bye for now

A mother's gift.

My mom gave me this amaryllis.
She has a passion for flowers.

-------------------------------------------------------

Lorraine and I were among the first to see the Phantom of the Opera in Toronto (for this run, at least) tonight!! She won tickets to OPENING NIGHT at a Phantom fan club breakfrast last semester...and I was lucky enough to go with her. It was amazing. If anyone out there still hasn't seen it, it's well worth whatever you have to pay. Fantastic. The music is unbelievable. Wow.
(I would have pictures, except Lorraine said she'd be embarassed of me if I took any...)

:)

So I'm taking a break from blogging. I haven't really had anything interesting to say of late anyway. I'm addicted to checking blogs, and that can't be good. From now on, if I want to see how you're doing, I'll send you an email or give you a call or even write you an old fashioned LETTER. I won't be checking or posting, so don't be offended or annoyed. Or, go ahead and be offended and annoyed, and write me a letter to tell me about how offended and annoyed you are.

Check back around Easter!

Bye for now,

Sara

The results of a Christmas gift-- at last

Above: me and Lorraine

Above: My apartment! (For those of you who haven't seen it yet...oh, and there's people in the picture, too: Yvana, Jeff, and Mike.)

Me laughing. And Noah. In fact, I'm probably laughing AT Noah.

Noah and Chris reading my coffee table magazines...The Banner and Geez Magazine.

Mike. He's a happy guy.

Blogger forced me to make the switch to their "bigger and better" blogger. I don't like being coerced. But I couldn't post anything without switching. So here I am. It's not so bad.

I really wanted to post because....

PICTURES!!
(Ok, so this new blogger hasn't made it any easier to place pictures where I want them in posts...sorry...deal with it.)

Above: Jon and Kara, at Jon's house. Check out Jon's halo!

Below: Paul and the dog. I am so sorry, I cannot remember the name of the dog!

Above: a family portrait, at Jon's house
We all look so happy because we all just ate the yummiest fried desert EVER (thanks, Beth and Paul!)

The more pictures I add, the more they get all jumbled up. So just enjoy the pictures, ok? They're out of order.

Hmmmmm..... sigh of relief

Today is the beginning of reading week for me. What a blessed idea. A week in the middle of each semester to work ahead (read: catch up!) on reading and prepare for upcoming presentations and papers. And to give one's apartment a deep clean (which is what I've been doing all day--and LOVING it). And to go home for the weekend to enjoy the company of one's parents and friends.

Hmm...I can't remember the last time I felt this relaxed. What a much needed break.
A deep breath.

I couldn't be happier, thank goodness!

(Where is the title from? Points may be awarded for correct answers...)

I'm officially done with the fall semester.

I handed in my IDS paper today.

Good riddance.

Happy.

Yay.

oh dear

I just found out, through a friend of a friend's blog, that this road trip is coming to Dordt in March. You have to check this out. How will Dordt respond?? I'm curious.

(Soulforce is also going to Calvin College, Messiah College, Gordon College, Covenant College, and 30+ other religious colleges....)

world's best...

...procrastinator.

Just now my internet wasn't working (thank you, Bell Sympatico...grrr...), so instead of taking this as a hint and getting back to work, I played, oh, 7 or 8 games of minesweeper until the internet worked again and I could check my e-mail.

Sick.

I sure hope my profs never read this.

Back to work!

what did you expect?

Nothing.

It's better to expect nothing.

I don't mean it's better to have low expectations. That would be rather depressing. I mean it's better to not have any expectations. To go into new situations and friendships with no presuppositions, if that's at all possible. Then you are not faced with disappointment or unrealistic expectations. I think life would be more exciting, more hopeful this way.

That's what I've learned this week at ICS.

To humour a friend

I just read Christopher's blog (see link on right). He "tagged" me to do the following:
-grab the book closest to you
-turn to page 123
-find the fourth sentence down
-post the three following sentences
-post the author and name of the book
(I hope I'm remembering that correctly.)

So here goes.

"The keeping of the covenant (emunah) on the part of man, who knows he is secure in this relation to God, then finds its expression in the way of life according to the guidelines of the Torah. Buber's determination of the early period of Israel as situated in the life of this emunah-religiosity is of course itself influenced by the ieas of Protestant Biblical criticism in the nineteenth century. Taubes in his turn takes distance from Buber's simple opposition of emunah as an expression of natural belonging to a people and pistis as a "foreign" Greek notion of faith."

From: the afterword of The Political Theology of Paul by Jacob Taubes (translated by Dana Hollander). I have a stack of nine books beside my computer that I have to return to the library after reading from them for my last paper on Romans 13.

Ok, so this was a rather interesting exercise and I didn't do it just to humour Chris. I'm tagging three people to do the same: Matt K, Ann, and Nathan S (Nathan, you can just post yours as a comment--I know you're not blogging right now...)

Today I had a long talk with my mentor at ICS. I'm glad I took the initiative to discuss some questions with him. He's a great mentor. I'm still feeling rather lost, but now am more sure that I don't need to make a drastic move away from ICS in order to be able to honestly express myself. If that's vague, it's ok. I'll be fine.