Speeding Up, Slowing Down

The new academic year is off and running at Holy Cross, as faculty have returned, students moved in last weekend, and classes began last Wednesday. The Grants Office has taken on three major projects since August 20, all of them involving a moderate yet steady investment of time and effort that keeps me happily occupied. Although various deadlines are comfortably situated at the end of September, I'm noticing a sustained, even occasionally urgent, rhythm in the tasks and interactions that fill my days– meetings, phone calls, online research, document revision, and strolling the corridors to chat with professors and clear my mind.

Tower Hill Botanic Garden
Boylston MA

The increased intensity of my working days– a welcome change after some very slow and quiet days in early August– has inspired an intentional calming of my evenings. Walking up the hill to the Jesuit community at the end of each afternoon, joining my brothers for Mass and dinner, savoring some of the last pleasant evenings to chat and dine on our patio, has been a delightful reward for each day of work. In the evenings, I haven't felt much inclination to return to the world of Internet and e-mail; I've instead found myself reading, penning letters, and knitting, often while listening to the rising crescendo of crickets as cool nights beckon sleep with open windows. It's been surprisingly pleasant, even liberating, to claim these stretches of time for maintaining contact with the deeper fibers of my life– admiring the subtle wonders of nature; delving into intriguing poetry and prose; sustaining and savoring the bonds that connect the Jesuits with whom I live, pray, and work; crafting correspondence that overcomes distance no less powerfully (and sometimes much more so) than other forms of communication.

Shifting daily between these two paces does take effort and intention; I imagine that I'm getting some sense of what it's like to run through the range of a transmission (I've never learned to "drive a stick") on a road trip that involves both modern highways and older country roads. I'm glad to have both speeds in my life as the semester gets rolling, and appreciate the contribution that these complementary modes of work and rest make to my ongoing journey.