let us commence

Yesterday was a bittersweet day for Park Street Church. Our associate minister, Daniel Harrell, has been called to serve as the head pastor at a church in Edina, MN. This Sunday he gave his farewell address, speaking at all four services. It was a highly emotional day for everyone, especially since Daniel has been on the ministry team at Park Street for 23 years! This is what they printed in the bulletin about him:

Gratitude for 23 years:
Farewell to Daniel Harrell, Associate Minister

Growing up in North Carolina, Daniel began his ministry in Young Life and InterVarsity. While an editorial cartoonist in college, he majored in psychology and religion (UNC Chapel Hill, 1983). He honed his ministry manifesto “to have fun” at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (MDiv, 1988), and twenty-four years ago this June, he joined Park Street’s staff as youth minister. Since then, he’s earned a PhD in psychology (Boston College, 1993), taught as an adjunct professor (GCTS, Fuller, Gordon, BU), written a book on the compatibility of faith and evolution (Nature’s Witness: How Evolution Can Inspire Faith, 2008) and on the 2008 Leviticus Project (How to Be Perfect, 2010), been minister of education, minister of outreach & urban ministry, and interim senior minister. In 1993, he led a team to launch the current Sunday Night format. The PowerPoint clipart, PSC logo, special Sunday Night services, Holy Week liturgies, and Thursday Night Homeless Outreach are all the work of Daniel’s hands. Daniel, his wife, Dawn, and his daughter, Violet, leave us now to start a new chapter of life and ministry in Edina, MN, where Daniel has been called to serve as senior minister of Colonial Church. Please keep the Harrell family in your prayers and take a few moments to say goodbye in the Welcome Center following the service today.

I took my opportunity after the service to shake Daniel's hand and assure him that he would do just fine in the Midwest, that his preaching style and his heart would be warmly welcomed by his new church. He was visibly relieved to hear such a report from someone who calls that region of the country home.

The day had a ceremonial feel to it, like a graduation. This effect was heightened for me because one of the hymns selected for the morning services was "For All the Saints," which is the song USF uses for the processional at commencement, and which I have played probably hundreds of times. By now one would think I'd be completely sick of the piece, and that might be true were I asked to play it again as a processional, but actually singing the words was a new experience for me, and thankfully we only sang it once. As an archivist I have a deep love for tradition, and hearing the familiar tune, I couldn't help but sing louder, as if I were on the stage at the Washington Pavilion, watching the graduates file past the faculty on the stage, sharing one last hug or handshake (wow, I'm really sentimental today, or possibly just missing the community of the USF faculty). I am probably the only member of the congregation who had such a visceral reaction to the hymn, but it just felt right for the day.

Daniel moving on from Park Street is a commencement of sorts. He is closing one chapter of his life (though another member of the ministerial staff reminded him he would always be one of use, echoing the words of Aslan: "once a Park Streeter, always a Park Streeter" [this will apply to me soon to, as I have decided to officially join the church this summer and will be attending new member classes in May and June!]) to begin another in a new place.

So many people in my life are experiencing a commencement, a new beginning, of one sort or another. My friend Brittany got married this weekend, and several other friends have weddings in the works. Many of my grad school friends are graduating and moving out in the next couple weeks. Dianna is headed to Japan to teach English literature at a university for the next two years, and she's leaving shortly after her own graduation, in only a matter or weeks. Other friends are soon to have their first child. It boggles the mind.

Today I finished two of my three final assignments of my graduate career. My Master's gown and hood have already been purchased and are hanging on the back of my dorm room door. I'm beginning to pack up boxes of books and clothes to ship home, move across town to my summer residence, or simply get rid of. And since services yesterday "For All the Saints" has been playing in my head nonstop, in spite of the peppy showtunes I tried to drown it out with.

Commencement is coming.

The grad school chapter of my life is almost at an end, and the next is about to begin. I don't know what this coming chapter will be titled, or what the setting will be beyond this calendar year. Beyond summer work and an international internship in the fall, I don't know what the setting or the content will be. But I know it will be great.

I say, bring it on.

Let us commence.

-Kim

The Wall and the Wing

This was probably the worst time possible for me to start reading a new book. I have several papers due in only a week, an orchestra concert and an art show to put on in a matter of days, and a very tight schedule to stick to to get it all done. But last week I was shelving in the children's section and this book caught my eye. I've been able to resist the books already in my room out of familiarity with their presence, but this exotic new book from the strange and distant land of the library was too enticing. I began reading it at work during a long, boring shift promoting the self-checkout machine and then had to finish it on my own time. Now that I've finished, I have to say that the distraction was worth it.

The Wall and the Wing by Laura Ruby is a delightful fantasy about a world where almost everyone can fly, if only a little. Gurl, an orphan at Hope House for the Homeless and Hopeless, can't fly at all, but her life becomes much more interesting, if not less miserable, when she discovers she can become invisible and forms an unlikely friendship with a rare stray cat and a boy named Bug, who even kind of looks like one.

The main characters in this story are utterly believable, just two kids who don't fit in their world trying to get by. And the rest of the cast is so over-the-top it would be ridiculous if it weren't done so masterfully. There's the Professor, with grass growing out of his head and kittens in his pockets, Mrs. Terwiliger, the headmistress of Hope House who loves plastic surgery and plastic monkeys, and Odd John with a zipper on his face--don't ask what's underneath! Even New York City is bigger than life and full of real magic.

The pace is good, and the writing doesn't distract from the story, much. There were two tiny spots near the end where the dialog felt a little forced and preachy, but overall the craftsmanship is so good it just blends into the background. And even though I could see the biggest part of the conclusion as early as chapter 12, there were enough smaller twists and surprises to keep me satisfied.

All in all, it's a read worth your time, though I would wait to start it until after your work is done, because once you pick it up you won't put it down until the flight is over!

-Kim

I want this book

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2010/4/13miracle.html

archives in the spring

This past Saturday was the spring 2010 meeting of the New England Archivists in Amherst, MA. It was a pretty good conference, but until just a few days before it began I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to go. The short version is that I thought I had a ride, then, about one week before the meeting, I learned I no longer had a ride and set about scrambling to find one again. At one point I almost gave up and decided not to go, but that would have been the wrong choice. By Wednesday night I had secured my ride again and could rest easy.

Because the meeting was in Amherst, I got up at 5am on Saturday to meet my group at the rental car (by the way, I'm pretty sure ZipCars are the best thing ever for city dwellers). We managed to make only one wrong turn on the way there, for which Christina was demoted from her role as Navigator. She should have kept her position, because on the way back our new navigator failed big time, and only Christina's photographic memory of which stores we had passed on the way there was able to get us back on track.

The campus at UMass Amherst is actually very nice. During our lunch break I went outside and walked around a lovely pond full of ducks and geese. The sessions were pretty good too, for the most part, and I picked up some awesome swag, like tin acid-free boxes big enough only for business cards.

The best part of the day, however, came after lunch at a session on international archives. One of the presenters, who works at Tufts, is from Austria and spent time talking about the state of Austrian archival institutions. How awesome is that? When the session ended I introduced myself and got her card. Later on this spring we're going to meet and talk about libraries and archives in Austria! How much more perfect could that moment have been? I guess I really was supposed to go to this event.

-Kim

well there's good news...

...and there's complicated news. After my one month post-op check-up on Friday, the good news is that my healing is progressing at such a rate that my dentists continue to be astounded. In both thickness and height, this second grafting procedure has yielded even better results than the first. Hooray for me.

The news that gives me complicated feelings rather than simply good or bad is that the earliest date we could schedule my next surgery, the upper left side, is May 21. We did what we could to try to get it in sooner, but this was the best we could do. It boils down to the difficulty in matching together three schedules: mine, my dentist Fatema, and the surgeon Dr. Griffin.

On the one hand, this is great because it won't take any more time away from this semester (it actually falls exactly one week after my graduation). This is very good news, since I have three big projects to complete in the next few weeks and another surgery would make that difficult, to say the least. So there is a sense of relief associated with this news. Also, my healing weeks will be in the empty buffer zone between the end of the semester and the start of my summer job as a tour guide at Park Street Church (unconfirmed, but I know they want me back), so I'll have plenty of time to sleep and recover.

On the other hand, scheduling the next surgery for May stretches out the whole process much longer than I would have liked. The procedure that we do in May will be the third in a series of at least four (there has been some debate between Fatema and Dr. Griffin about whether they might do one more procedure on the bottom teeth when we're done with all the bone grafting, to thicken the soft tissue even more). After the surgery in May I will have to wait four to six weeks before we could even consider doing the upper right. Waiting for the left side to heal is absolutely necessary so that I will be able to chew on that side again when we do the surgery on the right--there is no getting around it unless I want to be on a purely liquid diet for six weeks. Not to mention that having two large areas healing at the same time is just not the best idea. So the fourth surgery would be put off until at least June, best case scenario. Then we take into account all the follow-up appointments to check the tissue growth. I've been in every week for the past month for measurements, photographs and cleanings. The weekly visits are now over, but she wants to see me at the two and three month mark as well. So, best-case scenario, the last date I could have a surgery this summer and complete my follow-up appointments, would be the end of June. That would be a tight squeeze, fitting it in after the one on May 21. So, my series of surgeries is likely to be incomplete when I leave town at the end of summer in preparation for spending the fall in Salzburg. Darn.

On the other hand, having the work unfinished gives me a reason to come back to Boston in January and narrows my job searching options. This could be a good thing, as a narrower focus could make searching easier, and I do have a few good contacts here in Boston, as well as friends who would let me stay with them while I look for a place of my own.

On the other hand, if I don't find a job right away but decide to come back to Boston to complete my surgeries (even without dental insurance) it will be a very expensive few months. If I were allowed to look beyond the Boston area, say back home in the Midwest, I would have more options and therefore, mathematically, better chances of finding something.

On the other hand, by completing this internship I am making my resume much more impressive and making myself much more likely to get a job period, wherever I look. After all, who else will be able to say they've done what I will be doing?

On the other hand, sometimes I worry too much. God has been working things out beautifully so far, and I should trust him to continue. He led me from USF to Boston, to an incredible program where I have learned much and made great friends. He made sure I was in Boston, with access to the most current and exciting dental procedures when I needed them. And he blessed me with an incredible internship, which will bless me in ways I can't even imagine yet. I worry because I don't know where I will be or what I will be doing in January, when really, that's not so bad. Plenty of people don't know what they'll be living next week or whether they'll have enough money for food tomorrow. I have never had to worry about those things, and there is plenty of time still for these details to come together.

As for surgeries, I'll take them as they come and trust that the one who created my mouth will grant me the time and the opportunity to complete the work of repairing and strengthening it.

-Kim