Sharp Relief

(Written Friday afternoon.)

The 8th graders are taking their finals in my classroom in the mornings, so I've been teaching in a different room most of the time this week.  Yesterday was my last time teaching in the classroom I've inhabited for the last two years, and at the beginning of class I mentioned this to the 7th graders.

Mistake.   I thought I was sentimental.  Apparently I've got nothing on these kids, especially the girls.

First, during prayer, they produced a lengthy and moving string of prayers in thanks for me and my fellow ACEr at my school, and for our well-being as we move on.

Then they started sneaking up to the board while my back was turned working with other students and writing all kinds of sweetness.  All the while they were telling me how much they're going to miss me and asking if I might come back for their graduation next year.

Then Daniela walks up to me and very frankly, sweetly, sincerely, says, "Ma'am, thank you."

I kept it together just long enough to say, "You're welcome, Daniela," and send her back to work.  Then I went and sat behind my desk and put on my best poker face.

Then Judith looks up and catches the suddenly watery nature of my eyes and says, in Spanish, "Look, she's about to cry!"

They all went, "Awwww!" and got up and surrounded me and hugged me.  And then I lost it.

Then I told them they were jerks, and one of them goes, "But we're your jerks!"

They've been teasing me about it since.  When I got  out of my car with my sunglasses on this morning, Ivette smirked and said, "You know why she's wearing those glasses..."

Today, I taught my last class for the foreseeable future.  I'm sitting in an empty classroom, for once not relishing the peace but wishing for a few more minutes of pandemonium.  I'm pretty positive I'll find my way back to a classroom sometime, but I have no idea how long from now that will be.  This is strange, because if you had asked me even ten months ago if I thought I might not be in a classroom next year, I would have said no way.  And yet, here I go, off to sit at a desk, not working with kids.  It's putting me in a weird state of mind -- I'm not having second thoughts, and yet I am wondering what the hell I'm thinking leaving the classroom.  My heart aches a little.

Teaching is such a weird occupation, at least for me.  It takes everything I've got, provides minimal or invisible returns, and I love it.  Love it.  It consumes most of my energy, time, and thought, and well beyond my oft-stated belief that education is a human right.  It's the act of teaching, the process of writing plans, being in the classroom, dealing with kids, nudging, prodding, pushing, questioning, challenging them, getting to know them, laughing with them, reigning in my impulsive reactions ("What in the hell are you thinking?!"), pulling my hair out, wondering what I'm doing wrong, trying to do it better, catching glimmers of sanity, the mild shock when a kid suddenly looks and acts a little bit older, a little more mature, and the very normal, unassuming, undramatic* little blip of satisfaction, encouragement, and hope when a kid does well.  Every shade on the human spectrum of emotion, every week.

I'm not having second thoughts about the new job, and I am still just as excited about it as I was in March when I got the offer.  I've no doubt it's where I'm supposed to go.  There are (at least) two sides to everything, though, and the flip side of this coin is very much in focus right now.  This blog is named Theophany because of my constant wonder at the ways God reveals himself in the world, and I have encountered him in the most mundane and profound ways in this profession.  For the last three and a half years, even as I've fought the impulse to beat my head on a desk, I've loved it and felt right doing it.

I have one more final to give and some miscellaneous old work to grade.  I need to tear down and pack up my classroom.  And that's it.  Two weeks from now, I'll be taking up permanent residence in an office at Notre Dame, not a classroom anywhere.  It is the definition of bittersweet.

*This, incidentally, is why I sort of hate most Inspiring Teacher Movies

The Miss List - Edited

(Originally posted May 12.  Updated now and again until the end of the school year. New items in bold.)

In the weeks since I officially decided to take this job at Notre Dame and knew, therefor, that I would not be teaching next year, there has naturally been at least one incident everyday that makes me wonder why in the world I am leaving the classroom.

There has also been at least one moment everyday when I think, "I will not miss that at all."

I think I am actually rather grateful for this, because without the occasional thought to the elements of my profession with which I am not, shall we say, enamored, I would be a blubbering mass of tears and snot at the thought of leaving.  At the same time, if I were to leave teaching and be really gleeful about it, it would cast a depressing light on these last three years (or more, depending how you count), and I don't think they'd want me where I'm going, either.

So it's all about balance here.  As always.  I am the queen of balance.

Thus, below is a list of both "Things I Will NOT Miss" and "Things I Will Miss".  I intend to update this post whenever these things occur to me.  Of course, we all know my posting track record.  My intentions and actions almost never match up.

Things I Will NOT Miss

1. Eye rolling
2. 500 reasons a day to give them The Look.
3. Eau de After PE Class
4. Finding the work I just assigned.  On the floor. Without a name.
5. Being asked, "Ma'am, do you believe in aliens?  It's in the Bible," in the middle of a vocab quiz
6. Having eight kids all yelling my name at the same time and all expecting my full attention right that moment.
7. Having seven kids simultaneously become unbearably indignant because I paid attention to someone else.
8. Writing finals
9. Grading anything.  Especially finals.  Ugh.
10. And grading late work.
11. And grading.
12. Did I mention grading?

Things I WILL Miss

1. The "I Get It!" look!
2. Giving them The Look.
3. The look on their faces when I give them The Look
4. Being asked, "Ma'am, do you believe in aliens?  It's in the Bible," in the middle of a vocab quiz
5. The chorus of voices that responds in perfectly trained harmony of cadence when I say, "Good morning, 7th grade!" ("Gooood mOOOOOrning Miiiiss-Ciiiiis-neee-roooooos!")
6. The (rare) moment when pandemonium breaks out in class because they're excited about something.
7. Telling a senior who went to my school years ago and who I did a mission trip with that he should turn down MIT for ND, and Penn is a good third choice.
8. Pretending I knew the Yankees had won before Jose walks in the door high-fiving me.
9. Having an excuse to get nerdily excited about a poem (I'm trying to get them excited... really...). 
10. Looking at a kid in May, remembering how the same kid was in August, and being struck speechless by how proud I am of said kid for coming so far.
11. Guillermo yelling, "Ma'am, I love you!" every time he leaves my class or sees me in the hall.
12. Kids coming up to me after they finish a book I recommended and saying, "Ma'am, you were right, that book was so great!"
13. Realizing after the fact they enjoyed and connected with an activity I thought at the time was a disaster.
14. Field trips and seeing the kids in a different context.
15. Messing with their heads (Example: "You'll be fine.  Unless of course you fail."  "Yh-- Wait, what?"  "What?"  "Ma'am, what did you say?!"  "George Washington.")

My School!!

I'm little-kid-with-a-drawing-look-mom-look-mom proud of the school I work at.  Our development office put this together.  It's a fair snapshot of the remarkable place we have, though I don't think anything short of a documentary would really capture the wonder of it.




(For my fam: yeah, there's one shot of me in there, and I'd guess about a fourth of those photos are mine.)

The Gym Floor Moment

[I wrote this a couple of weeks ago in my private journal (Yes, I type my journal.  I often misspeak at first, and I like being able to revise until I'm actually saying what I mean.  In fact, I often discover what I mean in that process.), and decided it was the sort of thing I could post here -- heck, maybe even should.]


Today's nugget from my "St. Teresa of Avila for Every Day" book:

"God so places himself in the interior of that soul that when it returns to itself, it can in no way doubt that it was in God and God was in it."

I don't think I've ever talked about the moment I met God, to anyone, ever, and I'm not really going to here, either.  When the subject comes up, I tend to say things like:

• "I had one of those 'conversion experiences' people talk about."
• "God just shook me and made me listen."
• "Well, it involved adoration and lying face-down on a gym floor in Ohio."
  
• "Something happened."

I leave it at that.  If people try to get more from me, I shrug and say I can't really explain it.  This is true, in two senses.  One, I'm not sure I'm ready, even over six years later, to talk about it.  It's far too intimate a thing to chat about over coffee.

Two, I've never found the words to describe what happened that night.  It was utterly out of the realm of all my experiences up to that point, as unprecedented to me as a daisy in the arctic -- imagine suddenly seeing the brilliance of the noon sun when before that you've only ever seen fireflies. 

But I can say this, simply and to the point: in the very early morning hours of June 22nd, 2003, I knew God in a way I had not on the afternoon of the 21st.  In fact, I had not really known Him at all before that.

Imagine breathing for the first time and only then discovering there was something other than the feeling of drowning.

Even now, more than six years and a lot of valleys later, I have not forgotten one particle of the experience, a moment so powerful it wiped out all my life before that; before I knew Him, before Love overcame me and I found myself with no alternative but to bumble my way desperately forward.  It was my defining moment.

I am agonizingly aware of how far I have to go.  Certainly I am no saint and my experience pales compared to Teresa's.  The Gym Floor Moment, though, has framed all the rest of my life, the meaning of my existence, my purpose for being.  And I -- a girl with no certainty about anyone or anything on this earth at all -- have never, not once, ever, doubted it at all.

I cannot deny the sun's existence even as I feel it pouring life into me.

Hubble Gets a Tune Up, We Get Glimpses of Infinity.

Pretty amazing, not only that these sorts of things exist -- which deserves a prolonged standing ovation by itself -- but that we teeny little things have figured out how to look at it.

The same God who made this:

...also made this:

...and, while we're at it, this:

While I don't think I could phrase it rationally if my life depended on it, I look at these things and can't help but think, how could you not believe?

"The only thing Thomas will ever know of this world is love."

This is both truly gut-wrenching and breathtakingly beautiful.  How much good did this little boy bring into the world in his brief time?  What would have been missed if his parents had taken the easy way out instead of standing firm on a Truth so often ignored?

"We didn't choose not to terminate based on some hope of a medical mistake or a medical miracle.  We did it because he's our son."


(H/T to CAEI)

Lions in the Meadows*

Every summer of my life (25 summers now), I've visited my family in California, and my siblings have joined in the pilgrimage as they have gotten old enough to do so.

The journey is always dictated by habit. We do something once, we do it every summer there after; we go to the same places following the same itinerary, eat at the same places, watch the same movies. Summer vacation in California is kind of like watching the same movie over and over, and that actually is what makes it so glorious.

Each summer of the last ten or so, a side trip to Las Vegas is included, much to the glee of my littlest siblings (alright, and me -- I'm a sucker for tacky gift shops, giant Coca Cola bottles, and glittering lights).

This year, though, we inadvertently added a stop to the cycle. This happens; the movie evolves now and again. We parked on the wrong side of the MGM Grand, and so had to walk through it to get to the giant Coke bottle. Along our bee-line to green-bottle bliss, we passed MGM Grand's lion habitat, a spot I hadn't known existed. It was open, bright, and lush; lots of things for the lions to climb, waterfalls crashing dramatically-yet-gently into a little pool, quite idyllic. Two lions, a male and a female, lounged just on the other side of the inch-thick, slightly green glass, drowsy and showered in sun from the massive skylight.

All around them, pressed to every inch of the perimeter, were tourists from God knows where -- everywhere, probably -- thee people deep holding up children and cameras, standing on tip toe to get a view of the lions. The sleepy felines, meanwhile, remained totally aloof.

The female lion perched at the top of one of the water falls, gazing about occasionally but mostly vegetating with her eyes closed; beautiful. The male lion was sprawled out on top of the frosted glass that covered a walkway through the middle of the habitat, presumably to another section. Dozens of people had crammed themselves into this space, a space meant for people to pass through not linger in, to see him and take vague silhouetted pictures.

I count myself in this number, of course.


And I was fascinated. Not so much by the lion, actually, though being a mere two inches and a flaw in glass-making craftsmanship away from those paws and jaws was pretty awe-inspiring. No, I was really interested in the people who came to Las Vegas, the middle of the dessert, presumably for some gaming, some food, some shows, and perhaps some less family friendly activity, and were now captured, in rapt attention, by this massive, powerful creature (who had absolutely no use for them, by the way).

I often lament how disconnected we've become from good ol' Mother Earth. Greening industry and saving the planet are all the rage, but I don't know how many of us spend much time actually appreciating the planet we live on (sorry, Planet Earth doesn't count) or the other creatures who inhabit it. We -- humans, that is -- are God's crowning jewel, but can you imagine Adam's reaction when God showed him the first lion?

God: Here, check this guy out! You might want to give him an especially good name, I don't think he'll be too happy with you otherwise.
Adam: (squeak)

It was both amusing and heartening to see all those people so enthralled by a pair of lions. I've started to think (realize might be the better word) that God meant for us to feel connected to every other living thing on the planet, not in an Earth mother crazy kind of way, but in an awareness that we come from the same place and those other things were made for our good. It's evident, especially when we meet those creations in such unexpected places -- like lions in a meadow.


*"Las Vegas" is Spanish for "the meadows".

Thank God for August 23rd!

This is Becca. She is my best friend, and today (well, yesterday now, I suppose) was her birthday.


Sometimes God puts people in your life and means them to stay there forever and ever no matter what either of you do. Becca is like that. You want to talk about the Almighty making Himself known in my life? This girl. All. The stinkin'. Time. Although "mighty" isn't the first word I'd use to describe her, unless it was "mighty darlin'". I love her very much.


Even though she's weird.

Okay, maybe because she's weird.

Happy Birthday, Donut!

I Am My Father's Daughter

And I could not be prouder to be so.

"Here Comes Everybody"

Blessed Easter, everyone.

One of my favorite things about Easter is the Vigil Mass, at which newcomers to the faith are baptized and confirmed. I've heard in several places that this year, that's about 150,000 people, among them my Uncle Richard. Pray for him and all our new Catholics.

Read Deacon Greg's homily. It moved me to tears -- not just welling up, which diaper comercials do, but actual rolling tears, which is not at all a common occurrence.

I hope to write more about Missions at some point, but you all know how I am.

And God bless you all.

12

Following their "church wedding", November 2006

Today is my parents' 12th anniversary. It's pretty dizzying to think of everything that's happened to our family in that time: two more babies, eight houses and five or six states, depending on how you count, four graduations -- two high school, one college, one basic training -- and the innumerable trials and triumphs of everyday life.

Here's to the last 12, and to many more.

11 Years Old Today

Love you, Noona Fish.

Love

Salesian Sisters' Provincial House
San Antonio
May 2008

Neil Diamond and My Favorite Church Song

My dad is a huge dork. Always has been. He paid over $700 for a VCR when they first came out, and spent a good chunk of his life recording everything of even mild interest he saw on television. I think he once figured out he could watch his recorded VHSs 24 hours a day for more than a month before rewatching anything.

One of these low-fi gems is a Neil Diamond Christmas special (we also own the accompanying CD). That special, watched year after year... until he met and married my step mom, come to think of it... anyway, it included Mr. Diamond singing Morning Has Broken. Before I was quite old enough to listen to and "get" the words, I loved that song. It's melody struck me and stuck with me.

Incidently, I don't care at all for Cat Stevens's version of the song. I'm just not a folky girl.

Then, I got to Notre Dame this past summer, and one day in mass, what to my wondering ears should come wafting through the air but another song with that same tune.

Christ be beside me, Christ be before me
Christ be behind me, King of my heart
Christ be within me, Christ be below me
Christ be above me, never to part.

Christ on my right hand, Christ on my left hand
Christ all around me, shield in strife
Christ in my sleeping, Christ in my sitting
Christ in my rising, light of my life.

I now find myself humming it constantly, thinking half the time of Morning Has Broken and the other half of Christ Beside Me.

If you're thinking, "Hey, didn't you blog about another Notre Dame song you're now, like, totally in love with?" You are correct, sir. There's just a lot of reasons I love Notre Dame.

Brilliance (Mine) and Guardian Angels (God's)

I know I posted some of these pictures of my black eye before, and I know y'all probably don't want to see more. But, I can't stop thinking about how it happened.

It's not a big deal at all. I'm 100% fine and so is my eye, even if my pride still stings a little. That's exactly the thing, though: it's not a big deal, though it very easily could have been a huge deal.

(Morning after, quite swollen)

What happened was this: We have a weight lifting thingy in our house. I was taking the weights off the bench press bar, thinking that the bar itself was heavy enough to stay down when the disc weights were off one end. All three of my male housemates, who have weight lifted for real for years, say they've done exactly the same thing (which makes me feel better). They also said that works most of the time, "unless you're dealing with a cheap home set".

Which, evidently, is what we have.

The instant I slid the last weight off the right end of bar, the weighted left end plummeted to the floor, swinging the right end of this 50 pound solid steel bar up through the air. The left end slammed into the floor and the right side swung around and fell into the window. I stood stunned, thinking, "Wow, that could have really hurt me."

Two of my girl roommates were standing behind me. "Oh my God! Andie, did it hit you?"

"No." ...I don't think so, anyway.

"Did it break the window?"

I checked, then turned to them, laughing. "Nope! What a close--"

"You're bleeding!"

"What? No I--" I touched my forehead. Sure enough, they were right. They whisked me off to the kitchen, cleaned me up, and helped me find preemptive pain killers and an ice pack. We marveled that it didn't hurt at all -- I still barely felt it -- and how much worse the whole situation could have been. It was starting to sting, but I felt totally lucid and my eyeball istelf was (and remains) fine. I went to bed.

All the next day, as I deflected my students' questions about my shiner, my mind kept wandering back to what a nearly miraculous thing had happened, or perhaps not happened. I truly don't mean to make a big deal out of the whole thing or read too much into it, but had I been leaning even half an inch further forward -- which I had been a second earlier -- well, suffice it to say I don't think I would have gotten off with just a sweet shiner.

(Swelling down, colors becoming flashier.)

As I mulled all this over, I remembered the time my baby sister, at about two years old, escaped out the sliding door and was missing for about five minutes, until our mom found her in the middle of an intersection with cars coming at her from three or four sides.

(Tiny Baby Melissa, wearing everything in her dresser.)

And I remembered the time my best friend and I in my Grand Am were almost rammed by an SUV. And all the other times, as a kid, when I should have been seriously injured. And all the close-call stories my dad told me. And plenty of other stories in which, had one thing been a millimeter or a half second off, the ending would have been decidedly less happy.

I'm an odd sort of Catholic, probably because I wasn't really raised Catholic per say, and where some people have devotions rooted in childhood, I barely have an awareness. It's taken me years and conscious effort to get to know the Blessed Mother and make her a part of my life. Guardian angels, frankly, sat for a long time in the same place in my brain as fairies.

Like my faith in God itself, though, I am beginning to find the existence and presence of angels an undeniable reality.

See, I don't believe in luck or coincidences. That I and so many I know have skirted disaster so many times does not mesh with pure chance. Like so many other things, my rational brain forces me to look elsewhere for an explanation. It makes perfect sense that the same loving God who made us and redeemed us would keep us safe from our own brilliance, and would do so through whatever means He knows will serve us best.

I could easily have broken something not easily fixed, either on me or the window, or gashed myself wide open. I should have, in fact. If you look closely at those pictures, you can see several neat and parallel scrapes along my eyebrow from the threads of the bar brushing right by my eye. Could we explain this away with simple chance? Sure, this one event, but that leaves... well, pretty much the rest of my life to account for.

My nuns in the convent last year often prayed to their guardian angels, and often had the kids do so as well. A few weeks ago, in a situation where I was concerned about my safety, without thinking I called on my guardian angel and instantly felt assured and secure. My point (finally) is that I'm finally paying some attention to my angel and hoping to get better acquainted.

That, and giving him some public recognition for keeping my graceful tail out of trouble and my eyeballs intact for almost twenty-four years.

Building Blocks

Camps Hope
St Bernard Parish, LA
January 2007

(In Louisiana, counties are called parishes)

The month I spent in New Orleans during my senior year of college, I realized one thing: every teeny bit counts, both in making improvements and in understanding a thing, a place, or a person.

My Best Friend is Amazing

I need to brag a little bit.



My best friend, Becca, is in L.A. this year working at a Christo Rey school with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. She's far and away the most genuine, sincere, loving person I've ever met who wasn't already a nun or still a small child. I often wish I could be a tenth as earnest as she is.

She's got a bunch of her kids runing the L.A. marathon (yes, she's also insane). The local NBC affiliate did a story on her and her runners. Not gonna lie, I cried a little.

Everyone should comment on how awesome Becca is. Aaand, GO!

The 500th Post, or "On the Gifts of (the) Spirit"

(I wrote this Thursday, January 15th, but am only just posting it now.)

It's 7:30 a.m. I just got to school, and I have already been to Mexico (yes, the country) and Wal-Mart today.

When I got to school, I took a moment and glanced at my blog feeds, discovering this really wonderful video Paul posted.

And, because I am not quite mentally... normal, to me these things fit together.

Fret not, I'm going to attempt to explain. First, I need to back up.

I finally ordered a digital SLR last week. The days following saw me obsessively watching UPS's tracking site. The UPS man didn't show until Wednesday night about 6:30, when we were at dinner. When the doorbell rang, I quite literally leapt up, threw my chair back and ran to the door faster than I've run in at least six months. I came back with my package and the jitters, and one of my housemates said, "I would never have expected that from you."

"Well," I said, "I've wanted this for years." I looked down at the beautiful brown box and shrugged. "I love taking pictures."

Despite my overwhelming glee, I went to bed early. Two of my housemates are going on a ten-day mission to Mexico in April as chaperons for their students. This weekend was a pre-mission retreat, and they loaded the buses in Mexico at 6 a.m., so I volunteered to take them over the border. In the midst of my anxiety over getting my Volvo back into the United States, I could not help but smile and be stirred: it was an hours before daylight, but there was so much life, energy, and enthusiasm on and around those buses.

This brings us to the part where I’m thinking about Beethoven (watch the video) and sitting back in my teacher chair, suddenly struck by the power of passion.

I strung these events together in my head, and 1 Corinthians 12 leapt to mind: “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit”. Generally, that’s applied to purely spiritual gifts. In that moment, though, I pondered that those gifts extend far beyond the invisible, mystical spirit. No, perhaps I should rephrase that -- the invisible, mystical spirit extends way beyond what we think it does.

You look at Beethoven and what he did, and you see extraordinary brilliance driven by other-worldly passion. You look at my housemates the other adults on that trip, and my coworkers, and you see depths of dedication fed by unearthly patience. You look at a dork like me and you see school-girl giddiness inspired by an unending wonder of everything around her.

We’re not a body with a spirit, or a spirit with a body; we’re both at the same time. That’s why we take certain physical postures to pray, and why a song that stirs your soul gives you goose bumps. It seems to me that saying “the physical world” and “the spiritual world” isn’t really accurate. They’re aspects of the same world, like the up-and-down and side-to-side threads of a loom. You’re not living a full life without something that drives you. I know it’s a cliché, but clichés exist because they are often true.

God gives us gifts in the form of abilities and talents, of course. What good would those gifts be, though, without one other: simply giving a damn about something. Anything. Maybe it’s a Mother Theresa like drive to serve, or maybe it’s a love of marine life. Maybe it’s your friends or your children. Hopefully, it’s a couple things. Isn’t having the drive more important than having the talent? What has ever been accomplished without passion?

Beethoven had passion. Anyone who teaches, or works with kids at all, better have passion for it, even if it’s often shrouded under exhaustion and frustration, or get out of it. Parents are passionate about their children. Heck, even the relatively meaningless hobbies we have – taking pictures, knitting, doodling on napkins -- serve the purpose of giving us meaning. All of it puts a ribbon of significance into everything we do.

Which is kind of the point of this little nook of cyberspace. There’s a lot of theophany going on, both as vast, encompassing, and stunning, and as frequently unnoticed as the sky. I suppose I’m a cloud watcher. Sometimes things take forms and shapes that force me to take a moment and sit back in my chair, and just take it in.

Oddly enough, this time coincided with my 500^th post here. Funny, eh?

A Look Back, a Little Early

Just like last year, here's a photographic, slightly epileptic, look back at this year for me. Highlights:

• My 2nd VIDES formation camp, this time having a clue
• My 2nd semester teaching, still without a clue
• The St. Vitus Fools, our drama club, and our production of "Looking Glass Land, which was a sucess largely because no one could tell none of us had a clue.
• More nuns, all indescribably wonderful.
• Leaving the nuns, with a full heart and some tears...
• ...and arriving at Notre Dame to start ACE...
• ...where I met some of the most incredible people ever, and certainly the heaviest concentration of awesome I've encountered yet
• My second convent full of community mates, this time unconsecrated my own age
• My second year of teaching, with a little bit of a clue
• And meanwhile, my family continued to be awesome and weird

Please note: There are two people who were as important in my life this year as anyone else, and more important than most, even though I only saw them once in April for a few hours each (hence the painful dearth of pictures and sinful under representation). You know who you are. This year would not have been nearly as wonderful without your constant long-distance support, laughter, and presence. Thank you. I love you more than I know how to say.



All the pictures in the movie are available here, should you be inclined to take a more leisurely look.

I Hear the Truth; It Liveth!

This song has been in my head all week. They sing it pretty often at the basilica at Notre Dame, which is where I first heard it. There's one line where the choir director always stomps his foot so loud it sounds through the whole church. That's my favorite part, and I confess I miss it sometimes.

Merry Christmas, Dear Readers!


My life flows on in endless song
above earth's lamentation.
I hear the real, though far-off hymn
that hails a new creation.

(chorus)
No storm can shake my inmost calm
while to that rock I'm clinging.
Since Love is Lord of heaven and earth,
how can I keep from singing?

Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear that music ringing.
It sounds an echo in my soul!
How can I keep from singing?

What though the tempest loudly roars,
I hear the truth; it liveth.
What though the darkness round me close,
songs in the night it giveth

While tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
and hear their death knells ringing;
When friends rejoice both far and near,
how can I keep from singing?