So. Today is the year aniversary of a friend’s death. He just dropped dead in the shower. He was twenty-seven. We found him after chapel. It was horrible.

I cried all the way through Communion, this morning.

The seemingly natural callous nature of some of my classmates (who are going to be priests!) is really bothering me. A treasured friend is visiting, and I want to be a good host, but I feel like the great moodswing maniac. I woke up at the time I was supposed to be leaving for field ed this morning – but did get to hear another treasured friend preach, for my laziness.

I came to the library to escape and just procrastinate: not writing my papers, but reading Zizioulas (the metropolitan of pergamon, considered a heretic by some more conservative orthodox, but a good friend of bishop mark) on the ontological nature of communion. It’s brilliant, and easier to read than Rowan Williams.

And then NEWT review started around me. I’m sitting in the comfy chairs in the research section. ::sigh:: Hard to concentrate before. Harder to cnocentrate now. Many of my friends mill around me, put a hand on my shoulder as they pass, apologize quietly. I smile. I let the words of the head librarian just filter through my numbed brain, remembering where she says all of the resources are so if I’m asked about some obscure heresy (like adoptionism: Christ wasn’t really the Son of God, but God liked him a whole lot, so adopted him), I can figure out what the heck I’m supposed to give my informed opinion on.

::sigh:: I know if I go back to my room, I’ll just mope. Grant you, I’m moping here. Maybe I’ll go to the bookstore and engage in some NEWT preparation/retail therapy. I really do need my own copy of the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church.

(Hello, my name is Hermione. I’m sad, so I’m going to go by myself a large reference text and bury myself in it.)

But, in the midst of it all, a friend is being ordained tonight, right here onhill. December and June. Very popular time with the bishops to ordain us.

And so life continues on, always.