Becoming a Cake Saver Kind of Person

Posted on January 31, 2014 by admin

Do you have a pickle dish? I don’t, but I grew up in a pickle dish family. My grandmother canned and pickles were a staple, always in the fridge with plenty more jars lined up in the pantry. Most meals at her house included pickles. They were just one of those things you made a place for on the table, like salt and pepper or butter. She served them in oblong cut-glass dishes, with little forks tucked in the side.

glass pedestal cake saver with dome and doily

Towards the end of her life when my grandmother struggled to move around and unscrew the lids on pickle jars, the rest of us tried unsuccessfully to get her to forego the pickle dish. Just put the jar on the table. That’s good enough.

The rest of us – visiting for the weekend from school and work and used to slap-it-on-the-table meals at our own homes – wanted the cooking and cleaning and towel-drying over with sooner. Her way wasn’t our way and doing it my grandmother’s way meant more work for us. All those special dishes pulled out of their spots in the cabinet, put into service on the table, emptied, cleaned, and put back again – and most of us didn’t eat many pickles either. Why was this worth it to her?

I should point out here that I was once annoyed by the suggestion that bagged ice ought to be emptied into a serving bowl. A friend’s mother asked to host her son’s birthday party at the Wesley Foundation and, after turning on the lights and hauling out one of our travel coolers to throw the bag of ice in, I was surprised when she asked if there was something nicer we could arrange.

For someone who has prided herself on offering hospitality, I’ve been clueless about some of the finer points. Let’s face it, there are times when the way someone offers hospitality doesn’t feel very welcoming and doesn’t incline you to make yourself at home. But that can happen as easily through a thoughtless simple cooler as it can through a thoughtful fussy pickle dish.

Here’s the real confession: I now have a cake saver. One of those cut-glass, pedestal, domed cover things that seem so very Betty-Crocker-1955. I don’t make many cakes or pies and I am strict about how many one-purpose items clutter up the kitchen. So , for a long time I thought keeping a cake saver on hand for those infrequent occasions was unnecessary.

I don’t know why, but a couple of years ago I started to think otherwise. I wanted a cake saver. I had no grand plans to become a pastry chef or to start having a cake for Sunday dinner each week. I simply thought it might be nice to have for those times when I did have a cake or pie to serve – or maybe even for a mound of cookies.

Visiting with my parents at the house that was once my grandmother’s, I found the cake saver in the same cabinet where she kept the pickle dishes. No one’s baking cakes there anymore and nobody else in the family had claimed it, so I did.

Most of the time it sits up high on top of my kitchen cabinets and needs to be dusted when I bring it down. But when I use it I see what was harder for me to understand when I just wanted to get the kitchen chores over with. I see in it an attentiveness to beauty and delight, and hospitality deeper than the dish but showcased in it.

It’s worth it to make a place for all that on the table.

How to Quit Like a Scout

Posted on January 24, 2014 by admin

old girl scouts sash with badges

I don’t know where I got my notions and expectations, other than the word scouts, but I had the impression we’d be camping and spending time in the woods and, while not exactly learning survival skills, at least learning how to tie a knot. Nothing in my family life encouraged these expectations. We weren’t a camping or hiking family. My dad grew up on a farm but we were firmly planted in the suburbs. I was the oldest child and the oldest grandchild, so there weren’t more experienced siblings or cousins to suggest my Girl Scout experience wasn’t up to par.

I just had an inkling…

[Click here for the rest of the story at catapult magazine.]

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photo credit: © 2012 Steve Snodgrass, CC BY 2.0

A Year of Snow. Sort of.

Posted on January 20, 2014 by admin

Last week marked a year here at Snow Day. As I said in my very first post, “I decided to invest more of my days with that snow day feel – space and pace…A walk through the snow makes it easy to taste and see what’s holy. But there is holiness everywhere, every day. I’m trying to leave enough room to notice that.”

greenhouse in snow

I’m not all the way there yet. I caught myself in a tizzy in December, fretting aloud to my husband about the craziness of my schedule that week and the domino-effect of changing one teeny thing in the line-up. In full-out rant, I stumbled upon a deep truth as I blurted out, “I do this to myself!”

Then again, we took a Snow Day Weekend before students returned in January and it was the deepest relaxation I’ve experienced in a long time. The fact that there was no actual snow involved should probably count as significant progress.

Relevant Magazine recently ran a piece about what to ask yourself before posting to social media. The whole thing is good, thoughtful advice, but the question that has stuck with me is this one: Is this a moment to protect? The author talks about our cultural tendencies to interrupt ourselves in the midst of intimate, important moments in order to “share” those online.

But the question hangs there for me, implicating other tendencies. Is this a moment to protect?

I’m not picturing a smothering “protection” based in fear or controlling behavior. I’m picturing the way tented plastic protects fragile plants from an early frost. Just enough cover to allow them to grow and thrive, to assist in what they are already trying to do.

seedlings in plastic cups

A year in, I’m still looking for more internal snow days. I’m not holding out for real snow days to do the work for me (though I’m ready any time, Mother Nature!) and I’m trying to rely less on permission from others. This little plastic tent of a blog has afforded me a few protected moments and I hope it has for you. Thank you for being part of the journey.

Resolve

Posted on January 1, 2014 by admin

“Life surprises us every day, and some days more than others. One day, hour, or even minute can change everything. The unexpected can throw us for a whirlwind adventure – physically and emotionally. Whether it’s winning the million dollar lottery, the untimely death of a loved one, a traveling adventure, or meeting ‘the one,’ crazy things happen, and we want to hear about yours.” So came the invitation from former student Maggie and her grandmother Jouette, as they embarked on their fall project to compile a collection of personal stories into a book called When IT Happens. This was Jouette’s longtime dream and Maggie helped pull it off. They published the collection last month and are donating proceeds to Sprouting Hope Community Garden. Here’s a picture of the proud editors and here’s my IT story, a version of which is included in the book.

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Jouette and Maggie Graham with their book

I stood at the payphone outside the ranger station in Glacier National Park, calling a hotel room in Vancouver, hoping he hadn’t left yet. It was maybe eight in the morning and I’d awoken by at least five that day with the unshakeable certainty that this was it and I was willing to drive all day through Canada to get to him.

I was in the middle of a two-week road trip, camping and visiting national parks with my good friend Anna. When we made the plans months before she suggested we consider driving into Canada. I was against it. Limited time, limited money, had to make tough choices. Blah, blah. We went over this several times and I never budged.

During the trip she spent a few days with other friends in Glacier while I detoured through Yellowstone. I made the long, remote, signal-less, dusty drive in to rendezvous with Anna at Glacier’s Bowman Lake Campground the night before the early morning call – the six miles from the ranger station took half an hour on the bumpy gravel road.

This at the end of a day driving through Montana saying “Good God!” at the beauty around every bend, the truth settling in my bones with the miles: I was in love. Deep.

Woody and I had been in almost daily contact during the trip. In the serendipitous way of things, he was embarking on his own travel adventure, to Canada. We thought about trying to meet somewhere but plans were set and distances were long. We weren’t kids anymore (I was 39 and he was 51); we could wait. It was sensible to do our own trips and see each other again at home. We had decided. Done. Resolved. Blah blah.

But when I woke up in the tent that morning at Bowman Lake, I immediately sat upright with an elaborate plan fully hatched, apparently in the incubator all night while I slept. I couldn’t wait another week to see Woody. I didn’t give a hoot what we had decided. I could barely wait for my friends to wake up so I could run this plan past them: We were going to abort our previous plans and drive to Nelson, British Columbia (where Anna’s friends lived and she had wanted to visit all along), and which was roughly half way between Glacier and Vancouver. Woody was going to meet us there – he just didn’t know it yet.

Once the other campers woke up and heard my outrageous plan (and wondered if I was just a little crazy), they agreed and I left them packing at the campground and drove as fast as I could those bumpy slow six miles to the first and only phone I could get to back at the ranger station. I had no idea if he would be gone for the day already but I stood in the chilled early morning air, phone clenched to my ear, hopeful with my whole being that the rest of the day would take me closer and closer to the love of my life. And the rest of my life.

When he picked up, I said the most simple direct true thing I could: “I’ve lost all resolve.” I married him ten months later.

Trying to Tell You Something about My Life

Posted on December 27, 2013 by admin

You know those songs that perfectly capture an era or a relationship? The ones that take you back to that moment in a flash and you can feel who you were back then? guitar headstocks

For me, one of those tunes is the Indigo Girls’ Closer to Fine. Amy, Emily, and this song have traveled with me through many years, stages, and places. But I every time I hear it I can remember singing I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper and I was free, while still yearning for that paper. For a certain group of my friends and countless others from my generation, that song is emblematic, galvanizing, community-making. Name this song to one of us and we’ll tell you about the first Indigo Girls concert or where we were when that album came out. With its iconic first line – I’m trying to tell you something about my life – the confession and the invitation begin…

[Click here for the rest of the story at the National Campus Ministry Association blog.]

Lake George from the Porch

Posted on December 20, 2013 by admin

view of lake george in summer from the porch

I’ve been visiting a 100 year old house on the shore of Lake George, New York. It reminds me of the lodges you find in National Parks out west, mainly because of its stacked stone pillars and the design cut into the balusters of the porch railings. Built out of solid materials and with an appreciation for beauty, it’s gracious the way I imagine some future house of mine will be whenever I read something like Southern Living or This Old House….

Click here to read more over at We Said Go Travel, where my entry in their Gratitude Travel Writing Contest is published today.

Tip of the Iceberg

Posted on December 10, 2013 by admin

Sometimes I wish we still wore mourning armbands. The kind Jimmy Stewart wears in It’s a Wonderful Life at the board meeting after his father dies. That simple black band around the upper arm signaled to everyone else something was up. Maybe you wouldn’t have known who had died when you saw a teacher at the school wearing one, but that signal would have prompted you to say, at least, “I’m sorry for your loss.” iceberg

One of the strangest sensations for a mourner is the sense that the rest of the world can somehow keep turning and bustling while time stands still for her. Absorbed by grief, routine questions like “Would you like room for cream in that?” can suddenly seem out of place and too normal to fit the terrain of her new world. I wonder if having the stranger, the barista, say “I’m sorry for your loss…Would you like room for cream?” would help. I wonder if that outward signal to others to make some room for mourning made those interactions less bizarre.

Death has come near several times this fall. Not to my innermost circle but close enough – too close for comfort. Three people cut down well before we expected. I learned about two of the deaths online. Distance and screens didn’t make them easier. I’ve found it difficult to mourn, to know how to express feelings and connections not readily apparent to those in my daily, physical community.

Meanwhile the calendar turns. Advent arrives. Trees and decorations go up. Special playlists serve as the seasonal soundtrack. We cook dishes reserved for this time of year. All those physical, sensual triggers that this is a different time now.

Like the mourning armband, reminding others – and the wearer herself – to make room for grief. This is a different time now.

We rely on rituals to cue our behavior and mindset. Sleep experts advise establishing and maintaining certain rituals, signals to your mind and body that it’s time to slow down and sleep. Dark, quiet, cool room. No screens for an hour before bed. Same time every night… Eventually your mind and body recognize the signals sent by the rituals so that brushing your teeth and turning off the screens starts you yawning. Similar to the way listening to Christmas music while baking helps you get in the spirit of things.

What did we lose when we lost the mourning armbands? Grief – an iceberg whose puny tip showed up as an armband for a few months – became even more hidden, less able to be shared. More private, less communal.

Put yourself back in the coffee shop, in a hurry, preoccupied by your own agenda. When the man in front of you fumbles for his wallet, appears spacey, takes too much time, and doesn’t know how to answer the cream question, how exasperated are you? What if that man were wearing a simple black armband? Would that give you the signal to go easy, make room, and let it be? I suspect it would. I imagine the odd relief the band would give its wearer, not having to explain anything out of the ordinary but also wearing a sign of his emotional and spiritual journey – literally – on his sleeve. Exposed and protected by the same signal.

Advent and the incarnation it heralds proclaim the bold, unnerving story: God lives here, too. It’s not “out there” or “later” or “in spite of” this world and the bodies we inhabit. The place of God’s revelation is in the midst of our lives and there is no place to hide but every place to be holy. Exposed and protected by the same sign.

Most of the year bodies are just bodies and time is just time. Death reminds us that bodies are the only way we know one another, the only medium we have for encounter. Advent proclaims time is not “just” anything. It’s holy. Permeated with the presence of God. All those gingerbread-Baby-It’s Cold-Outside-fir-scented-purple-candles-lessons-and-carols-once-a-year signals to wait a minute. Take it in, sense by sense, ritual by ritual. Can’t you see? Feel? Taste? Hear? Real, sensual, physical signals – just the tip of the iceberg – reminding us to make room for the One who came into time, into a human body, and filled it with holiness.

photo credit: Sunset Iceberg 2, CC / Free Cultural Works

Words for a Rainy Writer Friday

Posted on December 6, 2013 by admin

“I’m a teacher at Syracuse University, I write short stories, and that’s pretty much it.”

It’s a refreshing statement from writer George Saunders, made to sound simple because of its brevity, but wider and deeper than it appears at first. Teaching and writing are more than enough for a full, deep, wide, soul-satisfying life. Regardless of the standing-in-front-of-a-class-of-students aspect of teaching, neither of these occupations is showy. But they are both lifelong practices that will take you where you need to go – all you have to give over is time, consistent effort, and a willingness to be taken somewhere.

What would your deceptively simple sentence be? What’s the practice carrying you through life, deeper into life?

The whole video is charming but here’s another winner of a quote: “But actually, the deeper goal is to be more loving, more courageous, more accepting, more patient. But also less full of shit. So, in other words, to be able to really step up to the beauties of life and the horrors of it, without any kind of flinching…If some of that could get into your work, that would be a plus.”

Here it is at The New Yorker.

Advent: Embodiment and Cultivation

Posted on December 5, 2013 by admin

old hand plow

There is no way to be a spiritual person without your body. There is no enlightened height you can reach where having a body is no longer necessary for your life. This is the package we come in: dust and breath, body and spirit.

It’s the package Jesus came in, born with all the human vulnerability and fragility we experience (naked, poor, manger) while still, mysteriously, being God. Fully human, fully divine.

Advent is an invitation to consider your body. As we anticipate the feast of Christmas, God’s incarnation (embodiment) in Jesus Christ, how is God calling our attention to our own embodiment?

I’m talking with college students tonight about de-stressing. Tomorrow’s the last day of classes so you can imagine their stress level. Like the rest of us, they tend to think in terms of “when this is over.” When this semester is over, I will read that novel. When I graduate, I will learn to cook. When I have a real job, I will make time every day to pray. When I land that promotion, then I’ll have enough money. When my kids are older, then I’ll be able to exercise….

The obvious problem with this thinking is there is never a perfect time to do the hard, counter-cultural work of cultivating our lives. It’s far easier to let life happen to us, gathering us in a huge rolling snowball of stress and hurry and other people’s agendas. There is no perfect time, thus, every time is perfect for this life’s work.

The other problem with this thinking is we are always training ourselves. What we practice is how we live. A life spent out of control and waiting for perfection is just that. A life spent choosing – even in very small ways – to get out of the way of that huge snowball, is a life of slow, steady cultivation. Of body and spirit.

Advent has already gotten off to a rocky start for me but I am trying to remember and practice exactly these things. I’m looking forward to the wisdom of my students as we talk together tonight. I know tomorrow will be just as imperfect and lovely as today. So, in this season of waiting, I am not waiting to practice what I preach, even as I wait on the mystery of Christmas.

Here are a few tips I’m sharing with students tonight, ways to help bring body and spirit together more intentionally. Blessings as you cultivate an embodied spirituality.

Practice resting in God for 3 minutes a day. Sit in a comfortable position and breathe deep belly breaths. Try to focus your attention on physical sensations and the sound/feel/movement of your breath. Let that be enough prayer for these three minutes. Do not try to be “holy.” Just be present. Pay attention without judgment. Don’t “say” anything to God; just know it’s enough to sit still in God’s presence without controlling or narrating the encounter. No matter how rushed you are, I guarantee you always have 3 minutes. Choose to use them this way.

Set aside a time each day or each week to be completely offline. Do it for at least an hour or two, but a whole day is wonderful. You don’t have to pray and meditate that whole day/time but as you go about time offline, notice how and where you are. Being connected isn’t “bad” but it can be disorienting (taking you to other places and people than those where and with whom you actually are) and a huge time suck (“just one minute” online turns into an hour) and the frenetic, hyperlinked nature of it contributes to a racing, non-resting mind and spirit. Choose to check out and live a human pace for discreet periods each day or week. It will put things in perspective.

Before you eat a meal, before you even offer a prayer before your meal, take three deep breaths.Notice the feel of the cool air entering your nostrils and the warmer air leaving. Three deep, slow breaths.

Do the same thing right before you open your email in the morning or start the mountain of laundry. Three deep, slow breaths.

Drink water. As much as you can possibly stand.

Sleep. Make this one of the choices you exercise. This is another way of expressing your confidence and trust that God can keep the world spinning without your help for a few hours.

Sleep without your electronic devices on your pillow or nightstand. If your phone is also your alarm clock, set your phone to airplane mode, then set the alarm. Then turn it off and leave it alone until it wakes you up at the appointed time.

Move. If you are too tired or busy to do an actual workout, at least try a few stretches or walk around the block. Get out of your head and into the rest of you for a few minutes.

Eat. Try to make it nourishing food. Try enjoying it instead of wolfing it down. If you know you’ll be busy, take a few minutes to stock up on easy, healthy snacks you can grab in a hurry (rather than ordering late night pizza because you don’t have any groceries).

Prepare. Don’t just get up and start running until you drop – choose what makes your list for today and how you will go about it all. Yes, the choices might not be ideal, but you do still have choices…What really has to get done today? (Exam at 2pm, call Mom on her birthday) What can wait? (Reorganizing my shoe or spice collection, researching best post-graduation trips to Europe) Remember that you need to eat, drink, sleep, and spend at least 3 minutes resting in God today, too. Write down those things and the things that really have to get done today. Then take a look at the list: is it reasonable (can a non-bionic human being actually accomplish these things in the waking hours of a day)? If it is, great – that’s your guide for the day and for saying “no” to other things that try to worm their way into your list. If it is not reasonable, take a second look. Can anything be taken off the list? Is there a way to move anything to another day? If all of those are “no’s” then decide how much time and effort you will give to each of your list items in order to get them done – this will likely mean that you won’t be doing all of them at 100% but that’s OK. Choose for that to be ok for these items on this day.

Remember God loves you exactly as you are, with all of your unfinished business and half-assed efforts. God loves you no matter what happens on the exam or the relative cleanliness of your house or your Christmas shopping list. This hard-to-love, beautiful you who God loves is the one you are also called to love. You cannot “love your neighbor as yourself” if you don’t love yourself. Start now. If you are good enough for God to love, you are good enough. Trust that.

Halloween. Boo.

Posted on October 30, 2013 by admin

smiling jack o lantern with lit candle

I considered doing something anti-community this week. Rather, I considered not doing something. I was seriously thinking about keeping the lights off and not buying any candy and stopping by a bar for a while on the way home tomorrow night. I was going to skip the whole trick-or-treating thing.

I have my reasons. Our house is up a steep hill and I have actually stood at the door on previous Halloween evenings while filling little buckets with candy and heard other children down at the bottom of the driveway say It’s not worth it when they see the climb. We also don’t want the temptation of the candy in the house, even for one night. I don’t believe in giving crappy candy so we get the good stuff – Reese’s, Snickers, York Peppermints, Twix – things I will eat when they are just sitting there and I have to keep expending all that energy to get up and walk to the door with the huge bowl of them. Also, I work on Thursday nights and won’t get home until it’s almost over, so why bother?

Aren’t they good reasons?

We don’t have small children and we don’t know many of those in our neighborhood. It would be so easy to just opt out. It’s not up to us. We’ve done our time on that circuit. Even though I’ll spend time Facebook-liking the many pictures of my friends’ kids in their costumes in faraway cities, who wants to keep interrupting the World Series or Parks and Recreation for all these unknown neighborhood kids? Some of the older ones seem to think they’re doing me a favor as they jut out their pillowcase-bags while checking their phones and avoiding eye contact.

That’s the temptation. It’s not the candy’s siren call. It’s the allure of proclaiming ourselves done, moved on, past all that. It’s the easy answer thinking: But I don’t even know them or It’s not like when we were kids. The thing is, it probably isn’t like it was when we were kids. I really did know many more of my neighbors then than I do now – I even knew the ones who were old and retired or who didn’t have kids. It was a different time. But I suspect this wasn’t different: Those families I knew then didn’t want to keep getting up to answer the door either. They had also worked long days. They were tired and didn’t really care if I was dressed as a Gypsy – again. But they stocked up on candy and turned the lights on and answered the door and were appropriately impressed with my scarves.

Community requires participation. Not knowing the neighbors is not an excuse to keep not knowing them, especially while lamenting the way it used to be. It’s a call to try harder – or just plain try. I may be far from my Goddaughter and the other cute children whose pictures I’ll peruse, but these are the kids right in front of me and they want some candy and attention. Maybe that’s all it will be but they deserve at least this modicum of engagement by the adults in their neighborhood.

The lights will be on at our house Thursday. The good candy will be in the bowl by the door and I may even holler down the hill to encourage the kids to make the trek up. It is, quite honestly, the least I can do. It’s better than nothing and it’s better than being the dark house with the old people who don’t like kids. Boo to that.

October’s Other Poetry: Baseball

Posted on October 23, 2013 by admin

The World Series starts tonight and I’ll be rooting for the Red Sox. But for me it all started back in Atlanta during the 1995 World Series.

Click over to WVTF for the commentary I recorded in honor of this unusual anniversary.

Study Abroad, “Before Sunrise,” and the Beauty of Snow Days

Posted on October 21, 2013 by admin

snowday flavor beer

It’s not even time to “fall back” but I’m already dreaming of our first snow day in Virginia. I revel in the permission a snow day grants. Permission to stop adhering to the schedule, to take a pass, to stay home and off the roads, to make cookies in the middle of the day and nap just because I feel like it and I can. I could give myself this kind of permission more often, but it’s harder when there’s nothing external forcing my hand. This is the beauty of a snow day, when permission to be takes precedence over the obligation to do.

These days I sometimes go online during a snow day, if we still have power. It’s fun to see what other people are doing with the unexpected time and space. But in some respects, staying offline (imposed or by choice) is better. It helps me stay present in the day itself, with however I am filling it or emptying it. I have to rely on my own resources.

Back when I did it, studying abroad was like this, too. It was 1989 and I had barely heard of a fax machine. I was only able to call my parents three or four times the whole semester. My main mode of communication with friends and family back home was through letters squeezed onto every inch of the blue, striped aerogram paper which folded up into its own envelope. I was homesick and spent copious amounts of time in coffee shops writing home while gazing out the window and sipping a café crème. I’m sure if we’d had email or cell phones or Facebook I would have checked in incessantly and in real time, as today’s study abroad students do. I often have trouble remembering these students are gone when they’re away for the semester, since I spend just as much time liking status updates from Zurich as I do from across the campus.

Before Sunrise came out six years after my semester in France and, like a band you stick with over the decades, I’ve been growing up with this story, told now over three movies and decades. When I re-watched Before Sunrise a few years back, I was struck by the certainty this movie couldn’t be made now. Both of the young and footloose characters would have cell phones now, through which they would stay tethered to conversations and posts and people time zones away, no matter what ancient city they were in. When the characters in that first movie meet on a train there’s a long, quiet shot of Ethan Hawke looking out the window at Europe blurring past. I remember doing that through France, Italy, Sweden, Ireland. The movement of the train lulling me deeper in thought. Fabulous plans for the future were hatched on the train and in journals when I was alone and out of touch in Europe. The whole adventure of that film began out of un-tethered solo travel and that slim, delicious bubble of time before sunrise. Today, the characters might be so immersed in updating their Twitter accounts they’d never meet – and, if they did somehow strike up a conversation, surely the cell phones would ring and interrupt that lovely lingering night in Vienna. What was out-of-time but deeply grounded in one place and another person would surely be dissolved, jerked back into splintered time and attention with the ring of a far-off call or the beep of a text.

I know today’s parents and students would never consider a semester abroad without the availability of constant contact. But some of what was hard and strange and scary and wonderful about the time I studied abroad was precisely how out of touch it felt. The connections were largely distant and time-lagged. Letters I wrote took time to make their way into the hands of my friends and family. My observations were considered and honed before they were shared – or they were forgotten. The night my train hit and killed someone in Sweden and I missed the next train and had to rely on the kindness of a Danish woman who helped me find a hotel in Copenhagen for the night – that night was experienced without Google Maps or Trip Advisor or Facebook. I had to be where I was and trust a stranger and try to get a good night’s sleep anyway.

A lot of my time in Europe I felt small and inexperienced. Sometimes I felt scared. And, though I relied on my parents (and asked them to wire money – more than once), I also spent a lot of time relying on my own resources. By the time I came home I felt changed.

If I’m honest, I wouldn’t recommend students plan study abroad trips without cell phones. But I do recommend taking technology breaks on purpose – here and abroad. There are times and places better absorbed without the rest of the world watching. Like an all-night stroll through Vienna, standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon, the birth of a baby, a walk through the woods, or a snow day. And when one’s not forthcoming, you can always declare one for yourself. You might even call it Sabbath.

Snow Day

Space to play, rest, create, feast.

Category Archives: Paying Attention