“I will become a little sailboat, and I will sail away from you.” “If you become a sailboat and sail away from me,” said his mother, “I will become the wind…” The Runaway Bunny, Margaret Wise Brown “Am I late?” she breathes as she whirls into the room, a hurricane of red hair with bags–school,…
Tag: students
On Messes
Living in this beautiful mess is who we are. From “All I Am,” by Most People I’ve never loved messes. Not that I’m compulsively neat, of course. I have my blind spots, like everyone–mugs that sit on the counter longer than they should, that piece of paper still on the floor of my room, which is…
The Love We Share: M-Trip Sunday
We’re on the sixth slideshow when my roommate, Emily, leads her team to the front of the auditorium. The mostly-female team are all wearing the shapeless, colorful dresses that they wore for their week in a Central Asian village. This, along with covering their hair and serving the three men who accompanied them, was their…
A New Square Inch
Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Romans 12:15 I’m sitting near the back of the auditorium on Friday afternoon, again looking over the tops of my students’ heads as the Chapel speaker weaves to the front of the room, carrying a microphone. After a few words of introduction he begins…
What Is Love?
“He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy… One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no…
Risking Our Cool
“Who’ll read Uncle Paul? You have to read with a voice ‘like hard cheese being grated.’ Anyone?” A student’s hand shoots up instantly, and he snatches the highlighted short story out of the air, scanning his part seriously. The last class on Friday is gathered in a rectangle of couches in the Student Center, whose…
On Basketball
“Y’all ready for this?” asks the sound system on Friday night, the classic 90s warm-up playing just underneath the percussive arrhythmia of bouncing rubber balls and squealing rubber shoes, all three sounds telling us one thing: the Game is about to start. When the pre-game clock runs down to zero, most of the students in…
The Use of Stories
“What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?” Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories Snow is falling hesitantly, halfheartedly over Kandern this Sunday afternoon. Our living room is the picture of calm, complete with soft Christmas music and my sister, Holly, cutting out snowflakes while Emily’s brother, David, writes emails. I compare…
The Way Home 