Call and Response

We bought a house! This has been quite the saga, mostly taking place over the Christmas Holidays. I am just starting to resurface a bit, but plan to post some of the chronology, in case anyone is curious how a seminarian and teacher come to own property in a fairly decent neighborhood with almost no money in the bank. I mostly blogged the progress in constant emails to my mom. So I will go back through them and give the entire scoop as I have time.

In other news, school started. I am swamped and am barely staying one step ahead. But I haven't turned in anything late so far, and hopefully can maintain that high standard throughout the semester!

The trees outside my window are stark against the white sky. Their brownness and stickness is all there is, except for a few dried used up leaves left hanging there, not even worthy of joining the pile at the bottom of the hill. This time of year I can see streetlights through the nature preserve behind our apartment when the trees sway back and forth. It is a tiny bit of nature that is preserved there, and January, when I can see the floor of the valley and the parking garage beyond, is the month of its tiniest tinyness. Our apartments will be torn down in a year, and in their place will rise a many-storied structure of stores and apartments and newness and sterility. These apartments are old, only post-war old, but still old and they hold the remains of the breaths and lives of college and seminary students from years and decades and half-centuries ago. Their modern design has fallen out of favor but I find them beautiful. The university is less pleased with them and must practice more efficient land use than 50 apartments in 10 buildings spread over 2 acres of hilltop. They will quickly sweep away these structures, these remnants of breaths and lives, wash it all away down into the tiny valley I suppose. The creatures that live there are protected, yes, but only somewhat, only from new structures in their valley and not from new construction on the hill. The trees, the soaring many-storied trees, will not know what is now blocking their view of the skyline. They will only know that they can’t see the horizon through concrete, no matter the season, because buildings don’t thin out for the winter, and never sway to the side revealing mysteries beyond.