Today I described to one of my professors, Dr. Prentiss, a few of the many many things I am involved in, because he wanted to know why in the world I was up until all hours of the night getting things done so often.
“You should take up meditating,” he told me. This isn’t exactly meditating, but it’s in the neighborhood.
I’m Catholic, so I dutifully went without meat today (I went to a nice dinner with the Visiting Scholars Committee and got a plate of vegetables…my mother would be beyond proud), and still have some smudges of ashes on my forehead. But now it is 2:00 am, and my roommates and I agreed that since we began our fast after midnight last night, we were in the clear to break our fast after midnight tonight. So I am sitting at my kitchen table, up to my elbows in Pauline theology, but faithfully accompanied by some Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey (how college girl cliché is that?).
I took a break from the huge project my friend Andy and I are working on, which basically involves paraphrasing and writing footnotes to the entire book of Galatians, in order to pull my sugary companion out of the fridge. My roommate Liz, who is slogging away at invertebrate zoology, sensed the presence of chocolate in the kitchen and came over to join me. We just leaned against the counter and dug around the walnuts for a bit, and then we started talking about our Lenten resolutions.
I got a really good idea for how to approach Lent from my CLC leader. She suggested coming up with an overall goal for Lent, then adding something and giving up something to help you work towards that goal. I’m into overarching themes, so I really like this idea. My overall goal: Cura Personalis. Cura personalis is one of Rockhurst’s core values and means care of the whole person. I love this. I am sure I have referenced it before, but I firmly believe that if ever there was a philosophy to live by, this would be it. However, I still haven’t nailed down exactly what I want to do to achieve this goal. I know I want to add daily mass once a week and a Lenten prayer book, but the giving up is a little more amorphous at this point—it was going to be no sweets, but the Chunky Monkey isn’t helping that, though I think I will do something related to physical health.
I haven’t been getting a ton of sleep this week, I am absolutely lost on my Galatians translation, and I’m about four days behind on writing this post, but as I was leaning against the counter with Liz, she said, “This is a nice moment.” And it was. Chunky Monkey, homework stress, lack of sleep and all, and a little moment like that soothed my soul more than anything this week. Cura Personalis. In whatever odd ways it comes.
What Elizabeth and I Look Like When We Have Too Much To Do
(Or when we are pretending to be zombies on Halloween freshman year)
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