Cabin Fever

As the snow drifts down from different darkened starry skies, a familiar smile crosses my features. Home away from home once more.

There's only one more week before classes begin and as many of us finish up J-term classes or find ourselves with too much time on our hands, we dive into fiction books, catch up with friends and wander aimlessly. In conversation with one of my classmates we both agreed: we are ready for the semester to begin once more. I must admit I miss the daily interaction with my class, the routine of coming in with morning jokes or sharing baked muffins, warm coffee or enlightening tea or afternoons of hanging out at the Shelf, the mailroom or outside enjoying cool refreshing air; the courtyard filled with laughter as well as evenings of propped up on the couches in the library hunched over laptops writing in frustration or that moment of clarity as our own personal theology swirls and forms before us.

The nakedness of the woods greeted us as we pulled onto the pathway; through this darkness that I was so comfortable with and had walked on nights as these surrounded by bats swooping down snatching unsuspecting pesky bugs, was now still and where there were groups of night hikers, their voices echoing happily-now only deer, reclaiming land that for eons belonged to them, munching on sprigs of green that perhaps poked through the newly minted snow.

To have this moment, a break in the mundane was welcomed to my spirit-a wonderful way to end J-term and the promise of a semester ahead.

God's Peace.