“Spend the day. You can’t take it with you.” (Annie Dillard) I’ve been working on being more present in each moment…every conversation, every word read… At the start of today I thought that I would certainly be lost in numerous back-to-back meetings, but some days have nice suprises that remind you to be present in every moment. This was one of them marked by a great group of students with awesome attitudes, meetings with meaningful content, suprise visits from 2 friends, a spectacular display by a redtail out my window…and I still had time to learn a few things! I think that today was a day spent…
everything I need
I grew up in the south, so snow days were rare (and really didn’t require snow)… but I remember how much fun it was to be stuck at home with a glorious day away from school. Now that I live in the north where ice and snow is kept at bay with snowplows and salt (yuck), there is no such thing as a snow-day (not that there has been much snow this winter either). Today was the closest thing to a snow day for me in a long time. I have been too busy to look at the calendar, so I didn’t realize until late last week that we had no classes today (of course, I would have seen it on the syllabus eventually). Amazingly I was ahead on grading, and I was actually able to “play” a little today. Just what I needed…a day with no schedules, no grading…
All I need…
A walk with my buddy 
and an evening to hang out with my beau…
Something New
This is new to me, and really out of character…though others (particularly my students) might disagree. I’m not sure what my objective is here, but I hope to learn something in the process of writing and perhaps engaging in conversations with others.
Finally it is winter here…just in time for spring. It has been a warm winter, and not enough snow in my opinion (I haven’t been able to snowshoe at all!) There are many signs…ponds lack ice, active and well-fed wildlife, etc. In fact, last night I saw a HUGE raccoon. It was super fat for this time of year. Of course, it’s probably hitting all of the garbage cans rather than foraging for more “natural” fare. This is all circumstatial, and of course I can say nothing about “climate change” based on my personal, perhaps biased, observation…however…I heard a story today on NPR that was sobering! A professor at the University of Kansas, Pannir Kanagaratnam, reported on his study of ice melt from Greenland’s Glaciers. In 1996 he measured a melt of 22 cubic miles. In 2005, a whopping 54 cubic miles.
This story comes a week after the “Evangelical Call to Action” … a group of prominant evangelical leaders broke free of the “anti-environmentalist” mold to speak out against current attitudes and actions that perpetuate climate change. This story was pretty big…it made the National News because the majority of the public thinks that all evangelicals are anti-environment. NOT TRUE! Many evangelicals are misinformed, but there are many christian leaders in the environmental movement…Check out A Rocha… an International Christian Conservation Organization.
Well, it all comes down to loving our neighbors…how can we care for our suffering neighbors without considering the environment in which they live. As the earth gets warmer, we are creating an environment that will perpetuate disease and suffering…we should respond.