3 things I'm smiling about

1. I'm not graduating today. I'm done. In 2012, I finished my PhD. Seeing the candidates go through their receptions and their graduation ceremony, I am 200% (2 years worth) happy that it's not me. But it's SO good to see the faces of the men and woman from our classes, students and faculty alike.

Cohort #1. Several graduate this year; the others are still working at it.

2. Life feels good. It's been a week of renewing friendships and eating (first half of the week) before I started moving (second half: cycling, walking, exercise).

3. We have a teeny but happy lull this weekend before the storm or moving ramps up again. We have less than 9 weeks to go before we leave. W finished 57 semesters of teaching (classroom on-site) for Northwest U. He played accordion for his students to start the class, the final hurrah to years of "Bad Music Fridays" and was a bit teary-eyed after the last class. We're visiting a new church, hosting our kids (30th birthday for one), and shedding more stuff.

What are you smiling about this weekend?

Read more:
*Keep my statutes, and observe them; I am the Lord; I sanctify you. Leviticus 20:8 ESV

*And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness; it will be for those who walk on that Way. The unclean will not journey on it; wicked fools will not go about on it. No lion will be there, nor any ravenous beast;     they will not be found there.

But only the redeemed will walk there, and those the Lord has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. Isaiah 35:8-10 NIV

*Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed," says the Lord, who has compassion on you. Isaiah 54:10 NIV

*It is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Philippians 2:13 ESV

Creator God, may we abide by your word and care for your creation. As your son Jesus Christ cared for us, may we care for those who are in need today. Amen.

C.S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. 

This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn: We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. 

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.