“No matter how you get there or where you end up, human beings have this miraculous gift to make that place home.” The Office, Series Finale We’re misty-eyed as the screen goes black, familiar music and text signaling the end of the episode. The last episode. Emily and I started watching The Office together three years ago, when…
Tag: thanks
In Everything
“What’s Literary Thanksgiving?” they’d asked, curious, seeing the note on this week’s schedule. “You’ll have to wait until Thursday to see,” I replied, cryptic. Then, seeing their expectations, forming like frost on a cold November night, I elaborated. “No, it won’t be food. I mean, you can bring food if you want, but we’ll be…
Open Letter (Of Thanks) To My Flight Home
While my fellow teachers in America sleep in and make food, we spend Thanksgiving in Germany at school, celebrating even on a school day. Some classes have snacks. Mine have a creative writing assignment, a letter of thanks to an object, abstraction or entity that represents what they’re thankful for. This year, I’m thankful to…
Long Distance
I’m sitting out in the long-expected sunshine, a stack of Honors American Literature exams on my lap. I’m reading them, marking them, but slowly. I keep getting distracted. A senior is heading off to Scotland in the fall, and he perches on a bench long enough to talk about summer jobs in America and the…
Things (And Mostly People) That Made Life Better This Year: 2012 Edition
Black Forest Academy–this ever-changing community of staff and students that flow in and out of this little valley on the edge of the dark hills–is a place of tradition. Do something once, whether it’s dumping someone in a pond on their birthday or granting crazy Christmas wishes, and it’s likely that you’ll be asked to…
There Are No Lakes Till Eternity
We are not permitted to linger, even with what is most intimate. From images that are full, the spirit plunges on to others that suddenly must be filled; there are no lakes till eternity. Here, falling is best. To fall from the mastered emotion into the guessed-at, and onward. Rainer Maria Rilke, from “To Hölderlin” We…
A Letter of Thanks
On Thanksgiving Day in Germany, we go to school, like other Thursdays. To celebrate, I asked my students to write letters of thanks. Their letters were meant to be symbolic, written to objects, places or people that wouldn’t necessarily respond. As I think of what I’m thankful for this year, it’s more a group of…
Thanksgiving, Now and Yet to Come
It isn’t an ordinary evening at Maugenhard dorm. The seven oblong tables, typically arranged side by side in the dining room, have been pulled end-to-end into a long table, and every chair in the house has found its way upstairs to this mega-table. The boys come to the table, giddy with anticipation, wearing shirts and…
Of Graduation, Extravagant Gifts
Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3:20-21 (italics mine) “I think, I think, we can keep it under an hour. It’ll be tricky,…
A Junior Farewell
I’ve loved this year. I spent today, the last day of classes at BFA, as I’ve spent many days with this year’s group of students, sitting on the grass by the river, talking about books. Thankful tonight for the blessing of working with these students I so deeply admire and will miss dearly. In lieu of…
The Way Home 