I really wiped myself out yesterday — more of an outlay of energy than I had guessed — and I spent today mostly gathering myself to re-enter life at school, doing errands with the inimitable Pip, and taking a very restorative nap.
One odd element of today was the arrival of my copy of the French collection of interpretive essays that includes a piece I wrote about a year and a half ago. It had been translated, of course, but also re-titled (I thought I’d provided a snappy title that would do as well in French as in English, so that was a bit of a disappointment) and re-edited for structure! I didn’t see any major disruption of my argument, but until it sank home I was staring blankly at the first few pages asking myself, “I didn’t write it that way, did I?” I also had a hard time reading the French and figuring out whether the translator had made me sound more like myself or him — but it’s been so long since I wrote any extended prose in French that there’s not really a “myself” to have a particular style.
The nap was really good, though.
I’ll try to cobble together a condensed version of my South Bend talk tomorrow. That’ll be a good discipline, plus it will enable me to avoid working on the wedding disquisition sermon homily aphorism.
Just out of curiosity I clicked on “wedding”, never imagining I’d find a discourse on the Cord and Veil and Secondary Sponsors. We’ve done a number of Filipino weddings at North Shore, and attended a wedding while we were in the Philippines this summer to see how it is done there. We hope that will help us plan weddings with our Filipino members with more confidence in the future. Some of the symbolism is pretty cool. If the reception is to be a Filipino feast, you’re really in luck.