Faith Lutheran.  I came back and served as cheerleader while my spouse tried to connect the dryer hose; ultimately he was successful, but it did make me wonder why this has to be so hard.  Why is the diameter of the hose and the diameter of the vent pipe exactly the same?

When I look back on this week-end, I hope I remember that we also had fun times.  On Friday, when we were getting supplies for the laundry room remodel, we also picked up a rope and a hook for the suspension of the bird house that my spouse envisioned.  

So far, it's stayed suspended.  The birds have found it, but the bears and the squirrels have not.  

On Friday, I took some muslin that I had after an anniversary quilt project and some scraps of batting, and I created ghosts to go with the pumpkins at the fence.  

At first I had a vision of each ghost having different colored eyes, but the first ghost with blue eyes was more KKK hood than ghost:

So I grabbed a marker and made the more traditional ghost eyes.  

It's not permanent ink, so it's already running a bit, but I don't care:

On Saturday, I wrote this about them:  "Now some of the ghosts look extra sad or extra goth or extra hungover, like their mas-scare-a (say it with a spooky voice the way that spouse Carl did) has started to run down their faces."

Will I keep buying pumpkins?  Will the ghosts last to Halloween?  Stay tuned.

Today the flooring project resumes, which is a project that doesn't involve me this time.  I will be up the hill at Lutheridge attending and assisting with the Southeastern Synod's Convocation time (a continuing ed/spiritual renewal event for rostered ministers and others).  May all be well this week!

Fourth Festivities Week

It's been an interesting week to have a house in the mountains--in all the good ways.  This past week has felt like summer has finally arrived, but it's the type of summer that I remember from my first two decades of life, where it's warm/hot during the day, but it cools off at night.  It's also felt like summer because Lutheridge (the camp where my residential community is located) celebrated the Fourth of July, which at times, felt like falling into a Norman Rockwell painting--in a good way.  There were decorated cabins, people wearing festive clothing and body decorations, and a parade (but everyone was on foot).  One of our neighbors who has a beautiful back yard, invited us all over for barbecue and other treats, like homemade ice cream.

Photo taken by Sally Lingle

Here is a picture of the parade, taken from a far enough distance that people's privacy is protected.

I didn't get pictures of the fireworks.  My phone isn't as good as the ones that others have, so my ability to take pictures at night isn't great.  Plus, we didn't stay long.  I remember finding fireworks enchanting as a child, but as an adult, they seemed noisy.  We drove down to the lake, which seems unwise in retrospect--too many pedestrians on very dark streets.  Next year we'll go up to the loft to see what kind of view we have from our very high windows. 

My favorite memory of yesterday may end up being this one:

What on earth?  We were making props for my children's sermon on Sunday.  The passage talks about yokes being easy and burdens light.  I don't have an old-fashioned yoke, so I asked my spouse if he had ideas.  He gazed at the pile of construction debris in the back yard.  Soon we were cutting the styrofoam that had recently cushioned the ceiling fans that we just installed.

Another significant event from yesterday that has no pictures:  I chose our new health insurance plan.  We got notification that the group that offered the plan we had, Friday Health, would be pulling out of the state, so we had until August 31 to choose a new plan.  I had thought of putting off that decision, but yesterday I found myself on the website and decided to proceed, while it was all working (website, internet, brain).  So far, I've found the Healthcare.gov website much easier to navigate than I expected.  And so far, we've gotten health insurance coverage that has cost us far less than it cost when I was getting insurance through my employer.  Thanks, former President Obama!

Speaking of former employers, I found out that City College has discontinued its Vet Tech program and rather suddenly.  I'm not going to say much about it here, but it's news that my brain comes back to periodically.  The program was very expensive to run, but once upon a time, it was the most popular program, the one with a waiting list.  Post pandemic, I don't know the statistics as clearly.

I am grateful to be here, up on the mountain, safe from the heat that is scorching most of the planet.  I feel lucky to be part of this community here.  I feel lucky to have the opportunity to preach at the church in Bristol.  In a few hours, we'll leave to meet my parents in Bristol.  They're going to church with us tomorrow on their way to Lutheridge for Music Week.  More gratitude for this abundance.

Writing in the Remodeling and Rewiring

Today I will head over the mountains to Faith Lutheran Church in Bristol, Tennessee, as I've done for the past four Sundays.  But this morning, I'll drive by myself.  My spouse will stay here; his sister and her electrician fiancé are here for a few days to help us rewire the house and install lights and ceiling fans.  Going to Bristol takes a significant amount of time, so I will go, and they will stay here to make progress.

They are an amazing team, so I'm happy to head out by myself and leave them to the work at hand.  Yesterday they got the undercabinet lights installed, along with some of the overhead lights.  They figured out a strategy for hanging the ceiling fans in the two bedrooms where there is no existing overhead light.  They made initial cuts.  They ran wire.  My spouse did some framing in the loft where we hope to add a half bath.

They were done in time to have dinner and play a few rounds of Sequence, the game that is both a board game and a card game.  Then they headed back to their hotel, and my spouse and I collapsed into sleep even before it was fully dark (not an unusual bedtime for us).

The more we work on this house, the more amazed I am at what a solid house it is, probably the most well-constructed house we've ever had.  Why is this amazing?  In part, because it was built to be a summer cottage at a church camp, which is the kind of house where builders might have been on a budget.

I can't really help in many of these home repairs, so I sat at my desk yesterday, working on my sermon for today and on my class paper and Powerpoint presentation for seminary class on Wednesday.  I am amazed at what I was able to accomplish.  And yes, I did sleep a bit better last night, in part because of my sermon being done and printed.

I am looking forward to today's drive across the mountains--such beautiful country I drive through every week.  I am looking forward to some alone drive time--it feels like it's been forever since I did that, even though it's only been 6 weeks.  I am looking forward to being with the congregation.  And I'm looking forward to coming home to see all that has been accomplished without me.

Library Love

Usually when we move to a new place, getting a library card is high on my list of priorities, along with getting a driver's license.  Last year, when we moved to North Carolina, we discovered that getting our driver's license would take much more effort than in any other location we had ever lived; I had a hint of that when I went online to make an appointment to avoid lines, and the nearest appointment was 5 months away.

So, I barely got my driver's license in time, and since I thought I'd be living in D.C. for the next several years, I didn't prioritize my library card.  But I've been yearning to read some books that I don't own, both light reading and some climate change texts, and the local library has them.  Yesterday I needed to escape some of the deconstruction noise at the house, so off I went to the nearest branch of the Buncombe county library.

Almost always, entering a library feels like coming home.  My earliest memories are of going to the library, and libraries haven't changed radically in appearance in my lifetime, so it makes sense.  Libraries have more stuff now--computers, meeting rooms, non-book media/items--but libraries still have books, shelves and shelves and shelves of books.

I got my card with no trouble, since I now have a North Carolina driver's license.  The librarian asked me if I'd ever had a Buncombe county library card before, and I said no.  Suddenly I realized that I've had a library card in almost every state south of the Mason-Dixon line and east of the Mississippi River.  I have no particular desire to live in the missing states (Mississippi, for example), so this might be the end of my run.

I spent some time in the stacks, wondering what I'd like to read.  Yes, I keep a list, but that list is in a box somewhere.  I ended up with Living Resistance by Kaitlin B. Curtice and Sue Monk Kidd's The Book of Longings--not the light and fluffy reading I wanted, but maybe they'll hit the spot.  I came home and went online to request the climate change books I wanted--they are at a library far away, and I'm happy to wait for them to be delivered to the branch nearer to me.

One of the cool elements of this library system is that I have borrowing privileges at many other North Carolina counties.  It's hard to imagine that I'll get to many of them, but I do live just one mile away from Henderson county.  There are no overdue fees, but after 30 days, the item will be charged to the card.  But if you bring the item back, you're good; I know this, because I heard it explained to the young child and his dad who had brought items back.  If you're charged, and you bring a new copy of the book that you got from somewhere else, you don't have to pay what the library will charge you to replace that book.  Once I lost a book from the Broward county (FL) system, and not only had to pay an exorbitant cost to replace it, but also a service fee; I ended up paying almost $50.00 for a paperback that was widely available for a few dollars elsewhere.

One feature of this library card is that I can get Zoom passes, which gets me and my group admission into a variety of educational spaces (the NC Arboretum!  the WNC Nature Center!  the Asheville Art Museum!), with one pass per place per month.  Wow.  It requires some thinking ahead because I have to get the pass at the library, but I'm fine with that.

On my way home, I heard that Cormac McCarthy died; I was surprised that he was as old as he was when he died.  I only read The Road, which had some of the most gorgeous language I've ever read, which is particularly unusual in a dystopian novel.  My reading life is short, and I'm unlikely to read more of his work, although this appreciation made me want to read more.  NPR commentator Wade Goodwyn recorded it just before he died of cancer--he died in his 60's, much younger than anyone should.

I did not waste time with news coverage of the Trump appearance at a federal court room yesterday.  This story will drag on and on and on.  In some ways, it's much like a kitchen remodel.  I did get kitchen counters ordered yesterday.  

It will take 3-7 weeks for them to be made and installed.  Sigh.  

But at least the process is underway.  I also got the tin for the backsplash ordered; happily American Tin still had some of our old pattern in stock, which we're getting in hopes of duplicating what we've had before.

In the meantime, we have a temporary sink, and we'll keep making due.  Earlier this week, standing on the deck in the morning dark, looking through the sliding glass doors, I thought, if this was a picture that I saw in a magazine, I'd want to live here--even if the kitchen doesn't have counters yet.

Catapulting into a Different Future

Yesterday, I was part of a Zoom meeting where I met some members/leaders of the church in Bristol, Tennessee where I will serve as a Synod Authorized Minister (SAM) for the next 9 months.  They were in the middle of preparing for a Friday night fish fry.  They seemed like a delightful group of people, and I'm interested to see how our time together unfolds.

I was happy to learn that they have some solid processes in place that don't rely on a pastor:  office support and an organist/musician.  They have enough children for a children's sermon, and they have one confirmand this year.  They have a team that meets periodically to do worship planning, and they asked me to participate by way of Zoom.  They asked about the possibility of resuming the 9 a.m. Sunday School in the Fall.  Through yesterday's meeting, the assistant to the Synod bishop who will be "walking" beside us was part of the Zoom so that it seemed more like a getting to know you session, rather than a job interview.

Over dinner, my spouse and I returned to the topic which has fascinated us--how we thought we were headed into one future, and now we've been catapulted, again, into a different future.  I feel fortunate, because the catapulting mechanism could have been worse.  For example, there could have been a hurricane that wiped out everything we'd worked for; we did have several hurricanes, but they wiped out just a chunk of what we'd worked for, and we were able to make insurance and tax claims that restored us economically, even if we lost time in restoring the house, time we will never get back.

A year ago, I thought I would be living in seminary housing for 2-3 years.  Then in November came news of potential bulldozing of the building in which I lived, and then in January, the news that it might happen as early as August 2023.  I decided that I needed to create a few alternate plans, just in case.  I knew that the bulldozing and construction might not happen (I've seen city government and developers in action, and I know that there are vast stretches of delay with most projects), but it sounded like it was on track.

I needed an internship site where I could work 8 hours a week for the academic year--but not knowing where I would be living made me think about different possibilities.  Could I think about a site which might be able to have me working virtually?  I thought about the Southeast Synod, which has offered a variety of interesting online opportunities (I participated in one of them and wrote this blog post about it).  I reached out to the bishop, who I knew before he was a bishop, long ago when we did planning for the Create in Me retreat.  Because I did that, I not only have an internship site, but also this SAM possibility. 

In the earlier part of this year, when I expected seminary housing to be bulldozed, I started taking a closer look at English faculty job openings.  I applied for several full-time community college jobs within an easy drive of DC, but I also applied for some around North Carolina, close to our Lutheridge house.

I didn't get a full-time job, which is good.  A full-time job would give me more money, but less flexibility.  Instead, I have been offered and have accepted a new part-time job at Spartanburg Methodist College, a small, liberal arts college an hour south.  In the fall, I will be teaching two classes back to back, in person on Tuesdays and Thursdays, first year English classes.  I will create the curriculum that adheres to broad guidelines, and I could choose any texts I wanted.  I don't remember the last time I was in control of the textbook question.  Since so much is available online, I decided not to have a required text.

I am looking forward to being back in the classroom with no college administrator duties taking my attention away from teaching.  I am looking forward to the experience of being a minister.  I am looking forward to my seminary classes too.  And I am looking forward to being in this house that I didn't own this time last year.  I will have the best of so many worlds, and I know how lucky I am.

One Last Trip Back from Seminary Housing

And so it ended in much the same way as it began:  a car load of belongings, an evening spent at my sister's house, snuggles with her dog.  

Back in August, I brought the first car load of stuff to the DC area.  Yesterday, I brought the last car load back to our North Carolina house.

Back when I applied for seminary housing, in March of 2022, I thought I would be in my seminary apartment for 2 years or more.  Back when I applied for seminary housing, I didn't have a house at Lutheridge, and I didn't know that there were plans for the bulldozing of seminary housing.

As I drove yesterday, I thought back and wondered if I would make different plans then, if I knew then what I know now.  In a way, it's a ridiculous question.  If I had a time machine, I hope I would go back to the days when Apple teetered on the brink of bankruptcy; I hope I would buy the ridiculously cheap stock, which I could then sell later.  I'd buy a few shares of Starbucks, a tiny coffee company that nobody except for a few people, like my mom, knew about when she bought her shares for $12 a share.

In short, yes, I might rethink every decision I've ever made, if I had the advantage of knowledge gained in hindsight.  But then again, I might not.  Those alternate decisions would also come with good and bad consequences.

For part of yesterday's drive, I did not have the mental space for these kinds of musings.  Part of the drive took me on a detour that might have been scenic, if it hadn't been so foggy.  As I drove towards Harper's Ferry, I saw a sign that said "All lanes closed in Virginia" with a street name.  I was approaching the branch that went towards Leesburg, Virginia, so I hoped the sign was talking about that road.  I thought that I had miles and miles to go before I was in Virginia, so I'd get through the Harper's Ferry bridges, which always make me a touch nervous, and then see what was on the other side.

But it was the road between the two bridges that was closed.  I followed the detour signs, up the steep and winding road, and then down into fog.  Happily, there weren't many cars on the road with me, and it was just before dawn, so it wasn't as pitch dark as it would have been at other times of the year.

Still, the fog made the descent towards the Shenandoah River an intense experience.  It felt like I was driving into the void, which sometimes seems like a metaphor for life:  it feels like driving into the void, but the road is there, and if one proceeds with some amount of caution, one isn't likely to go over the bridge into the river below.

Do I want to stretch this metaphor into the wisdom of leaving early?  Do I want this metaphor to consider the other drivers on the road or the chance that the bridge may have fallen into the river?

The fog continued for the first several hours of the journey, and I was happy that I was travelling on a Sunday morning with fewer drivers than some of my trips.  I was astonished by how many cars on the road didn't have lit headlights.  Why wouldn't you help other drivers see you?  Here, too, the potential for life metaphor abounds.

As the fog cleared, I tried to take some pictures through the car window.  It was strange to see the Appalachians looking so Hawaiian in their deep greens and clouds drifting by.  But I didn't really capture any of it.  I loved watching the mountains shift from emerald greens to dark blues and grays as the light shifted through the morning.

Happily, my trip was fairly uneventful, and I pulled into my driveway to discover much construction work had been done in my 2 day absence--how wonderful to have an electrician in the family, family who was willing to extend the trip to see the youngest brother graduate.

We headed over to Hendersonville, where many of the cute shops were closed, but we had fun looking in the windows.  We ate at a Thai-Sushi place that wasn't too busy for Mother's Day.  It was a good end to a great week.

We have hugged the last group of family and sent them on their way, with hopes we might see them sooner rather than later.  Now it is time to focus on this week's tasks:  kitchen cabinets arrive tomorrow, and online classes start.  Let the work begin.

Last Morning in the Seminary Apartment

 It is my last morning in this seminary apartment.  Later this afternoon, at 4 or 4:30, I'll head over to my sister's house for dinner where I'm spending the night.  At one point, I thought it would take me the whole week-end to get my stuff out of this seminary apartment and get it cleaned, but I no longer think it will take me that long.  I usually leave town by going up I 270, cutting cross country to Harper's Ferry and Winchester, getting to I 81 that way.  Leaving from her house cuts a smidge of time off my trip.

When I first made my plans, I knew that I didn't have to be out until May 15, and I thought I'd want to enjoy one last week-end in this apartment.  But once it's packed up, it's not nearly as cozy as before.  It's a bit of a feeling akin to sadness, knowing that this time has come to an end, that it's time to go.

Part of my decision also comes from the last trip to North Carolina.  I left on Sunday, and there was less traffic.  I started thinking, maybe I could leave on Sunday again.  My spouse's sister and her fiancé are spending 2 days with us on their way back from the seminary graduation--another reason for leaving earlier rather than later.

Last night, I was closing drapes for the last night here, and I looked out across the parking lot at the library building, with the few lights left on for the night.  I will miss this view.  Earlier I had watched the small children of my upstairs neighbor play just outside the building, and I reminded myself that I was never going to stay here long enough to watch small children grow up--that community is the one I'm headed to when I leave tomorrow.

At some point, I'll write a blog post about what I've learned from a year in this seminary apartment--for the most part, it's all been good.  But this morning, I'm too distracted by tasks left to do, and I'd like to take one last morning walk around the beautiful seminary neighborhood.

Flooring Install in Snippets and Metaphors

 I'm not sure I have a blog post about one single unified and coherent topic today.  So let me write a collection of short observations, just so I capture them.

--We finished the flooring install in the main living area of the house yesterday.

--When we first saw the house, around 2011, there was shag green carpeting throughout.  The owners before us ripped up the carpet, but didn't install new flooring.

--My spouse was really interested in bamboo flooring, so one day last summer, we bought a piece of it from LL Flooring.  We spent a fun afternoon seeing if it was as indestructible as it claimed to be.  We put a lit cigar right against it--no burn marks.  We tried to simulate dragging furniture across it.  No damage.  We took every sharp item in the house and tried to carve words into the floor sample.

--I loved our hardwood floors in our historic house in South Florida, but they were not indestructible.  They would scuff and scratch and gouge--sometimes from something that made sense, like when we moved the refrigerator.  But more often, I'd see a dent in the floor and have no memory of anything that would have left a mark.

--Our bamboo floors are engineered flooring, meaning they come in planks with waterproofing on one side.  They are supposed to slide and lock in place easily.  Some of them did.

--Is this kind of flooring more ecologically sustainable?  We pondered that question last night, as we looked up at the oak trees that grow around us.  How many planks would come from one tree?  How long would it take to grow enough trees to provide floors for our very small house?  If you've ever tried to root bamboo out of your garden, you know that it grows quickly.  So on one level, yes sustainable.

--But there's also a lot of plastic and other petroleum products that go into making this flooring.  So, on another level, not sustainable.

--Why did it take us so long to get this flooring installed?  We bought it back in early autumn, when it went on sale.  But there wasn't a great time to install it, since we didn't have an HVAC plan and we knew that new registers and vents and parts of the system would impact the floor.  We knew the kitchen remodel would come later.  We didn't want to rip out the kitchen too early.

--I'm thinking of all the types of flooring we've installed ourselves through the decades:  peel and stick linoleum squares, parquet squares that needed to be glued with industrial adhesive to the subfloor (least favorite install so far), carpet, ceramic tile, and various types of engineered wood/laminate.  We've paid someone else to install hardwood, and we've redone hardwood floors several times now, both ourselves and paying someone else.

--I've said it before, but it's worth repeating:  the home repair/restoration shows on TV make it look so easy, with no clean up required at all.  Grr.

--Years from now, will I remember that yesterday was also a day when a former president was found guilty of sexual abuse and ordered to pay $5 million dollars?  Will that guilty verdict in a U.S. court of law make a difference?  Years from now, will our floors still be in place?  Will the nation?

--I often think of my presence in home repair projects as unnecessary and sometimes even not helpful.  But handing each plank to my spouse so he didn't have to get up and down did save time.  Getting the box of planks and unwrapping it from the plastic wrap that covered the cardboard box did save time.  There was vacuuming to do.

--Smaller efforts can be essential too.  Let us see if that is true on the national scene in years to come.  Political scientists have told us that local actions can have a huge impact, even more so than national ones.  The home repair metaphors seem to hold up for the larger home repair that the nation requires.

Blue Green Day in the Mountains

 Yesterday was a travel day, another carload of stuff driven back to the North Carolina house.  Today, at Wesley, people will go to the National Cathedral for graduation.  I have some friends who are graduating, but it is a ticketed event, so I shall cheer them on from a distance.

Yesterday was a lovely drive, a blue-green day in the mountains of Interstate 81:  blues and greens on the mountains in all directions, no bare patches, no browns.  I am happy to have seen these mountains change across seasons.  I am happy that my days of driving that particular stretch of mountains so regularly is coming to an end.  

Last week this time, I was about to set out from this house to my seminary apartment, about to wrap up the semester--but I still had a lot to do.  And now, here I am, having finished it:  my Luke paper on call stories and hospitality, my Church History final exam that had two parts, and so much grading for the online classes that I was teaching.

I drove the whole way yesterday wanting an orange scone from Panera's, and finally, there was a Panera at one of the exits.  I stopped, and it was such a disappointing scone.  The inside was fluffy, the outside soft.  I won't be doing that again.

I left early because the Lutheridge residential community group was meeting at a brewery nearby.  That hardly narrows it down; we live in a land of many breweries.  Last night was Blue Ghost Brewery, which was just a few miles away.  After some beer flights which let us sample all sorts of beers, I had a ginger beer, which helped settle my stomach which was achy from travel (or maybe from the horrible scone).  There was barbecue from a food truck.  

But best of all, there was getting to know our new neighbors.  I already knew some of them from Lutheridge retreats and other sorts of Lutheran connections.  They're a great group, and when we thought about moving here, a ready-made community was one of the benefits.

Now I have a week off, of sorts.  I have more online classes to teach this summer, but those don't start until next week.  I have the final move of stuff out of the seminary apartment and cleaning it, but that happens this coming week-end.  My spouse's youngest brother graduates from Southern Seminary in Columbia this Thursday, so we'll go to that.  Our last window gets installed today.

Still, it feels like a week off.  It's good not to have papers and projects hanging over my head, for one week at least.

One Year Anniversaries

Yesterday, I realized we were at the one year anniversary of making an offer on the house that we now own.  I was trying to figure out when my wrist surgery took place last year (May 2), and along the way, I figured out another piece of history.

I didn't blog about the process in real time, in part because I had a broken wrist that made it hard to write.  In larger part, I didn't blog about it because I didn't want anything to happen that might jeopardize the process.  I did write some blog posts after the fact, once we purchased the house in June (here and here).

At the time, a year ago when my spouse was talking to the owner of the house on the phone, I remember being a bit worried about making big decisions in a place of emotional vulnerability.  I remember saying words to the effect of, "I'm happy to have a house at Lutheridge, but right now, I'm focused on my wrist surgery, so I might not be thinking clearly."  My wrist was not the only thing shattered a year ago; my faith in my ability to know my body took a hit too, and I was feeling vulnerable, because if a little tumble could do so much damage, what other catastrophes might be waiting?

Yesterday my spouse and I talked about some of the decisions we've made in the past year.  We felt lucky to get this house at a really good price because it needed work.  We may end up spending as much (or even more) on it than we would have spent if we had bought a house that was more move-in-ready.  But oddly, I feel O.K. about that.  We're making good decisions (like putting in a high quality/efficiency HVAC system) that people who wanted to sell a house quickly at top dollar might not have made.  We're making design decisions that work for us.

A year later, I am glad to have this house in more ways than I would have anticipated, and I anticipated being glad to have this house.  I didn't anticipate that seminary housing might become more precarious.  Now I know that there are plans to bulldoze the building that has apartments, including mine.  I don't know exactly when that will happen, but I've felt lucky to have a place to go.  I knew the housing market had been weird, but I didn't realize it would continue to be weird; yesterday I read an article in The New York Times that noted that lots of people want to buy houses, but increasingly, as interest rates rise, many people don't want to sell and lose a lower interest mortgage.  If we had waited to invest the money from the sale of our prior house into another place to live, we might not have been able to find anything.  

I am glad to have a house in an area that's a bit safer from all the destruction that climate change is unleashing; several weeks ago, I looked at pictures of flooding in our old neighborhood and felt a bit of survivor's guilt.  But more, I felt relief.

A year ago, the people who owned this house accepted our offer to buy it.  And I continue to be grateful.

Sunday Snippets

 We've reached the point of the term when I feel both scattered and focused.  I have final projects/papers that I need to be working on; I have a plan, but I can't decide which project/paper to be working on.  I have online classes that I'm teaching, so I've got plenty of grading to do, but I can't dive in.  Three weeks from tomorrow I need to be moved out of seminary housing; I could be packing, but I do still have three weeks, so it's not yet time to pack all the dishes, all the books, all my clothes/bedding/towels.

Let me record a few random thoughts before getting back to the work of the end of the term.

--Yesterday was Earth Day, and a Facebook friend posted this picture:  

--"Here to save the planet."  This morning, a first line for a poem came to me:  The planet doesn’t need your salvation.  I've written a few more lines, and I'll see if more comes.

--Although there were plenty of Earth Day events around DC yesterday, I limited myself to taking a walk around the neighborhood.  I knew that storms were on the way, so I didn't want to get too far away from shelter.

--I felt the ominous approach of the storms, even before there were clouds in the sky.  Would I have that feeling if I hadn't read the weather reports?

--It was a relief to watch the storms roll in, knowing that I was relatively safe.  I made this Facebook post (and later updated it):  

"The crack of thunder that makes me disconnect the computer from the power cord, the rain that I hope will tamp down the pollen--it looks like the cold front is arriving! I am safe, not on a ground floor (no fear of flooding!), on a campus on a DC hill top (no fear of car flooding!), in my seminary apartment which was built the old-fashioned way, out of concrete block.

Update: The storm has settled into gentle rain; all is well here."

--On Friday, before I went to my sister's, I went out for ice cream with two seminary friends.  I love this picture:

--I made this Facebook post to go with the photo:  "Some days we do theology a bit differently in seminary. And some days, we eat ice cream. And some days, it all looks like the inbreaking community of God, and I want church to look like this."

--I will miss the people I've met here.  But I remind myself that many of them are graduating.  I'd be missing them if I stayed here.

--In some ways, I think that the emotional space of missing--missing houses, missing humans, missing land, missing the past--is one of the central explanations of my life.

Bucolic Blooms and Neighborhood Blossoms

 Long ago, in the late 90's when we moved to South Florida, my inner visual artist was excited by the quality of the light which was so different than the light of Lowcountry South Carolina.  Yesterday, as I took my walk through the abundance of blooms in the DC neighborhood near my seminary, I thought about changing landscapes through the seasons, a different kind of delight for my inner visual artist.

If you've been reading my blog posts over the past nine months, you've seen me taking note of these changes.  Some of them are the product of nature.  When we drove away from South Florida last summer, we talked about how green everything was once we escaped Florida.  As I've driven back and forth across the mountains, along Interstate 81, I've noticed how the landscape has changed from the deep greens of late summer, to autumnal bronzed brilliance, and now, the spring shape shifting of various trees blooming and blossoming, along with patches of tulips and daffodils.

Yesterday, as I drove back from my Easter break and the Create in Me retreat in the mountains of western North Carolina, I thought about how bucolic the countryside was, in a way different from the drive in March.  Back then, I described the landscape this way in this blog post:  "green fizz look of the first growth of spring."

The light green has deepened for many of the farm fields.  I was surprised by how many flocks of sheep I saw.  I also saw horses and cows, but I expected those.    As I traveled through the late fall and winter, I didn't see as many animals in the fields, but yesterday was different.

I got back to my seminary apartment, and I was surprised by how many blooms I saw.  When I left, almost 2 weeks ago, I thought I had seen the best of spring:  the daffodils were beginning to droop, as were the tulips.  The cherry trees had finished.  I was happy to get to the mountains to realize I hadn't missed the dogwoods.

Turns out, I haven't missed them here in DC either.  Yesterday I took a walk and marveled at all the dogwoods and the redbuds that were in full blossom, along with the azaleas--what beautiful azaleas!  When those hadn't bloomed in early April, I assumed we just didn't have any.  Wow--what a difference 10 days makes!

As I walked through the neighborhood, I thought about how I had seen the houses through the seasons, which ones were decorated for which holidays, what had bloomed through the year.  I will miss them, but I am looking forward to getting to know a new landscape.

Flooding, Windows, and a Retreat Begins

 After a week of really good sleep, last night was rougher.  I would have expected it to be better--we were at the end of a successful installation of sliding glass doors and windows.  But I was jangled.

I spent the day reading reports from my old neighborhood, the one in South Florida that flooded on a regular basis.  One of my neighborhood friends posted video of her flooded property, which I watched.  If her place flooded, I'm sure our old house flooded, since we often flooded when she didn't.

Ft. Lauderdale got 25.91 inches of rain in a 24 hour period.  The previous record was 14.59 inches.  I was first aware of the situation because I'm still on an e-mail list from the city of Hollywood, which was also inundated.

Yesterday was such a strange mix of emotions:  gratitude for not owning a house in a flood zone, survivor guilt because we left while others haven't been able to do that, sadness over a historic flood that one day will seem like a small flood in comparison, worry about friends who are still there.

I had emotions not related to the flood.  Yesterday was our window installation, which made me anxious:  fear that the wrong windows would be on the truck, fear that more rot would be discovered, fear that we'd have the wrong size openings for the windows going in where there weren't windows before.  Two of our windows are very high, up in the vaulted ceiling.  One of the installers told me that it wasn't really that high, that they'd worked on much higher windows.

Happily, I didn't have to stay in the house trying not to watch the installation.  I headed up the hill to Lutheridge's Faith Center to help get ready for the Create in Me retreat.  This year, we're exploring the theme of Creation out of Chaos, and our text is the Noah and the ark story.  We chose this theme and text back in 2018, for a 2020 retreat which had to be canceled.  Back in 2018, I pushed for that theme because of my experience with Hurricane Irma.  Sadly, it is no less relevant.

I created some fish out of foil and decorated them.  I made strips of fabric for an interesting garland that was designed to evoke water.  I helped others get materials and drove people to parts of camp and tried to stay out of the way when people were on ladders to create installations like this one:

I'm sure I will have more pictures later.  Today is the first full day of the retreat, and I am so blown away by all the raw materials that are in the Faith Center.  I'm sure that I was in a jangled state last night in part out of anticipation of the wonders of this retreat.

Breakfast will be served soon, so let me get ready for the day.  Again and again, I know how fortunate I am.  Again and again, I offer thanks.

Once I Saw through a Glass Darkly

This morning I'm thinking about that quote of Paul's, the one about seeing through a glass darkly.  When I was younger, I thought it meant that it was like seeing through a window at night.  But lately, I've thought about a different possibility.  We've had windows through which you see darkly--but we're in the process of replacing them.

Yesterday's installation went well, although the windows didn't arrive as expected.  We had also ordered sliding glass doors, so some installation could happen.

Our wall that faces the mountains has three sliding glass doors and a solid door, which means the back wall is almost all windows.  But the old sliding doors were pitted and dappled and impossible to make clear:

And yes, we did try to scrub them with a variety of cleansers. There were also places where condensation seemed to have settled in--here's a view from the old windows in the study/office:

When the professionals took the doors out, we discovered some rot, which wasn't a surprise to me.  It was clear from the damaged subfloor that there had been water intrusion.  Our installer took the rotted places out, replaced the wood, put flashing on the wood, and now everything should be water tight.  Hurrah!

Last night, I was struck by the difference in the view with new windows:

And here's the view from the windows in the study/office:

The old windows are in better shape, so the difference between them may not be as startling.  At the end of the project, we'll have 3 additional windows, so hopefully there will be a bit more light coming in.  Of course, we have lots of tall trees around the house, so the light will always be dappled.

At least when the project is finished, the glass in the house will not be dappled, even if the light is dappled.