The first year students have arrived. The crazy, tangled hustle of many efforts will soon begin.
For me, I have not really stopped since the semester last ended. So, aside from the writing I must do today, I am taking time to slow down, study the Scriptures, pray, and rest in the enjoyment of beauty.
I find beauty most in sights and sounds. There is beauty in the warble of forest birds as the afternoon sun filters through the last green leaves. I will practice my trumpet again today, perhaps for the last time alone in Zug Hall, alone as I float on waves of lyric sound, alone in the delayed company of so many beautiful minds of the past. Or I will close my eyes and feel the smiles of a friend's voice, or imagine worlds in the measured tones of a narrator reading great stories.
Most beautiful of all are thoughts of Christ.
I have been listening to C.S. Lewis's "Out of the Silent Planet" on BBC7 radio. Much thinking to do, much thinking...
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings