November 12, 2007
Dear friends,
It was one of those never-a-dull-moment weekends, that's for sure. On Friday, my laptop died. Didn't need a new battery or another simple fix; it was one of those Random Sudden Death things that occasionally strike laptops. To be fair, the laptop was three years old, which is 87 in laptop years.
Of course, I
was in the middle of writing a term paper when it died.
My husband left the house with it about noon to take it to the computer guys at the local store, and he was gone quite a while. (I didn't mind -- I was immersed in Lutheran intrigue.) He came back at 1:30 --
with a new laptop. The old laptop had been pronounced dead on arrival, and the store was offering financing on this new one. It's amazing how much smaller and lighter laptops have gotten, not to mention actually better as computers. Wow. Extreme gratitude to my husband.
Equally fortunately, I didn't lose anything, because I had everything backed up on my flash drive, a finger-size device that fits into a port on the side of a computer as an external hard drive. Technology is sometimes good. (My parents are planning to buy a new Macintosh in which there is no power "tower," bowl, or other apparent CPU -- the guts of the computer are all contained in the frame of the monitor. Wow, again.)
On Saturday, with our son on a confirmation retreat, I betook myself east to visit my parents; my older sister was there too, and it was a real treat for us to have some visiting time. The real reason for the trip was my father's voice concert. He and a soprano took turns performing solos, then closed with a couple of opera duets. It was simply gorgeous, a real treat, and one of the most enjoyable concerts I've attended in some time. It also raised $1200 for FARA, the Friedreich's Ataxia Research Alliance. FA is a progressive neuromuscular, life-shortening disease that afflicts a young woman in my parents' church and caused the death in June of her older brother at 22. The church has raised staggering amounts of money for FARA with various performances, including this concert.
In terms of schoolwork, I'm plugging away on those term papers, worrying about the clock ticking down too quickly, and waiting to get my Old Testament exam back. I'm also looking forward this weekend to the seminarians' retreat and progress interview with the N.C. Synod. After that, two semesters of postgraduate Lutheran study in Columbia, S.C., a year of full-time paid internship at a church of the N.C. Synod's placing, and then ... turned loose to serve God's people.
I recently reread a wonderful book by Nora Gallagher about discernment. There are several passages too long to quote here, but they reflected perfectly my deepest feelings about a pastor's role, community, and Holy Communion. Once again I am reminded of my gratitude for writers, for those who treasure words and who are intentional about putting them in a certain order, combining them to make something larger, and sharing that with others.
On this Veterans' Day, I am also more reflective than usual, thinking about my cousin who lost his legs to a roadside bomb and is now like so many others a wounded veteran. I loathe war on principle, but it seems impossible not to be conflicted about so complex and deeply rooted an issue.
Enough.
Grace and peace,
Beth
