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revdorothyl at 05:47pm on 22/02/2005
revdorothyl at 05:47pm on 22/02/2005Taking a quick peak through my FL while trying to put off grading the rest of my students' papers a little while longer, I noticed a new meme making the rounds, "Ten things you've done that other people might not have" (or something like that).
I doubt that I could come up with a list of ten, but it did start me thinking about the odd sorts of things I've done during my lifetime -- the things that I have a hard time working into a casual conversation, normally.
For instance, how contrived would it sound to suddenly blurt out, "Speaking of the ecumenical movement" -- or the weather in Addis Ababa, or whatever -- "did I ever tell you that I was once in a snowball fight with the Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church?"
It was January of 1984, as I recall, and I was taking advantage of an unusually abundant snowfall in Princeton, NJ, to teach my Southern California friend Eun-Kyoung how to build a snow fort in the middle of our seminary quadrangle. The future patriarch, known to us at the time only as "Bishop Paulos" (residing on the Princeton Seminary campus as a seemingly perpetual visiting scholar in order to keep him from being being returned to Ethiopia and once again subjected to imprisonment and torture -- as I learned only a little while later), came walking by in his customary purple cassock and miter, and so -- just to tease the dear man, whom Eun-Kyoung and I both regarded as a sort of kindly and eccentric uncle -- we each picked up a snowball and started to walk towards him, calling out, "Oh, Bishop Paulos . . .!"
Before we could sing out a second chorus of our teasing chant, Bishop Paulos laughingly bent down, scooped up a handful of snow, and lobbed a pretty accurate snowball at us, while we dived for the refuge of our little snow fort (and got the customary face full of snow in the process!).
In 1992, when another seminary classmate sent me a newspapper article interviewing the new Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Abune Paulos (at long last able to return from exile), I remember thinking of that snowball fight and wishing I'd made more time to talk with him while he was living in our midst.
I doubt that I could come up with a list of ten, but it did start me thinking about the odd sorts of things I've done during my lifetime -- the things that I have a hard time working into a casual conversation, normally.
For instance, how contrived would it sound to suddenly blurt out, "Speaking of the ecumenical movement" -- or the weather in Addis Ababa, or whatever -- "did I ever tell you that I was once in a snowball fight with the Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church?"
It was January of 1984, as I recall, and I was taking advantage of an unusually abundant snowfall in Princeton, NJ, to teach my Southern California friend Eun-Kyoung how to build a snow fort in the middle of our seminary quadrangle. The future patriarch, known to us at the time only as "Bishop Paulos" (residing on the Princeton Seminary campus as a seemingly perpetual visiting scholar in order to keep him from being being returned to Ethiopia and once again subjected to imprisonment and torture -- as I learned only a little while later), came walking by in his customary purple cassock and miter, and so -- just to tease the dear man, whom Eun-Kyoung and I both regarded as a sort of kindly and eccentric uncle -- we each picked up a snowball and started to walk towards him, calling out, "Oh, Bishop Paulos . . .!"
Before we could sing out a second chorus of our teasing chant, Bishop Paulos laughingly bent down, scooped up a handful of snow, and lobbed a pretty accurate snowball at us, while we dived for the refuge of our little snow fort (and got the customary face full of snow in the process!).
In 1992, when another seminary classmate sent me a newspapper article interviewing the new Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Abune Paulos (at long last able to return from exile), I remember thinking of that snowball fight and wishing I'd made more time to talk with him while he was living in our midst.
(no subject)
You didn't smite him in the mush with a snowball either - I wonder if this is another opportunity you regret missing?
(no subject)
I'm surprised and shocked -- yes, shocked at how well you know me!