today

Today has been the most perfect day. It hasn't been exceptional by any means, except perhaps exceptionally ordinary. The past two days have been more like what I expected graduate school to be like than the last two months of class. Yesterday I did preschool language screenings before class, and today three of my classmates [read: friends] and I did hearing screenings at an elementary school in West Jefferson.

We had to meet at 6:30 AM, clinic I.D. lanyards around our necks, travel mugs of coffee in our hands, and smiles on our faces by the time we arrived in Ashe County, 30 minutes early (thanks a lot, Garmin). So we went to West Jefferson's new fancy Wal-Mart and perused the Halloween cards to send to our siblings in Georgia and Florida. By the time we left the store, the sun had decided to make an appearance. We screened first, second, third, and fifth grade students, as well as a couple of RTI (Response to Intervetion [potential special education candidates]). It was kind of fun. We were finished before noon and went to a Thai restaurant in downtown Boone for lunch.

It's a rainy day, so I've been inside reading an Emily Griffin novel and doing laundry. Finally I conceded that it wasn't going to stop raining, so I put on my new balance shoes and went for an eight mile run in the rain, listening to a couple chapters of To Kill A Mockingbird. (Somehow I made it through the public school system without having been made to read it previously... sounds like a child was left behind).

And tonight? Contra Dance.

swing your partner

Recently I've been partaking in a North Carolinian high country cultural experience called contra dancing. I love it. So much so, in fact, that I have decided that at my wedding reception (whenever it may happen) I plan to have a live band and a caller who will give lessons while the guests await the arrival of the wedding party, but that is neither here nor there...

This is the way God put it: "They found grace out in the desert, these people who survived the killing. Israel, out looking for a place to rest, met God out looking for them!" God told them, "I've never quit loving you and never will. Expect love, love, and more love! And so now I'll start over with you and build you up again, dear virgin Israel. You'll resume your singing, grabbing tambourines and joining the dance. You'll go back to your old work of planting vineyards on the Samaritan hillsides, And sit back and enjoy the fruit— oh, how you'll enjoy those harvests! The time's coming when watchmen will call out from the hilltops of Ephraim: 'On your feet! Let's go to Zion, go to meet our God!'" - Jeremiah 31:1-3

How I long to join that dance! To spin around and swing my neighbor - to one day have my own to swing. I don't know exactly what it looks like, but I know what it feels like: contra dancing! It feels like giving a little weight to your partner and spinning and spinning until you almost feel dizzy, but trusting that you'll end up on his right in long lines or hands-four, ready to dance a little more. It feels like smiling through the pinch of your shoes or the breathlessness that accompanies the constant movement, despite the beads of perspiration forming on your brow.

I love to dance. I love to have a good partner to lead me through each step - a partner with whom I can just relax and move gracefully and fluidly, because it's only when I try to maintain control that I misstep or end up where I don't belong. I love leaning back in a swing and feeling the centrifugal force spinning us faster and faster. I love how the pre-swing balance is marked by the sound of hundreds of feet stomping in unison on the old wood floor of the apple barn. Clearly, I really like contra dancing. But that may or may not be what I'm talking about.

Being a skilled dancer has less to do with knowing the steps and more to do with learning to relax, to trust your partner, and to listen for the caller's instructions as He gives them.

"You did it: you changed wild lament into whirling dance; You ripped off my black mourning band and decked me with wildflowers. I'm about to burst with song; I can't keep quiet about you. God, my God, I can't thank you enough." -Psalm 30:11

i am a nerd

america's best idea

We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. Our flesh-and-bone tabernacle seems transparent as glass to the beauty about us, as if truly an inseparable part of it, thrilling with the air and trees, streams and rocks, in the waves of the sun, -- a part of all nature, neither old nor young, sick nor well, but immortal. Just now I can hardly conceive of any bodily condition dependent on food or breath any more than the ground or the sky. How glorious a conversion, so complete and wholesome it is. -John Muir

Anybody else super-excited about The National Parks series on PBS? Given that I plan to take my family on vacations to The National Parks, I sure am.