Snow in Baltimore

I would hardly expect to find snow in Baltimore, though I know it happens, but when I looked out my eighth-floor window this morning, here is what I saw. Oh, it's just a dusting but the snow makes things look a little more like Vermont.

Not that I have been able to get outside and do anything. Since we're not reading the GOEs at Camp Allen, there's no campus really to walk around, no reason to go any further than your room because we are submitting the evaluations electronically, rather than going to a central place to print out a copy to take to our chaplain. It has been harder building community, an essential aspect to the entire GOE reading process.

One of the reasons why I love coming here is because I am surrounded by people who love the church, care for the people who have taken the examinations, and who also enjoy the English language and are, yes, bright. It's a delight to be in such company.

Equally fun is being able to create a pick-up choir to sing at the nightly eucharist. Tonight we sang Elizabeth Poston's Jesus Christ the Apple Tree. (The fourth verse seemed particularly appropriate.) Tomorrow we will sing Duruflé's Ubi caritas.

Since 2005, I have unwittingly been cast into the role of choir director. I am not one; I sing in the choir, but I have enough sense to be able to interpret the music and, in the case of these two pieces, know them well enough to be able to break them down and bring people along in learning their parts.

Now it is time for compline, to put to rest the work of the day, to wrap those whose lives have touched ours through the examinations in God's care, and to settle down.