Updates and Religion

Greetings! I wish I had a really great post full of images and fun experiences to write about, but I don't today. Life has been busy!  It's certainly been busier before, but it's still pretty crazy. I've been waking up ultra-early each morning this week and despite the struggle, it's been an excellent choice! Mornings are inspiring too. I'm happy to share that my thesis will be finished on Sunday! It's just about there now, but could use a few more healthy read-throughs. This week I've begun to wonder about what I'll do with my time once it's turned in. Thankfully, there's still plenty to accomplish!

While at my parent's house last week, I set down the introduction of my thesis that I was editing at one point, and thought the scene might make a nice picture. 

On Tuesday evening, the Saint Michael's College center for peace and justice hosted A. Rashied Omar, a scholar at the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. When not teaching at Notre Dame (June-December), Omar works as an Imam (the Muslim equivalent to a priest or reverend) at a mosque in his native Cape Town, South Africa. I was particularly interested in Omar because of his involvement in South Africa's anti-apartheid movement and relationship with both Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. He spoke about intra-religious dialogue, the practice of Christians speaking with and communicating with Christians who may hold more or less strict religious views and Muslims doing the same with Muslims along with other faiths. The next morning, he spoke to my peace and justice class about the role of religion, emphasizing ten points. He elaborated on every point, citing specific examples and ideas, but just the list itself is eye-opening and informational. It made me think and I hope it does the same for you. 

The Role of Religion (by A. Rashied Omar)

1.) Modernization Thesis

2.) Definition of Religion

3.) Sanctity of Human Life

4.) Human Dignity

5.) Embracing "the other"

6.) Prophetic Theology

7.) Religion -- State Typologies

8.) Civil Society

9.) Social Spirituality

10.) Faith and Hope

Images and Words

Tonight as I filled in upcoming commitments, due dates and appointments in my agenda/calendar book, I reached the no-man's-land of mid-May. Turing the page to the week after graduation was a blank slate. It was frightening. The fright didn't arise because the page was a blank slate -- the empty pages were a nice change for my eyes, actually -- but that so much of my life right now feels defined by the next six (or is it seven?) weeks. The thesis. The final creative writing portfolio. The interviews and phone calls and travel. The plans. The excitement. I want to say I'm looking forward to graduation, but I'm looking forward to today and tomorrow and the moments in between more. The same ideas and emotions and experiences of last spring in Scotland are coming back. It's in realizing that I must leave a moment in time that I love. Yet it's in this process that I know that I must live in the present. "Am I excited to graduate?" has been a frequent question recently. I feel comfortable and confident to enter the world beyond, but in doing so, I've realized that I can never return to today and yesterday and tomorrow. What else defines life though? We can never return to last year or the year before, or five years before that. And I'm not upset about that. I'm pleased with where I am. I hope I always am.

I'm on my spring break this week. It's dominated mostly by working on my thesis (I really like writing it and I'm almost there!) with quite a bit of family time and outdoor adventures in between.  Lately, flowers have also played a recurring theme. 

At the Boston flower show, Saturday, March 15th.

Old Mill, the University of Vermont, March 10th.

I interviewed the Burlington mayor last week (March 10th) for my thesis, I was pretty nervous...

but not as nervous as I was for an interview with WCAX that evening…

I wore these new TJ Maxx shoes for both though, I think everything worked out well.

Blue Skies & Bagels

I wish I had some effective way to describe the past week besides the middle-of-the-night stream of consciousness found below. Put simply, it's been a good week.

I have a large chunk of my senior thesis due tomorrow and it's just about there. I've enjoyed designing the book's cover, choosing fonts and design, even the slight frustration of the learning curve of laying out the book through an adobe program has been enjoyable enough.

In the mornings, I've read plenty of the New York Times, specifically focusing on Ukraine. I resurrected running after a pair of shin splints kept me away for a week, and I continued reading a couple of war novels.

By night, I slept, read over the same chunks of my thesis again and again, shivered in the sub-zero weather, attended a birthday party and made a peanut butter pie for said birthday party.

At unknown times of day, I completed a couple of job interviews (oh man, real world time), listened to piano music played by a friend, coordinated the arrival of a $10,000 award for a local organization, and ate a few too many bagels.

In between such activities, I realized that I must leave Vermont. As soon as possible. Immediately, if it's an option. It's beautiful here, of course. It's just the never-ending-winter. A few friends and I nearly ran (not walked!) to the nearby Burlington airport when a new direct flight from Burlington to Orlando was announced.

Despite the ice, snow and chill, the increasingly frequent blue skies have brought a bright spot. This morning, as I laid on the far end of my bed near the window editing my thesis, a path of sunshine streamed in and I noticed something different about the large oak (actually, it might be pine...) tree outside my window. It was so attractive against the blue sky. Something had changed. Spring buds had arrived. They're small, but they're there.

This morning.

The current (tentative) cover of my thesis! The photograph might be changed later but for now I like it. I took the the photograph in Middlebury in early August 2013. I had just arrived for a dinner with a friend after driving through the Green Mountain national forest mountain range. It was an adventure. :)

Cover and one of the chapters. 

Sarah turns 22!