Peaches as altars

It’s July in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and fresh peaches are sacred experiences that you can buy for a few coins on the side of the road. Today I bought peaches at a roadside stand and ate one as soon as I got in the car. I did not stop to consider any illness or contagious disease I might suffer from eating an unwashed peach.

In her book An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor wrote, “I don’t have to choose between the Sermon on the Mount and the magnolia tress.” Similarly, there is no reason to distinguish parish or peach as potential sites of worship. Amen.

214 days

On Thursday, December 8, 2022, I held my last class session of the fall 2022 term. Two hundred and fourteen days later (Monday, July 10, 2023), I held my first class session since going on medical leave. Two hundred and fourteen days is 30.5 weeks. I know folks who have conceived and birthed rather healthy human beings in that length of time. The time did facilitate a sort of re-birth and was necessary in ways I couldn’t have anticipated when it began.

Maybe in 214 more days I’ll be able to more fully articulate some of the intangible, beautiful, and sacred things that happened during this time. For now, I just want to mark the official return to teaching (I still love it).