A sterile life.

I drove a lot today. From here to Elizabethtown to Ephrata (named from the biblical Ephrata which means purt' near Bethlehem) and then back to here. A lot of driving. A lot of weird roads. Driving from south to north is easier for me because I feel like I am navigating on the map. As if I'm sitting on the map. I had a clear vision of every direction I turned today because we went from south to north the same way I envision a map in my head. I saw the Ephrata Cloisters today. These folks had a sterile life. They were celibate...didn't help the cause much I guess. They slept only 6 hours per night. Waking at 12midnight to assemble for prayers for 2 hours and then if Christ didn't return that night, they'd go back to bed and wake at 6am and do it all over again. They slept on 18" wide wooden benches and had a block of wood for a pillow to keep luxurious sins from over powering them. They ate only one meal a day and spent much day in prayer. I'm pretty sure I could live like this if I could have a decent bed and anything else but a block of wood for a pillow. It's fascinating to see this precocious slice of life still preserved in a very simple way.

3114079569575175 You can figure it out.

Things went well today. Eerily well. I made an airport run and didn't get lost though the directions were confusing: 31 to 140 to 795 to 695 to 75 to 175 the last four number were all curvy interstates and I didn't hit anyone or miss a turn off. I even found the elusive cell phone waiting lot.
So now it's 10:52pm and I have a head full of things I must do tomorrow. Ah well, this is a great vocation.

The season that's a verb, too.

What is it about spring? Seems like this one is more spectacular than most others. I also haven't experienced a season of spring since 2001. At that point I was living in central Illinois and hadn't really been out of the seasonal loop. Since then I had a non-existent Phoenician spring, which really just two weeks of 70 degree weather before moving directly into the high 90s.

After that, I had 3 years of Nigerian spring weather. This is the equivalent of having severely humid days with clouds forming in the east every afternoon, as if giant unpopped boils in the sky were taunting me with rain. The rains came around 4pm for the month of June, always angrily and always around 4pm.

So now I'm back into the spring I know and grew up with. I like this season and this word because it's the only word of our seasons that is an action. SPRING! It's like the word is telling everything that has been in dormancy to hop to it and get moving.