nothing READ, and thus my soul is fed

So LSTC had the rather clever notion to add a spiritual requirement for graduation. These are called Growth in Faith opportunities (hereafter known as my GIF). I participated in my first tonight. All about life in community. Louise joked at the beginning that there would be no homework, nothing to read, no outside requirements... aside from working on our own spirituality. This could be quiet reflection, silent or spoken prayer, singing, writing (hey, lookie here), or any number of things that feed your soul. So we gathered into the small groups we would have for the rest of the semester and introduced ourselves. We talked about a few things that each of us wanted the group to know about us. Despite our diversity and the craziness of the day, we found similarites and still peace in the noise.

... I love it.

After two and half weeks of class and packing my head full of facts, dates, greek vocabulary words, and random chicagoian tidbits on living, I desperately needed a little mental down time. And not the down time where I caught up on sleep or watched Weeds (this I did last night and really, really enjoyed the abrasive reality that it makes light of)... but down time where it wasn't about my head. It was about a different kind of listening.

Don't get me wrong, I've been laughing quite hard in my classes (mostly Greek, go P. Perry) and that makes it very bearable. But this - this was delight of my soul. *Sigh* It was so needed.

So, now I am going to go further unwind before tomorrow's big bag Old Testament online quiz. :/ Thanks to all for reading and keeping up with me. I am so blessed to have you in my life.

EDIT: Instead of working on tomorrow's quiz, I started to read for my Church and Society class. We are reading and reviewing/editing/commenting on the ELCA's social statement DRAFT on human sexuality. I thought you might want to read it with me. If so, here's the link to ELCA's site on the statement. So far, I am in section II and really loving the language. Most recently I read and liked this: "we do not ignore or underestimate the brokenness of our relationships to God or to each other." How awesome is that? Now to see how it holds up...