around the world in 8 hours

My parents arrived last night, as I may have mentioned below, and today we had a full day in the city. We headed down to Chinatown, which included a very ordinary lunch and an extraordinary tea shop - not in the sense that Dream About Tea is extraordinary, but I found there chocolate milk tea with boba (which there apparently comes in slush form when you order it cold), and my parents found a small teapot with an infusing basket in it (which I thought they were buying for themselves and in fact they were buying for me). Then we headed back up the red line to Michigan Avenue - specifically, to American Girl Place. My father was extremely tolerant, and even enjoyed the museum-like parts and the chance to marvel over how much the company has grown in a mere 15 years. My mother and I were more like exultant at the chance to wander around and see in person all the stuff we mostly skim now in the catalogues, and to touch some of the really cool outfits I don't own, and rejoice over how well they do what they do. It was superfun, and a woman in the store gave me free stickers.

After AG, we wandered up and down Michigan Ave for a while. I managed to find a pair of cropped jeans at Gap (where jeans often fit me) that stunned me. Not so much because they were gorgeous, but because they were both too long and too small. Granted, I'm not actually a size 0 and haven't been for years, but these were a strange size 0. Also, I really think it's ridiculous that the smallest adult size is too long for me, and especially if it doesn't even begin to go around my skeleton. Who are these people whose hip bones are three inches narrower than mine (entirely aside from whether there's anything on them) and whose legs are six inches longer than mine.

We topped off the day with a brief rest and then a delicious dinner at Tapas Barcelona. China, all around America, and Spain all in one day, then a whirlwind tour of Christian theology from all over the Mediterranean and Europe to close it out. No wonder I'm exhausted!

in case you were wondering...

Christ IS risen!

It happened this year, indeed. We arose for a 5:15 service and were not disappointed - the tomb was empty. I survived singing solos at 5:30 and 6:30 am, basically, sang "Welcome, happy morning!" (minus verses 2 & 3, but I dealt) and had a fine brunch with friends.

Somehow I forgot to take a nap today before the 6 pm Easter dinner - really, if someone knows how I possibly forgot to take a nap after getting up at 4 am, please let me know. But I had a great day chatting with Hope and then eating with friends, and then my parents joined us after dinner for dessert and wine!

18.5 hours and half a bottle of Montepulciano later, I'll wish you all a happy and blessed Easter week!

He is risen, he is risen!
Tell it out with joyful voice:
he has burst his three days' prison;
let the whole wide earth rejoice:
death is conquered, we are free,
Christ has won the victory.

hope around the edges

One of the things that gets me during Holy Week is that most years, I'm not really all that sure what's going to happen until it does. There's a piece of me that wants to believe that maybe this year, we can avoid the cross - maybe this year, we won't screw it up. And there's an equal part that isn't sure, after Good Friday, if Jesus will really rise this year - what if Easter just doesn't come? I'm never convinced it will happen until it does.

But after a good Easter Vigil rehearsal this afternoon and seeing some of the prep work for tomorrow morning, I'm beginning to hope again. It still feels a little bit like "just in case." There's a way in which it's a little like the waiting when someone's missing, when every day it becomes more real that they're probably dead, but you don't make it final until it's for sure - just in case she comes home tomorrow. Rehearsing the Vigil/Easter service is a little like that - like we'd better be ready just in case the tomb is empty tomorrow, rather than because we know it will be. But it begins to look as though that hope is not false.

It's got my vote.

My sophomore year at Smith, when our director introduced the Brahms Requiem to the Glee Club, he told us that if he had to pick only one great choral work to survive destruction, this would probably be it. Several people were amazed that he hadn't chosen the Mozart Requiem, but I quickly came to agree with him. I fell in love with the Brahms, and even after we performed the Mozart my senior year, I didn't change my mind. The Mozart was great, but the Brahms was transcendent for me. It spoke to my heart at a time when I needed to hear that kind of language - by which I mean both the texts and the music. And it has continued to be the most powerful piece I've ever performed OR heard. I'm sure it doesn't hurt that my German is better than my Latin, though my requiem Latin is pretty decent (or was). Certainly I'm proud to have been part of a performance whose CD version is actually worth listening to - I go back and forth between ours and the Chicago Symphony version. I'm sure part of my love for the piece is the timing - that year in general, and the performance date specifically (the day before what would have been Emily's 21st birthday). But the piece itself is also an amazing work of art and prayer. It's become a regular part of my Holy Week listening:

Nun Herr, wess soll ich mich trösten?

Ich hoffe auf dich.

Tod, wo ist dein Stachel? Hölle, wo ist dein Sieg?

playtime

Ok, I've done several hours of reading tonight already, and since my own classes haven't actually started, I declare it to be play time.

I've been looking for a recording of "Welcome, Happy Morning" - my very favorite Easter hymn and one of my overall favorites as well, since commenting on Tripp's blog about it. I can't seem to find one anywhere (if you know of one, please share!), so I'm indulging in one of my favorite daydreams: if I could commission recordings of hymns, what would they be? I've often bemoaned the fact that most fairly straightforward choral recordings of carols and hymns leave out verses; as I've begun to search for good cds of hymns, I've also discovered that many of my favorite hymns don't seem to be out there at all.

It occurred to me that there might somewhere be a church who could pull off some sort of fundraiser around this - calculate the cost of having the choir record, say, 25 songs, and start the bidding there to auction off the opportunity to pick which 25 hymns they'd record. You could limit it to the Hymnal 1982 or not, whatever you preferred, and you could reserve the right for the organist/choirmaster/musical director to set the order. They'd make money off the raffle itself and then off selling the cds once they were produced.

Anyway, if in my fantasy world I were to have such an opportunity, here's what I think I'd pick, from the Hymnal 1982:

1. All hail the power of Jesus' Name! (450)
2. Not here for high and holy things (9)
3. Alleluia, song of gladness (123)
4. Alleluia! sing to Jesus! (460)
5. Lord of all hopefulness (482)
6. The Church's one foundation (525)
7. Come down, O Love divine (516)
8. Crown him with many crowns (494)
9. For all the saints (287)
10. We know that Christ is raised and dies no more (296)
11. I come with joy to meet my Lord (304)
12. How firm a foundation (637)
13. Let all mortal flesh keep silence (324)
14. Christ is made the sure foundation (518)
15. The King of love my shepherd is (645)
16. God of grace and God of glory (594)
17. The God of Abraham praise (401)
18. Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve (546)
19. O worship the King (388)
20. Praise to the Lord (390)
21. Christ for the world we sing! (537)
22. When morning gilds the skies (427)
23. O praise ye the Lord! (432)
24. At the name of Jesus (435)
25. Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates (436)


Ok, I couldn't do it. Even that was tough. I had to make a separate list just for Easter (and could do likewise for Advent and Christmas songs, but those get recorded a lot anyway).

1. Welcome, happy morning! (179)
2. He is risen, he is risen! (180)
3. Christ is alive! Let Christians sing. (182)
4. Alleluia, alleluia! Hearts and voices heavenward raise (191)
5. That Easter day with joy was bright (193)
6. Come, ye faithful, raise the strain (199)
7. Now the green blade riseth (204)
8. The day of resurrection (210)
9. Awake, arise, lift up your voice (212)
10. Come away to the skies (213)
11. At the Lamb's high feast we sing (174)
12. Hail thee, festival day! (175)
13. Alleluia, alleluia! Give thanks to the risen Lord. (178)
14. Jesus Christ is risen today (207)
15. The strife is o'er, the battle done (208)
16. We walk by faith, and not by sight (209)
17. Hail the day that sees him rise (214)

Yeah. Should probably go to bed now.

pop! goes the seminary

People seem to have popped out of the woodwork this morning. All of a sudden, juniors are middlers are back from break, and even better, seniors are back from field ed. There were fewer empty seats at mass today than I've gotten used to on Mondays (especially in the row behind mine, which is mostly seniors). The seniors are not only around (which some of them were last quarter) but in classes. I have roommates again! Kirsteen's only been gone a week, and Hope's still house sitting for a couple of weeks, but it's great to have Jane back, cleaning and singing and making tea. We've all begun doing homework again.

Yep, things are buzzing again - and all this is before I've set foot in any of my classes for the term.

things

Today is Palm Sunday. Rory and I went to a lovely church service this morning at St. Matthew's.

Rory and Ryan are gone. This is a terrible travesty.

We did, however, have a superfun weekend. I can't imagine anyone more fun to visit the Field Museum with, and dinner Friday was a blast.

Classes start tomorrow, except mine don't start until Tuesday. I think I'm looking forward to this, though somehow my classmates are enthusiastic enough that I already feel behind/like a slacker. Oh well.

Did I mention that Rory and Ryan should not have left?

this is the morning report...

gives you the long and the short...

As of right now, weather.com predicts that it will start raining here on Maundy Thursday and rain through until Easter, when the sun will come out. This will probably change between now and the weekend, but I think it's pretty darn cool.

Weather.com also tells me that it's 33 degrees out and feels like 23, with wind gusting. I'm perfectly willing to believe that it's 33 out, but I see very little movement in the trees. I'm thinking not so much on the gusting.

And regardless of these silly claims that it's cold today, I am sitting here in shorts - because it's not nearly cold enough to warrant the kind of radiator activity we're getting in the dorm.

Countdown: 5.5ish hours until Rory and Ryan arrive...

good to know...?

kind of strange, considering I don't drink that much, and I definitely don't drink hard liquor, but there it is... and I can't for the life of me figure out how to tighten up the ridiculous spacing...

Bourbon Congratulations! You're 130 proof, with specific scores in beer (80) , wine (116), and liquor (104).

Screw all that namby-pamby chick stuff, you're going straight for the bottle and a shot glass! It'll take more than a few shots of Wild Turkey or 99 Bananas before you start seeing pink elephants. You know how to handle your alcohol, and yourself at parties.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender : You scored higher than 69% on proof You scored higher than 94% on beer index You scored higher than 97% on wine index You scored higher than 98% on liquor index

Link: The Alcohol Knowledge Test written by hoppersplit on Ok Cupid

back!

I am back. This is good.

I am watching Help! This is also good.

Rory and Ryan are coming in 1.5 days. This is very very good.

March Gladness is here!

This is copied from Mike's blog:

Once again, Wash. U. Episcopal Campus Ministry is doing March Gladness ... it's your usual NCAA basketball tournament pool -- with a twist. If you win, you don't get to keep the money, you get to donate it to a charity of your choice! We all have fun. It's good healthy competition and in the end some people who really need it get some help.

And it's only $5 an entry to join. You can't beat that!

This year, we've gone hi-tech (sort of) ... well, actually we've just gone kind of lazy. We're letting Yahoo run the pool for us. In fact, we've arranged it so you can do the whole thing ... fill out your bracket and give your $5 "donation" (see that, FBI guys, no illegal gambling here!) all online. Here's how it works:

1) Just go to the game front page and click on the "Sign Up" button to create a team. After completing registration, or if you already have a team, click the "Create or Join Group" button and follow the path to join an existing private group. Then, when prompted, enter the following information...

Group ID#: 36417
Password: love

The only catch to this is that if you don't already have a Yahoo ID, you have to sign up for on (it's free, I've had one for years and never had a hassle with it).

You have to have your bracket entered by Thursday morning. NO LATE ENTRIES!

2) You can give your "donation" through Network for Good with your major credit card. Just click on this link or on either of the Network for Good buttons on this site. Then...


-click on "Donate Now"

-contribute $5 (or more, if you like!)

-under "donation preferences" put in that you want your name and email address revealed (otherwise we won't know you've paid!)

-under "designation" put WUECM March Gladness

-under "dedication" put the name of the charity you want to receive your winnings.

OR

You can bring $5 by Rockwell House or mail it to ECM March Gladness at 7023 Forsyth, St. Louis, MO 63105. Be sure to include a note with your name and designated charity.

IT'S THAT EASY!!!!

Tell your friends and family about it! The more people who enter, the larger the pot for some worthy cause! In case of a tie, the money will be split. Otherwise, it's winner take all!

March Gladness is the brainchild of ECM alum Lesley McCullough! Yeah, Lesley!

Just thought I'd pass this on for those of you who are into basketball, tournament pools, March, or gladness. :)

Ain't got nothin on Smith

NU is far larger than Smith College. I'm quite sure that even if you only count the students who are likely to be on campus at 9 pm on a Sunday night before finals, it's more than Smith has altogether. Considering that, the strength of NU's primal scream is pathetic. I was walking through campus tonight and heard a few guys screaming. I smiled to myself. A few more people screamed. Eventually I realized that it's the night before finals and this is probably the beginning of their version of the primal scream... only it never got to be more than a few people at any given moment. Now, at Smith, when it comes time for the primal scream, you know it. It usually starts at one end of campus or the other and spreads, but for a good sixty seconds at least, the whole campus is screaming at once. I remember being in the basement of the chapel playing the Cube with a friend one semester the night before finals at 10pm (which is the proper hour for a primal scream, but 9pm here is 10pm on the east coast, so I'll let it slide) and hearing a bloodcurdling scream from all over campus, even down there. A Smith primal scream makes itself heard. I'd be willing to bet that hardly anyone north of Emerson or south of Clark heard tonight's scream.

I have to say, however, it was pleasant to be walking through listening to their screaming, mild as it was, knowing that I'm on spring break, even if my spring break isn't the most exciting thing ever.

sluggish

I'm supposedly back on the Jeremiah-God-sexual violence paper again, but I'm finding it extremely difficult to get motivated to work on a paper on the second day of spring break. I really do want to get some good work done on it over break, and I really would prefer not to bring my computer to the hospital with me, but not doing work is so enjoyable...

Admittedly, this is hardly a surprise. One of the pluses to my original plan for spring break was that I'd get several days off with friends before* buckling back down to look at a paper again. I'm not in the least surprised that I feel ready for a couple of days off at the end of the term - that's why we get a break between terms. On the other hand, my plans have shifted; my days away from the suite will be Tues-Sun, not Fri-Weds, and I need to deal with it and do my work.

I have* read a 440 pages of a 600 page tome in the last twenty-four hours... but that doesn't really count as productivity, since it was the March Power Issue of Vogue.

Maybe if I give myself till tomorrow, I'll be more motivated...

*I was planning to italicize this, but oddly, Netscape isn't displaying those buttons. Any of them. This is unwelcome - the entire reason I use Netscape is because it displays more of those buttons than Safari does. Harumph.

pizza bagels bad

I've never liked pizza bagels. Even the one night they were really good at Smith, and my roommate ate something like ten of them, they weren't that great. They're usually crunchy on the bottom and soggy on the top and then greasy over that, and they're made with bland bread and sauce and cheese and often taste like cardboard. Here at Seabury, it's also a way to use up all the extra bagels before break, so we have pizza bagels on cinnamon raisin and poppyseed and so forth. But they've never hurt me before today. Today I bit into my pizza bagel and the sauce was so hot - temperature-wise, not spice-wise - that it burned the roof of my mouth so badly that my skin is peeling off of it.

I am not a fan. I am, however, a fan of ice. I believe eating ice is helping much more than my lunchtime neighbor's suggestion of drinking soy sauce. Ice is good.

languages

I was listening to the Hebrew class discuss their final this morning and being jealous (yes, I know it's bizarre to be jealous of someone's final). So here's my list of languages I want to learn, in the order I currently intend to learn them. I don't include German, Greek, or Latin, even though I'd like to improve all of those, because I've learned their basic grammar and can work through readings in those languages, though German is much much quicker than Greek or Latin.

1. Hebrew.
2. French
3. Spanish
4. Russian
5. Welsh
6. Gaelic
7. Italian
8.

yippee!!!

The staff of Rush has informed me that I only need to be in for 2-3 days for the video EEG, not 3-5!!!

So right now, my understanding is that I will go in on Tuesday the 15th and be released sometime on Thursday or Friday. As soon as I can get them to pin that down for sure, I'll start putting together a visiting schedule, but let me know what days are good for you if you want to come play. I know there are a couple of people who have requested early in the week... as far as I'm concerned, we can have as many people in there as will fit. I don't know, though, if Rush will be as lenient as Evanston. Both places claim you can only have 2 visitors at once, but we know that Evanston doesn't mean it. I'm hoping Rush doesn't either, as long as their patients are safe and happy.

Ok, I do actually want to pay attention to this class. We're talking about icons. Icons make me happy.

notes to self

~Buy more microwaveable bowls. One microwaveable container for food is not reasonable.
~Reschedule spiritual direction, as march 17 is clearly no longer workable.
~Call B&B about rates
~Email Mom and Dad and tell them you need them to bring Ramen, books, summer clothes, the Godspell video, and the games from the top of your closet when they come. Do not expect them to read your mind and simply bring these things.
~Mom & Dad's birthdays are in a month. (So is Amy Ray's, but you don't have to buy her a present.)

i survived!

So I made it through what was actually a very pleasant weekend - catching up with my friend Sam Thursday night as I stayed at his house, meeting the COM and chatting with them Friday and Saturday, dinner with my parents Saturday night, and church this morning. That last included preaching at both services, as many of you know, and an adult forum on the ordination process in Ohio with a couple of current/past COM chairs from my parish. The sermons went amazingly well, though the parishioners there are probably supportive enough of me not to be the best measure of how good the sermon actually was. Now I'm back and I've got to learn to chant Eucharistic Prayer D, Mozarabic Tone, with all due speed, so I can sing it tomorrow afternoon for a final project. For those who are interested, here's the sermon for the later service (the early service was much the same but without the first third). Warning: it's not short. They like long sermons at that service, or at least the rector does. (The relevant readings are 1 Samuel 13:1-16, Psalm 23, and John 9: 1-11. Except at the early service the first half of the Samuel was cut. Without warning me. Luckily it didn't matter.) Anyway:



I love anointing stories. We’ve got three of them this morning: Samuel anoints David. The psalmist talks about God anointing his head with oil. Even the Gospel talks about anointing - when Jesus smears the mud on the man’s eyes, the Greek says he “anoints” mud on his eyes. One of the reasons I love anointing stories so much is that they’ve always sounded kind of mythical to me. Until this year, I’d never been part of a community that did regular anointing, and I would guess that many of you haven’t either. So it’s something that can sound kind of old-fashioned when we think about it today, like being knighted or rescued from a dragon. Certainly we use anointing differently today - we don’t anoint our presidents, we elect them, and we prefer medicine to anointing people with mud to cure diseases! If we think about anointing at all, actually, we tend just to think that there has to be a pretty special reason for someone to be anointed by God. Often we’re inclined to reserve that epithet for Jesus, since the Messiah is the Anointed One.

And it’s true that being anointed by God is a pretty special thing. It’s not your everyday happening. But it’s also not just for Jesus - or even David. We don’t have to be the savior of the world or the greatest king ancient Israel ever knew to be anointed by God. The blind man was anointed by God too - not because he was particularly talented or amazing or because only he could do a particular task, but because it was an opportunity to glorify God.

Some of us may be like David in that God tags us for certain tasks. Some of us may have sensed a clear calling as a doctor or an actor or a teacher. Others of us may identify more closely with the blind man, who was anointed to see and to bear witness to Christ. Most likely, we each have some of both of these going on. God probably does have some specifics in mind for each of us - a place to be, a role to fill, something along those lines - though we may not always know what those specifics are - or maybe we think we know some days and other times we know we don’t. Certainly, we are all called to see the world anew and to witness to Christ’s presence and work.

In fact, we’re not just called, as important as that is on its own. We’re also all anointed to these two things. The reading from Samuel tells us that David was anointed with oil and the Spirit. Does this sound familiar? It should - because we’ve also been anointed at least with the Spirit, and most of us probably with oil too, at our baptisms. Think about the last baptism you witnessed: after the baptism with water, the presider makes a cross on the person’s forehead (often with oil) and says, “you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”

Now, being anointed is sort of a scary thing to think about sometimes. On the one hand, people who think they’re God’s anointed usually come to our attention on the news, after they kill someone or something like that. We vehemently disagree that this is the work of God’s anointed, but that image is enough to make us think twice about adopting the label for ourselves. In our society, being “God’s anointed” often means being arrogant at best and psychotic at worst.

Admittedly, it’s not all rainbows and fairy dust when we acknowledge that being God’s anointed means something else, and might even apply to us. We don’t get a menu with daily specials for what we can be anointed to be or do for God. Often, it means we get signed on for more responsibility, harder work, greater risk, than we would have chosen for ourselves, or maybe even imagined. God chooses, not us, and since God is not a short order chef, sometimes we get chicken fried steak and are told to eat it with a potato masher when what we were hoping for was cottage cheese and pineapple with a teaspoon.

So sometimes we’re not sure what God’s going to anoint us to do next. Some of what we’re anointed for, though, we can know fairly definitely, because it’s pretty much non-negotiable. Our baptismal vows tell us that we’re all anointed to do things like pray, work for peace and justice, and repent of our sins. The blind man’s tasks, and ours, of telling people about Christ and seeing the world anew fall into this category.

Seeing the world anew after baptism means seeing the world the way God sees it. So what do we see when we see through God-eyes? Well, my friend Emily used to talk occasionally about seeing the world through stained-glass glasses. What she meant by that was seeing Christ in absolutely everything. We look up at a stained-glass window, and we see something that makes us think of God. Putting on our stained-glass glasses meant, then, that when we look at something or someone, we think of God. We look at a tree, and we see a source of beauty and perhaps of food and shade, and we remember that God created it to grow the way it does, to change with the seasons, to revitalize itself. We look at a broken-down house and we see a way for a group to come together in rebuilding it, and a place where someone who needs a home might be able to afford one after it’s rebuilt. We look at our neighbor and we see the ways in which that person cares for their family and friends, the ways that person makes sense of the world around them, or maybe we remember a time when that person helped us to learn something new or challenged us to work harder. But we see everybody that way, and every thing. It’s not just the people who are easy to love, or the things we like the most. It’s seeing Christ in absolutely every single place we look.

So that’s part of our new sight. But that’s not quite enough. The reading from Samuel gives us a pretty clear idea of what it means biblically to see the world as God sees it. The LORD says to Samuel, “the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” The way of the world is to look at the outside, in more ways than we often realize. We’re no better than Samuel about this. In school we learn not to judge by whether someone walks with a limp, or speaks with a lisp, or whether they wear certain brands of shoes or clothes. We talk about how outside characteristics such as beauty or money or fame don’t make Hollywood actors and sports stars good role models. Adults teach children to listen to what people say and look at how they treat their classmates instead, and those are valuable lessons. As we grow up, though, we often forget much of this. It changes shape, and we learn to rationalize it better, and so sometimes we’re not even aware we’re judging that way. So we look at someone in a pinstripe suit with a briefcase and someone in a trench coat with long hair, and we make assumptions about which person it’s safer to stand next to. If we’re from the North, as most of us are, we hear a Texas accent and we make assumptions about their politics, about their intelligence. If we’re going to a job, we know that we need to look a certain way, because in our society, appearances matter. They matter a lot. And we know all the tricks to justify how those decisions are based on other things, why we aren’t guilty of that - but deep inside, if we let ourselves notice, we probably know that we’re just like the person next to us, or across the street, in this. We are mortals, and mortals look on the appearance of a person, and we see them with glasses that are colored by our own personality quirks and foibles.

But putting on stained glass glasses means seeing the world in radically new ways, completely differently than how we saw it before. With these glasses on, I can see the world the way everyone around me sees it. I can read books and magazines and play on the internet and watch TV. If I put on a pair of sunglasses with purple lenses [note: in the early service I actually did this], everyone looks a little purple. I like purple, a lot. But you and I both know that you’re not actually purple, so seeing the world through purple glasses probably wouldn’t work very well for me in the long run.

Putting on those stained-glass glasses, on the other hand, trying to see the way that God sees, means seeing things honestly for what they are and seeing what God wants them to become. It doesn’t mean trying not to see the differences between people or the conflicts in the world. That’s putting on rose-colored glasses. Rose is a great color too, probably my favorite color. But, just like the purple glasses, rose colored glasses don’t show us a true picture of the world. We only need a little bit of rose in our glasses. Stained glass has all sorts of colors and shapes. Walk around the church after the service and look at all the stained glass. Some pieces are very different from each other, and even in a single piece there’s beautiful variety. Stained glass glasses help us to see all sorts of different facets of creation.

Looking on the heart means we see the true picture, the one we don’t get either with our everyday, worldly eyes or with rose colored glasses. It’s not about ignoring people’s flaws or pretending that only good things can or will happen. It’s about judging people by their character, their actions, the person they are inside, rather than what they look like on the outside. I see the best of you, I see the worst of you, if you will. David grew up to be not only a great king, but a faulty and flawed human being. God knew that. But God also knew that David was true and faithful and loving, because God looks on the heart. That’s why Jesus looked at the man born blind and saw more than just an outcast. By learning to look on the heart instead of the outward appearance, we too participate in God’s love for us and for the world. And that love is the greatest thing to which we have been anointed.

spring break: downtown

So originally I was planning to spend spring break split between visiting St Louis and rewriting my "what shall we do with a predatory deity?" paper. But today I had my appointment with the epilepsy expert at Rush, and now I'm not going to St Louis.

It turns out that what needs to happen now, in order for him to make a diagnosis, is a video extendeed EEG. What's that, you ask? That means that I pack a suitcase and a bag of books and things and spend my spring break at Rush, with wires glued to my head and a video camera pointed at me for 3-5 days, so they can monitor my brain activity continuously. The hope is that I'll do something interesting, like pass out, while this is happening, but this doctor claims that even if I don't, five days of brain activity will give him enough information for a diagnosis. Here's hoping.

So if you're going to be around Chicago and you feel like coming down/up to Rush for a couple hours sometime that week, let me know. I'm assuming, though I don't have checkin information yet, that they'll have me come in on Monday and leave Friday or before. Since I actually get to plan for this one, I'm hoping to make up some sort of schedule. (People who are on Thursday or Friday may or may not actually have to show up, depending on how interesting I am and when they release me, though I'll certainly be more than willing to do lunch/coffee/movie/whatever with anyone willing to come to Rush if I end up not being there then.) I won't need the same level of attention as I do when I don't know what's going to happen to me next, but a week will still be much more pleasant with a few visitors. :)