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Again, I ask for forgiveness as far as posting. I had the temerity to entertain the brief thought that things were calming down slightly after the school year started, and the very next day, there was another major upheaval, resulting in switching gears where one of the kids will now be homeschooled. I’m grateful that as bad as this situation could have been, there might be a lot of good that comes from it, and hopefully, the child staying home this year will learn and grow a lot from the extra attention.

I’m grateful to be finding kindred spirits in different places. It’s hard for me to be too social – part of me would definitely like to find a quiet hole someplace and read for the rest of my life – but I’ve really been struck by what happens when a person reaches out a little.

I’m grateful to have been able to make it to the Touchstone Conference. Last year, I did a pretty in-depth review, but they also posted videos from the conference pretty quickly afterward. Although there was a link to a site where they said the presentations would be available online, at least for attendees, I’ve seen nothing posted as of yet. All in all, I think the quality of the presentations were better – they were more geared toward a conference audience as opposed to seeming like academic lectures – but a lot of the joy of the conference, for me, is to be around a group of Christians who consider the questions of what Christian life and Christian witness look like in these days. I’m definitely not someone who parties hard or anything, but I was part of a conversation that Thursday night that stretched until 1am on Friday morning. I got to spend time with old friends, met some new people, and even got to chat a little bit with Rod Dreher (not an affiliate link) and Vesper Stamper, both of whom were presenters.

I’m grateful to have gotten the chance to visit an old friend, someone I hadn’t seen for many years. He is chronically ill, and so there’s gratitude here simply for the fact that I still have the ability to visit him. We’ve known each other since I was 13 (and he, 14), and despite some radically different paths in life, there’s a level of simply knowing him that doesn’t exist with most people I know.

I’m grateful, that, with some help from God, I think, in order to hit some of the high notes without making a fool of myself, I made it through a Sunday Divine Liturgy as the entire choir – with a Serbian setting and the vast majority of the service being in Church Slavonic. Some of it was my own doing, but in the end, the range I sang was something like 2 1/2 octaves, and while I was still mostly singing soprano, I did jump into alto as necessary (for the Cherubic Hymn and the Hymn to the Theotokos) and once even to tenor. I got a little lost a couple of times, but it turned out much better than I probably could have even hoped for.

I am grateful to have been able to sit and just *talk* with a priest, because I just need that sometimes. I’m grateful that it worked out that I didn’t have any kids with me, and although a lot of the talking was on the lighter side, so to speak, there was more to it than “fluff”.

I am grateful for the beautiful weather; it’s been warm, but getting cooler at night, and I couldn’t ask for anything better.

I’m grateful also that with all the driving, there haven’t been any major things. It’s really easy to start to be inattentive to the driving when one is doing so much of it, “autopilot” mode, so to speak, and I’m just thankful that the driving isn’t in extremely stressful situations.

I know there’s a lot more I could list here, but I also need to work on some other things here, so please know that I certainly am grateful for all of you.

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