Reflecting on Francis

With prayers for a blessed rememberance of Brother Francis...

What might Francis say to us today?

What Now, Francis?

Waste not
your tears on me.
on what was
or could have been,
maybe should have been.

Save your weeping
for those who live-
the hungry, the thirsty, the cold,
the sick, the beaten down, the longing-
for those who still have breath.

Turn all of your tears to hope
To fuel God's work-
the death of injustice, pain, and suffering-
with joy.

Cry not for me;
I have eternal life in Christ.
Weep only,
as I do,
for God's hurting people on earth.

KEB

Apples and Tamales

 Today is Food Friday, which means I spent a good part of the day cooking and taking photographs along the way to post on Pixels, Plates, and LOLs! Click on over for some tasty apple recipes.

I played for a service tonight at the Interfaith Peace Chapel.  It was a Taize service with a celebration of the Transitus of St. Francis.  Both are moving services in their own right, but experiencing them together was exceptionally moving.

After the service, a few of us went to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant.  As we were walking in, I was struck by the shapes, lines, lights, and darks of the pathway leading in.

And yes, I had tamales for dinner.

Where I Work

Today's Capture Your 365 photo prompt is "Where I Work."  I was excited by this prompt because it encouraged me to take photos in a place where I normally am not thinking about my camera.  The sad part here is that it is the place that I have come nearly every work day for the past 23 years and of which I have very few photos.

As I walked in to school this morning, I was thinking about the possibilities for today's photo.  So many aspects of where I work would be worthy of a photo to represent my workplace - my students, my colleagues, the quirky details of my classroom or the music building, or perhaps a bigger picture of our campus.   

My teaching day began at 7:30am.  These were the students that I missed seeing on Tuesday when I was home sick.  Even though they had a test, they asked how I was feeling and we're glad that I was back.  This made for a wonderful start to my day.

I continued through the morning teaching back to back classes - lecturing in some, returning tests in another, and testing again in my last class of the day.  And then I went to lunch.  As I always do, I checked my personal email and Facebook expecting to find my email full of ads and my Facebook feed full of beautiful photos posted by my fellow CY365ers.  Instead, my phone's home screen was filled with news alerts about another mass shooting.  This one in  Oregon.  This one on a community college campus.  Suddenly,  my perspective on where I work changed.

Where I work is on a community college campus much like that of Umpqua Community College, the site of today's shooting rampage.  Every day I stand up in the front of a classroom filled with students just like those who were injured and killed today.  And every day, that scenario that unfolded in Oregon could have just as easily be where I work - in a classroom that I enter each day, without any reservation.

Those students at Umpqua Community College were in only the first week of their fall semester.  A morning and a  semester that for them began full of possibilities, hopes, and dreams ended in a few short minutes.  What could have been, no longer given a chance.  The lives of all those  sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, friends, and lovers who were working to better themselves by gaining an education now, rather than earning a college degree, earn a place in history as ten more innocent people taken by gun violence in this country.  

This is where I work.  In a classroom full of students striving to realize their dreams.  In a classroom where the reality is that those dreams can be shattered far more quickly and easily than they can be realized.  This is where I work.  On a college campus in a state whose legislature has voted to permit the legal possession of guns on our college campuses.   This is where I work.  

This is where I work.  Giving my all to every student with whom I share a classroom.  Hoping that I can play at least a small part in helping to make each of their dreams come true.  Praying that the senseless violence that has struck so many students in so many schools in so many places

 ceases and that none of us has to experience fear in any classroom.  This is where I work.

My heart aches for all of those whose lives are forever changed by the events on the Umpqua Community College campus today.  I pray for this college community, for the family and friends of those who were injured and those who lost their lives, for the students and staff who will return to that campus next week trying to move forward, for all those who enter classrooms around the world every day, for all those who believe that violence is an answer.   This is where I work.

What's Been Going On

What the saying?  "Life is what happens while we are busy making plans."  I made the big pronouncement that my plan was to post here regularly.  I guess the truth is that I don't yet have enough of a trend to define "regularly" but in my head that meant almost every day if not every day.  And here it is five days since my last post.  So what's been going on?  Lots, actually.

The biggest obstacle to posting has been no computer.  Well, that's not actually true.  I had two computers.  An old one and a new one.  

YAY!  Weber spent all weekend cleaning up files on my old computer, backing up everything, and then doing the migration of everything to the new one.  It was a long process that I am happy to say is now complete and everything is working perfectly so far, but it left me with no computer over the weekend.

Friday was food post day on Pixels, Plates, and LOLs.  Our subject is cinnamon.  If you are interested in recipes for cinnamon rolls or cinnamon streusel coffee cake, check out this link.

http://pixelsplatesandlols.blogspot.com/2015/09/sugar-and-spice-and-cinnamon-are-nice.html

On Saturday while Weber worked on my computer, I cleaned.  I'll spare you pictures of my clean bathroom, but I assure you that it is picture worthy. :-)

Then we get to Sunday, usually one of my favorite days of the week.  Normally it is filled with church, singing, food, fellowship, and, if I'm lucky, sometimes even a nap!  All of  those things happened, but I must say that church was discomforting, and not in a good way.  My morning started in the Episcopal Church, the church in which I was raised, married, and have called my spiritual home for my entire life.  The guest preacher was the newly elected diocesan bishop of Dallas, a man who is proud to stand in opposition to the held beliefs of the Episcopal Church as a denomination and the Supreme Court of the United States.  He is proud to preach in favor of injustice and inequality for gay and lesbian children of God.  He also began his sermon by invoking the story of St. Francis, which he totally bastardized.  I found myself saying out loud, "That is not the way the story goes!"  I left angry rather than refreshed.

The good news was that I had another service to attend at Cathedral of Hope Dallas where, in direct contrast, the sermon focused on our need to coexist with all of God's people, even with those who hurt us or with whom we disagree.  

There is something seriously wrong with having to go to a second church service because you are so unhappy with the things you heard at the first, especially when that first church is supposedly your home church.  And to add insult to injury, the "first church" had the nerve to do the stewardship pitch.  Yeah. NO.

And then came Monday... 

I woke up feeling not great, but went ahead and got ready and went to school, knowing that it was my shortest teaching day of the week.  I figured I could get through two classes just fine.  I did, but by the time I got home, I felt much worse.  After dinner, I was running a 101 temperature and made the decision that I should not, could not go to school today.  Why is that such a hard decision to make?  I felt terrible yet I also felt a sense of responsibility to my students.  I finally realized that there was no way that I could give them my best so instead of wasting their time, I emailed my classes and told them I would not be at school.  Once I had committed to staying home, I was able to rest and not worry too much.  I can't remember the last time I took a sick day from school.

The animals and I have spent all day doing pretty much nothing but resting, except for the test that i had to write for tomorrow.  

Though I still have the fever hangover kind of feeling, I am better.  I will be back at school tomorrow.

And it will be a new day.

Thursday

My Thursday's are incredibly long days, beginning with my first class at 7:30 am and ending at 4 pm after a final composition lesson.  In between, I teach five different classes and two lessons.  The good news?  Unlike Wednesday's, I actually have 30 minutes for lunch!  The thing that makes this tiring day tolerable is knowing that it is the end of my work week.  And, I have some awesome students.

No one really wants to take (or teach) a 7:30 am class, but to get it all done, this is the way the schedule has to be, so we make the best of it and do whatever we have to do...arrive at school with a great big cup of coffee!  

This morning, one of my students came skipping into class at about 7:28 with a big smile on her face and pronounced, "I am so happy this morning; I am winning at life."  Whenever someone says something like this I always go through a quick analysis of their expression to determine whether they are speaking truth or sarcasm.  In this case,  I was fairly sure it was truth, but I asked her just to make sure.  She said that she was glad that she was on time and really enjoyed being in the class.  How can you not have a good day when it begins like this?  I woke up with a sore throat and the feeling that a cold was trying to take over my body.  This student's enthusiasm and good cheer made me forget about the fact that I wasn't feeling 100% and pushed me to give her my 100% so that she  left class still feeling as though she was winning at life.

My day had an equally good ending.  Thursday has become "diner dinner night."  We have gotten into a routine of meeting a small group of friends almost every Thursday night at our local diner.  It is a true diner experience-juke box and love meter in the entry way; burgers, fries, and all-day breakfast; and servers that know all the regulars (that would be us) and bring our drinks as soon as we walk in the door, no ordering necessary  Most of us order the exact same meal every Thursday night.  That s part of the routine.  We catch up on each other's week, roll our eyes over the current state of politics in this country, solve as many of the world's problems as we can in a couple of hours, and mostly enjoy the friendship that we share.  Oh, and we have dessert.  Diner dinner is the only dinner during the week that includes dessert.  For me that is banana pudding.  This too is part of the routine.  The partners that we are, we close the place down at 9pm.

Neither having a student who feels that she is winning at life or a Thursday night diner dinner may make the list of what makes most people happy, but both are exactly what bring joy to my world.  Knowing that what I do as a teacher causes even one student to feel good about herself and having wonderful friends who enjoy simply being together are both, for me,  awesome things!   If only more people realized that it is really the little things that are the big things in life...

Today's photo prompt was "With A Ball."  This is what you get when you take your photo at 10pm...after diner dinner.  It's all about priorities!

Fall

Wednesdays are long days.  The best I have to offer is my daily haiku...

The season changes

 Year's perfect end approaching.

Where is the weather?

...and today's photo taken very late tonight.  The prompt was "rushing."  I rushed to get a photo taken while trying to get several others things done.

Revolving Door

One thing that I have learned, because the lesson has been shown to me time and time again, is that no doors ever really shut in life.  Our existence involves continuous movement, an unchoreographed dance,  through a constantly revolving door.  The variables that impact where that door leads include how quickly the door turns, how we embrace our perspective at the present point of rotation, and who else is making their way through the door with us.

Today was bittersweet in that the revolving door of life turned in a new direction.  I closed on the sale of my dad's house in Delaware, the house that my grandparents restored in the early sixties and in which they and then my parents lived until my dad's death almost a year ago.  I was four when my grandparents moved into this house, so most of my memories of visiting them were formed there.  My parents moved in after my grandfather's death in 1998.  I made a few trips to visit my parents, but it all honesty, my most vivid memories of the Delaware house with regard to my parents is it is the place where they both died.  This, however, is not the reason that I chose to sell the house; it simply was not feasible for me to keep it.

 As a military brat, I am a master at blooming where I am planted."  As a child,  I was transplanted to many different places coast to coast.  Finally as a young adult, I moved to Texas and now have firmly established roots hereWeber and I have a simple yet wonderful life here.  My girls and their dad live close.  I have an amazing group of friends.  And, a job I love.  What I would have given up to move to Delaware and keep the house would have been far more valuable than what I would have gained by keeping it.  And, keeping it as a "summer home" was not fair to the house.  It was built in 1760 and deserves full time care and attention.  I am thankful that the men who bought it are not only willing, but excited to give it that.  I wish them much happiness as they make this house their home.  I trust that if I ever want to return for a short visit, that they would graciously extend a bit of hospitality.

So today, my last real tie to Delaware has been severed and life's portal has turned to face another direction.  And I am OK with that.  My family and my life are here in Texas, the place that I happily call home.

Lately I have been playing with a photo manipulation technique that creates abstract images from photos.  I thought today would be a good day to try it with the above photo of the house in Lewes, which I took over the summer.

Perhaps I should title this one, "A New Turn" as the revolving door of life has turned a few more degrees.   And, who is that now staring at me?