It is Monday again and I am reminded of my habit of many years when I was working on saying, ‘Good Old Monday.’ My colleagues knew this refrain and often smiled wanly while Nancy would greet the sound of it with a wonderful grin. She said she had never heard anyone refer to Monday as ‘Good Old Monday.’ So today I have resurrected the clarion call to say, ‘Good Old Monday.’ I do this with some passion as Monday is the seventh of our week and thus much of our life. Hope springs eternal and it is almost spring. We are living in a magnificent gift and every day is like Christmas with the surprises that it brings.

The other day I wrote of being in the new house for 23 years. As I thought about the significance of this fact of life I saw the connectedness of the events that brought me to the point I find myself today.

The joy of living is the journey. Southern Illinois University fascinated me since my childhood. The Theatre Department at SIUC sent their actors to many of the small towns in Southern Illinois and conducted plays for us students. I knew that I must find a way to be closer to the University. The results were an over 34-year career at SIUC.

University aided me in thinking big thoughts. I began to question some of the closed thoughts that many with whom I associated proclaimed as truth. I discovered the beauty of all peoples and reveled in their diversity. Some of the kindest folks I know are from other countries races and religions. I have said that travel is the act of reading the story of life…one chapter at a time.

Time goes by as a weaver’s shuttle…it is difficult to see the landscape passing by our train windows when we took the train to Paris from England… We wonder who we are at times. Our sense of place comes from where we have been.

Presbyterians are good people. They made MJ and me and Aaron and Jonathon welcome 26 years ago. An older couple in the church drove to Elkville to bring us cookies the first Sunday we attended. The group loved Aaron and Jonathon and the first Christmas that we were there I understood that this is a church that does Christmas right. The Christmas Eve Service was reminiscent of what a Service must have been like in the time of Charles Dickens. It was a midnight service and everyone wished each other Merry Christmas and we sang Silent Night by candellight. I was in Heaven with the beauty of the event.

We are walking our way back to Jerusalem right now. We need not wait for tomorrow. This is the trip as Jerry Seinfeld told his nemesis Banya to whom he had promised a meal for an Armani Suit that Banya had given him. Banya kept trying to extend his gift to another time until Jerry proclaimed when Banya was enjoying a third or fourth food consumption event on Jerry’s ‘Dime’…’This is the Meal!’