Tuesday December 17
This last day students take finals this term; campus decompresses and campus intensifies: grading exams and processing the grades adds labor intensivity around the university — grades entered into student records; letters of academic probation and dismissal — recording achievement and days of reckoning. Grief for students we didn’t find a way to help enough, determination to engage other students needing help. Sorting out legitimate disputes, and less legitimate. The labors at the end of term.
Blessings to each of us whose labor pressure rises these days.
john sj
D. H. Lawrence, of Lady Chatterly fame, wrote poetry as well. Here is an Advent prayer if there ever was one.
“What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody who wants to do us harm.
No, no, it is the three strange angels. Admit them, admit them.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence