a good day

This was the first part an email I wrote this morning. The subject line was “why I love being a Medievalist (and a Presbyterian type Christian).”

So I get to walk into class today, at my public university, and (depending on what the group presenting offers) talk about Ash Wednesday and a “clean heart” and “willing spirit” as a way into talking about confession in the Middle Ages and then read the story of the Last Supper and then the crucifixion. This not to proselytize, and not “as literature,” but as stories fundamental to Thomas Malory’s view of the world and the Quest for the Holy Grail (or Sangreal). (How do you understand a quest for something if you don’t know what that thing is?)

Then I go home and talk to my own children about some of the same things and just be with them.

(How joyful am I that Bubble got to be in chapel yesterday.
Mommy: What did you sing?
Bubble: We sang lots of things. That’s too hard to answer.
Mommy: Well, I bet I know one thing you didn’t sing. I bet you didn’t sing “Halle Halle Halle.”
Bubble (excitedly): Mommy, we did! It’s tomorrow that we don’t sing that anymore. Until Easter.)

Finally, I’ll come to church and participate in something that these men and women I read also would have known and that will carry on long after I am, in fact, dust.

It’s a good day.