News

While all the children were nestled “snug in their beds” with “visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads,” I am imagining that you struggled to sleep throughout the holiday anxiously awaiting news as to whether Delta had regranted me my airline status for 2024. Well, yes, Autumn, there really is a Santa Claus. I woke on Christmas morn to discover that I had crossed that ever-so-difficult-to-figure-out magical line. (Hint to Delta: You could make your strange algorithm for counting miles wayyyyy more clear for Skymiles members.)

Before I launch into today’s newsletter, I have a request from my friend Autumn to include a correction to my last newsletter. In response to the grave crisis I faced regarding the potential loss of my Delta status and my quest to find 1500 more miles before the end of the month, she wants you to know that she did not say, “You have lost your mind.” Rather she said, “Are you bats?#$t crazy?!?” Autumn does not feel that the way I recorded our conversation earlier conveys the profound depth of her concern for my sanity.

“Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God.” – Isaiah 40:1

For some time now, you have heard me hint of this elusive podcast that I’m launching. I’ve kept suggesting that my next newsletter would include a link to the first episode. But weeks… okay, months… have gone by with neither hide nor hair of said episode.

I began writing this newsletter at 2:13 a.m., on a red eye flight from Calgary to Atlanta. Even though it was the middle of the night, my internal clock was so messed up it hardly seemed to matter anymore and I was filled with enthusiasm for the week I had just spent on Vancouver Island. I had lots to say.

The day of my great revelation began – quite literally – in HELL.

It began when I awoke from a night of restless, sweaty doses of sleep to find myself stuffed, with three other college exchange students, in the backseat of a rusting taxi… still.

It began with the loud squawking of chickens and a vendor pounding on the dusty window, sliding plastic watches from China through the crack at the top of the pane.

Many of you know that last year at this time I was cocooning in that blissful little corner of the world known as the Collegeville Institute, located on the campus of St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. Even though the trees were ablaze in every shade of orange and yellow and red, I did the best I could to keep my seat planted to the chair and finally get to work on a project called “Redeeming Power.”

Two years ago this month a package from Canada arrived in the mail from my longtime cgs catechist sister, Mariann Dunsmore. Mariann had been diagnosed with cancer a year earlier and she knew that her time here on earth was coming toward an end. As an amazing artist and icon writer, she had many, many projects started that she knew would be left undone unless she recruited a gaggle of us to finish them.

“There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens.

A time to give birth, and a time to die;

A time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant.

A time to weep and a time to laugh;

A time to mourn, and a time to dance.” - Ecclesiastes 3:1-2, 4

At multiple points in my life now, I’ve crossed the border into another country. Most of the time this has gone smoothly. I’ve stood before the immigrations officer, been asked a few questions, and then got a stamp in my passport. Sometimes they haven’t even given me the stamp. Just waved me through.