Christmas in October!

So get this...

Yesterday the Hebrew professor never showed up for class because her alarm didn't go off. And now we've received word that tomorrow's Hebrew class has been cancelled. Why? Don't know, don't care. All I know is that I get an entire week of reprieve from Hebrew class!! God loves me! He really, REALLY loves me!!

So tomorrow morning, instead of considering the subtle art of Hebrew vowel pointing, I'll be wallowing about in the pages of the dust book. And the next chapter starts with a discussion of dust in the preindustrial world followed by its relationship to the dust of the European peasants in the Middle Ages. I'm all a-quiver with anticipation!!

Shalom! (That's my tip-of-the-hat to Hebrew for the week.)

A Fascinating Moment of Self-Discovery

I had a watershed moment of personal revelation last night. I realized that I had reached an entirely new level of uber nerditude when I started reading a book about the history of dust - just for the fun of it! Furthermore, I'm finding it FASCINATING! Now bear with me for a moment, kids...

How can dust not inspire a certain amount of whimsey? After all, common house dust is a mixture of dead insect parts, flakes of human skin, shreds of fabric, pollen, molds, and (my personal favorite) excrement. And I know that at this very moment you're probably thinking, "Dawn, shouldn't you be studying Hebrew instead?" Of course I should. But dust is so much more understandable! Unlike Hebrew, excrement is a concept that I actually GET! And just think of the theological component; every year on Ash Wednesday we usher in Lent by proclaiming, "You are dust, and to dust you shall return." What could squelch your nasty pride more than having your minister tell you that you're just a massive pile of poo and that's all you'll ever be? (And a note to every minister I've ever had: you can wipe that smirk off your face because I've been told by tons people other than you that I'm full of doodie. You are NOT original.)

So be prepared - until I'm finished with this little leisure read, I'm going to be polluting you with endless factoids about dust. If any of them help you win a trivia contest, I expect a Christmas card. And if any of you want to read along/get neridified with me, you can order the book on Amazon (Joseph A. Amato is the author). Come on over to the dark side - it's nice in here.

One final morsel for you smokers in the peanut gallery: a single puff of a cigarette produces 4 billion particles of dust. So just say no, kids.

An Inexcusably Overdue Perusal of the Mailbag

You see, the thing is, I had a big Hebrew test at the end of last week. And since the test was worth 20% of my total grade and the blog is worth (sadly) 0% of my grade, the blog went on temporary hiatus. But that means that I have TONS of mail to answer now, so I hope you have a refreshing beverage in hand 'cause baby got blog! Let's hit it...

Question 1: "So did you end up passing your ordination exams or what?" I dunno. We get our raw results (pass/fail data only) on October 22, then we get our papers with critiques returned about a week or two after that. But don't worry - I'll let you know. Unless, of course, I totally stunk it up, in which case I probably won't tell you that I stunk it up; you'll just have to put two-and-two together when January rolls around and I start posting grumpy messages about having to take ords again.

Question 2: (From countless readers) "When you titled one of your posts 'Engagement Announcement' we thought it was going to say that YOU were getting married again." To everyone who sent me this message...y'all are seriously smoking copious, COPIOUS amounts of crack. I mean really.

Question 3: "Were you really considering putting superglue in your nose to cure your cold?" Ummm...no.

Question 4: "Are you going to continue testing Oprah's suggestions for saving the world?" Sure, but you have to be patient. I've had the new issue of the Oprah magazine for over a week now but haven't had a chance to evaluate this month's suggestions yet (on account of Hebrew, you understand). But it keeps me amused and arms me with interesting blog fodder. Plus, it gives me an excuse to wear my cape.

Question 5: "Why don't you ever post pictures on your blog? It would be fun to see your friends/home/school/fill-in-the-blank." Oh for Pete's sake. I'll see what I can do.

But for now, I'm going to hit the sack. It's good to be back among the cyber-living! Thanks for hanging in there with me.

A funny thing happened on the way to saving the world...

As all of you faithful readers know, I have been embarking on an Oprah-inspired mission to save the world by writing a letter to someone each day for a month. Let me tell you how things were going at the half-way point in the project: stinky. Really stinky. Like, limburger stinky. You see, one of the criteria was that each letter should be sent to someone who wasn't expecting to hear from me, so I wrote letters to missionary friends I haven't spoken to in way too long, friends who (sadly) had to drop out of seminary because of particular hardships in their lives, people I used to work with who had been facing challenging times when we last spoke, etc. Writing the letters was no problem, but then they started reappearing in my mailbox - shocking amounts of them - stamped with messages like, "address unknown" or "forwarding expired" or some other cryptic postal euphamism for "you've-allowed-these-people-to-drop-out-of-your-life-and-now-you'll-never-find-them-again". So many were returned that I was becoming a bit dispondent about it. Cut to the chase: I quit writing the letters.

But then yesterday as I was rifling through my mail, I discovered a letter from someone I've never met before. In her note she told me that she is the daughter of a very good friend and she thought, perhaps, that I would like to know that she is praying for me. This simple note from someone I've never met was very dear and immensely encouraging and completely, completely unexpected.

And it changed my world.

*Sniff*

I hab a cold in by dose. Bummer. Yesterday I suspected that I was coming down with a cold, but when I woke up at 2:30 this morning, all doubt was removed. So I'm sniffling and sneezing my way through the day and I'm actually pleased for the timing. My body usually waits until the inconvenience of finals week to cash in all of its "sick cards", so a mid-September cold is rather fortuitous.

The superglue did such a dandy job of fixing my thumbnail that I thought I might try the same remedy for my cold. But then I saw that the tube advised against internal use which made absolutely no sense to me since veterinarians use the stuff to perform surgery all the time. I think maybe they're in cahoots with the pharmaceutical lobby.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could solve all of our problems with a $2.00 tube of superglue?

Engagement Announcement

For all of you fellow seminarians and recent UDTS alums, Tony Oltmann is getting married! He called me yesterday to share the happy news and asked me to pass along his joy and excitment to all of you since he can't figure out how to find any of you anymore (he's still Tony, after all). It seemed the most expedient way to share the announcement was to blog it. So here it is, in my own little homage to craigslist.com (dawnslist?) - a public proclamation for all the world to hear!

Tony and Kristin will be getting married on February 16 somewhere in Minnesota - he told me exactly where but I was cruising down the interstate at 75 mph when he called, so I failed to write down the particulars. If you want more details, drop me a line and I'll let you know how to hook up with Tony again.

Caught Up In Evel

I almost missed church this morning and it was totally Evel Knievel's fault. As I was getting ready for church, I glanced up at the TV (yes, I was watching TV on Sunday morning) and saw that Evel was hanging out with Robert Schuller at the Crystal Cathedral. Who could argue that such an eclectic mix makes for some compelling viewing? So I turned up the volume in time to hear Evel give his personal testimony - turns out he found Jesus a couple of weeks ago - and get baptized by the good Dr. Schuller. It was actually kind of a nice little thing.

BUT THEN...

On the heels of Evel's baptism (that has an interesting ring, no? Evel's baptism?) the junior Schuller invited EVERYBODY in the Crystal Cathedral who wanted to get baptized to come forward for this huge, sweeping, on-the-spot mass baptism. No questions asked, no discussion of personal faith, no counseling, didn't even matter if they had already been baptized previously. I nearly fell out of my chair! But I mustered up all of my most decent Presbyterian sensibilities and pulled myself together.

UNTIL...

After baptizing hundreds (yes, hundreds) of people totally on-the-spot, the junior Schuller decided that the baptisms were enough of a church service for the day, so he didn't need to give a sermon after all. I talked to the TV in my sternest voice giving it my most grave liturgical advice; "No, you can't end the service like this. If you're going to baptize hundreds of people totally anonymously, you at least have to give a sermon. You're a minister of word and sacrament, not just sacrament! For the love of everything holy, GIVE THE SERMON!!" Alas, he simply shed a few weepy tears of joy and ended the service. At that point my head completely popped off my body and rolled around on the floor.

Sundays: not just for armchair quarterbacks.