Resuming my list of thanks...

237) the prospect of making earl grey cookies

238) singing Christmas carols with my mom and a young Amish girl named Rachel with cerebral palsy, who sings with such joy unto the Lord, treasuring the words in her heart

239) re-discovering the pleasures of crocheting and staying up entirely too late to finish a scarf

240) being knocked off my feet by our enormous Anatolian shepherd while taking her out for a simple walk

241) playing hide and seek with the above-mentioned dog

242) the landscape cloaked in a yellow-orange greyness, the colors themselves heavy and pervading

243) making sugar cookies with my mom, and never quite getting enough flour on the rolling pin/dough

244) replenishing the woodstove, logs ablaze

245) being done with this semester (fall 2009) as of fifteen minutes ago

246) humming hymns; wishing i had an instrument to play the melodies

247) beginning to do the daily office, and reveling in rich liturgy (constant reminders of what God has done and what I am capable of being)

248) the desolateness, bleakness, dryness of the valley (the agony bleaching them to beauty)

249) midnights clear

250) reading my mom a winnie-the-pooh christmas story last night

251) advent services put together by a friend at houghton; visits to orthodox, catholic, and episcopalian services

252) beautiful acapella hymn singing

253) new babies being born; lives preparing to be tied together (hopefully not in that order)

254) fairy tales (George MacDonald)

255) missing london (perhaps almost sehnsucht--profound homesickness/longing, with transcendent)

256) thomas merton and his take on the desert fathers

257) ecclesiology, mariology, etc.

258) anything by gerard manley hopkins

259) learning how to die (to self)

260) hoping, daring, praying, having faith enough to taste God's goodness

261) snatches of joy

262) the rhythms and themes of austen's canon coursing through my brain

263) josh groban, an affair to remember, somewhere, so she dances, ave maria, etc.

264) the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully Kind

265) the lifelines that are the psalms

266) the Welsh language!

267) playful banter

268) the lodge at Mt. Irenaeus

269) beautiful music, of all kinds: classical, celtic, bluegrass, opera, jazz. etc.

270) an indian buffet lunch with a professor, his family, and classmate

271) visiting a halloween-specific costume store; and laughing hysterically at the tackiness of it all

272) reading out loud: poetry, children's stories, anything!

273) playing chess with my mother

274) butterscotch-tinged fudge

275) my mom's home-made breakfast sandwiches

276) tchaikovsky's nutcracker (the music, and the ballet itself)

277) gorecki's third symphony

278) the paintings of Rembrandt and Vermeer (the Dutch realists)

279) becoming acquainted with it's a wonderful life

280) excitement for praxis week following my return to campus

This semester, could, I think, be characterized by the single word of distance. In trying to distance myself from a particular relationship, rather abruptly broken, I distanced myself from myself. I became increasingly less self-aware; increasingly disconnected from the reality of my feelings, often under the cover of mounds and mounds of work to be done. In the process, I've become resentful. My heart has become hard. And I find my patterns of thinking so divorced from the reality I know to be true, in Scripture, and in experience. I find myself as a person I do not like. And by this, I mean, I'm a person whose character, whose soul, is in definite need of correction. But not that correction I so harshly bestow upon myself...but, the correction of the Holy Spirit Not only have I found myself distant from God, but also from relationships I treasure and never stop thanking God for. I construct walls; I make excuses; I isolate myself. And while time for solitary reflection is a very real need of mine, I've not allowed myself to really get the past the threshold of vulnerability. And mostly, because of this distance, I've been lonely. So lonely, sometimes, even, hopeless. Feeling the burden and strain of this particular estranged relationship, my estrangement with my father, 'figuring out what to do next'/teetering on the brink of adulthood, ever bombarded with stretching questions, and arguments, when my soul is starving for the Bread of Life, and thirsting so ardently after the Living Water!
I pray healing is taking place, or will take place, or has taken place, that my hope will not be disappointed.

I picked up a rather large, clumsy-looking leaf on the way back from dinner tonight. It, for some odd reason, appealed to me. It's neither green, nor red, nor yellow, but a brownish-greenish hodgepodge with holes and rips on either side, and tips curled up and down. It's not a terribly pretty leaf. It twirled, the wind rushing through its holes, snaking its way from top to underneath. The leaf was transfigured, the light joining in with the wind.

cure for the pain?

226) ice cream in cold weather

227)the satisfaction and cleanliness of having straightened up one's desk

228) dona nobis pacem, doxology, guide our feet, etc. at Menno

229) enjoying leftover chicken noodle alfredo instead of a chicken patty, on Sunday

230) reading Jane Kenyon and Ted Kooser in the wee small hours of the morning

231) flipping through yearbooks of past years; comparing the appearance of the aging/ growing young professors

232) SJMF covenanting words: "have patience with us as we cling to your garment in faith and in confusion"

233) Help us to to hear your call to communion, but give us the gift of deafness, so by your light we can come home.

234) Calm our trembling as we learn to embrace your children. Gift us the courage to touch one another even as our wounds still flow red.

235) To gather us, to call us back, this God became meat and bone and weakness. And came to walk beside us, to talk together over supper, to heal our wounds.

236) Until then, we walk in the land of the not quite. We wait in hope, mourn and are comforted, fear...

237) but discover that God remains among us, within us, close as breath and blood

238) College Choir's 8 Chestnut Horses, This is My Father's World, Give Me Jesus, etc.

239) the gravel roads and cows and skylines and hung Amish laundry of Pennsylvania

240) the combination of tea (apple cinnamon, or mint) and oatmeal

241) gregory peck and jimmy stewart in wait (a philadelphia story)

242) the cliffs, ravines, sand, cold salty water and ever-present fog; eucalyptus trees of Cali.

God must be mercy

201) the reading of psalms from the book of common prayer and the reading of prayers in the Orthodox tradition, based on the liturgy of the hours

202) Gymnopedie #1 by Satie

203) The Swan by Saint-Saens

204) Jane Austen's canon resting right in front of my eyes on the bookshelf, visually (and audibly!) calling my name!

205) singing a hymn with the words by George Herbert and the melody by Ralph Vaughan Williams

206) a friend studying theatre in London for the semester, and for a friend who flew to Kiev via London being thus reminded of me

207) leaves buried in puddles of water, in parking lots, and on the way to library

208) tango melodies and rhythms

209) tea and prayer on Java's couch

210) the poetry of George Cowper

211) thoughtful, rich discussion on religious language and devotional reading

212) the progressive learning of multiple wonderful, yet often times very silly sounding indeed, sounds in phonetics

213) 'love and freindship'

214) my sizable collection of Brennan Manning books

215) leaves wet and afire

216) shared bags of popcorn over grey's anatomy

217) a particular painting of a table set for tea in an apartment building overlooking Manhattan in the library

218) 'love's purest joys restored'

219) walking alone through a gallery full of abstract prints

220) a student-composed organ piece played at the end of chapel today

221) Dean Brittain's self-effacing, matter of fact humor

222) compositions with marked dissonances

223) 'We are marching in the light of God'

224) three crinkling and crumpling orchid flowers in my dorm window

225) the rushing dance of the wind with the trees, flowers, and scattered leaves

a continual reminder

Right now someone exists who has disappointed and offended us, someone with whom we are continually displeased and with whom we are more impatient, irritated, unforgiving, and spiteful then we would dare be with anyone else. That person is ourselves. We are so often fed up with ourselves. We're sick of our own mediocrity, revolted by our own inconsistency, bored by our own monotony. We would never judge any other of God's children with the savage self-condemnation with which we crush ourselves. Jesus said we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. We must be patient, gentle, and compassionate with ourselves in the same way we try to love our neighbor.
--Brennan Manning

fixing my heart on the good

176) a card with my two very favorite flavors of tea shoved into my oft-empty college mailbox

177) affectionate hugs, inbetween classes, at meals, in the sheer joy of seeing the other..."Such was our love to each other that even the sight of each other filled our hearts with divine consolation"

178) Wilberforce's joy in God, far from erecting a granite wall to prevent incursions by the sea, appointed its bounds by mere grains of sand!

179) resonating oil-well deep with Orthodox ways of 'being'

180) appreciating ever-more Jane Austen's insights into propriety in relationships

181) the burning red-yellow leaves

182) casual chats involving literature and broad philosophical concepts (and possibly many blanket statements--not so good, i think)

183) feeling ever more comfortable in conversing with professors

184) desperately attempting to retrain my mouth muscles to form vowels unused in American English; this typically involves holding my lips down/apart so as not to round the sound

185) the temperature controlled room on the second floor of the library, with its myriad paintings by the Ortlip family

186) learning of the richness of Trinitarian language and prayer

187) being stretched, once again, to the limits of my understanding (both in the mind and the heart), and knowing, somehow, that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, will prove Himself as Truth

188) being taught some basic Welsh word fragments by Dr. Pearse

189) the incredible capacities and potential we possess for communication!

190) my London group, and connections with years past and years present and years future

191) the juxtaposed 'sense' of Elinor and 'sensibility' of Marianne; and the hilarity of the extremes of both

192) the rhythms of life, including breath, stillness, words up, down, scrambled, flat, then gratitude, then doubt, and so on

193) the mystics of the Church through the ages, including today

194) the joys of the body; the senses

195) God is closer and at the same time further away than we can imagine

196) the engagement of the body (and reason, and imagination) in worship. not merely our emotional faculties

197) curmudgeonly old men

198) light satire, its object being Scripture

199) the imagery of humanity, or rather, individual human beings being restored to the image, to the Icon of God, to the colors, and form

200) desire for a heart grown calm in the peace of God