What I'm Not Missing

Mrangelmeg and I took his cousin Lilli to St Meinrad with us on Friday evening for a couple of functions that happened to be going on that evening in conjunction with this semester's lay student class weekend. As I have said before I am happily not taking a class this semester, but these two particular functions were ones that were not to be missed.

The first was the dedication of a painting that was donated to the school by the students of Fr Damien Dietlein OSB, the Old Testament Professor there. The picture is called Exodus and is of Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, painted by an Ethiopian artist who currently lives in South Dakota. The entire enterprise was done as a surprise to Damo (our name for Father) and he was genuinely touched and surprised by the affair.

The other activity was the inaugural session of Theology in the Round, a session intended to bring Seminarians, Lay Students and Alumni together for an evening of discussion surrounding a topic chosen by a guest speaker. The evening's speaker happened to be another of my professors: Fr. Denis Robinson OSB whom I had for Early Church History and had been telling mrangelmeg about for months. His topic was John Henry Newman and Catholic Education. It was a bit more lecture than discussion, but very interesting none-the-less. I really wanted mrangelmeg to have a chance to experience Fr. Denis because he is a force with which to be reckoned.

After that discussion we spent some time in the little bar on campus which is called the Unstable ( Benedictines take a vow of stability, so they call the bar, the Unstable, get it?) visiting with all my friends who are there for class this weekend while I am not. I do miss them so very much, though I don't miss class at all. I even had a chance to talk to the artist of the painting, which was really cool, they flew him in for the unveiling, but his plane was delayed and he didn't get there till later, but he was going to be there for the weekend.

We had a wonderful time. And we got to see the Extreme Makeover Home Edition house in St. Meinrad (the town) as we drove to the Monastery. How cool was that?

I have to admit, knowing that those of my friends who were there for Fr. Denis' class on Creed were having a quiz on Heresies in the early church on Saturday morning I was more than happy to be returning home Friday night.

Pax