Wednesday, February 13, 2008

SNOW!

Yup, in North Carolina. Used to happen once or twice a year, but none of it the last couple. This here snowstorm is the real thing, coming down thick and white and good for packing into snowballs. We let our evening classes out early. (Most of the students in evening classes are our adult commuter students.) I still didn't get out of the building till nearly 10 p.m., but usually when I teach in the evening I don't get home till 11. So I got an extra hour and we didn't get to talk about early African American Methodists and Baptists.

Pasta with gorgonzola and toasted hazelnuts, I think. To blazes with diets, it's snowing. Padre Pablito will absolve me, I am certain of that. The pasta is whole wheat, anyway.

We watched the rest of the Romero movie in seminar today. Stunning. Literally: the students couldn't (and didn't want to) speak for five minutes afterward. We just sat in silence for a while.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was about to post that we're just getting rain out here, but first I went to get the mail, and I caught a little snow on my sleeve. It's definitely not sticking though.

I've found the Romero quotes you've been posting really enriching. I'll have to take a look at the movie.

Paul said...

It is a powerful movie. I remember seeing it at the Albany Theatre (the one at the foot of Solano Avenue, Jane) years ago with Anne Lammers, the prof from whom I had just taken Anglican social ethics.

It was difficult to speak afterward. Very moving; not easy to watch, beautifully done.

It was also colored by memories of the poor and neglected people I had met and seen in Mexico and the stories I had heard from the sister relationship St Mark's, Berkeley, had with San Juan Evangelista in San Salvador. During the pre-ordination retreat before the transitional diaconate, Bishop Swing told us all he might have to go quite suddenly down to El Salvador but another bishop would make sure we were ordained.

The whole week before the ordination service I was visually sensitized to the color red. My eyes were drawn to everything in sight that was red, reminding me of the blood of martyrs and the vast host that I was going to be bound to in a new way. I was somewhat terrified of the piece of red cloth that would go over my left shoulder on the coming Saturday.

Oscar Romero. ¡Presente!

Paul said...

PS: I suppose asking to have some of that delicious pasta prior to absolution might constitute something like simony, thereby endangering my soul.

Ioanna, ego te absolvo in Nomine Partis + et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.