It’s halfway through summer, more or less.  Annie Dillard has a nice metaphor in Teaching a Stone to Talk, about riding one’s bicycle uphill, and then downhill, which she compares to the life cycle.  Dillard suggests that it feels when you’re young like it takes forever to get to the top of the hill --- but then the ride downhill is far too fast.  She writes: “When do the days start to blur and then, breaking your heart, the seasons?  The cards click faster in the spokes; you pitch forward.  You roll headlong, out of control.  The blur of cards makes one long sound like a bomb’s whine, the whine of many bombs, and you know your course is fatal."

Did I say it was a nice metaphor?  Maybe not so nice what with all the bombs and the fatality and the whining.  But time does have a way of running at its own pace --- if we let it.

That’s why I really do like the halfway point. It’s the middle moment that’s still, quiet, in between the vast “no longer” and the equally vast “not yet.”  So much content behind us, and so much more to come.  But for now it’s just the right now, short and sweet.  It’s kind of like the silence between musical notes.  I like the way Rollo May writes about this in Freedom and Destiny.  He cites pianist Artur Sachnabel’s statement: “I don’t think I handle the notes much differently from other pianists.  But the pauses between the notes --- ah, there is where the artistry lies!”

I like the way one of my old teachers, Dominic Crossan (who became a faculty colleague later when I taught with him at DeOther University some time ago) cited Franz Kafka in his book Raid on the Articulate: Comic Eschatology in Jesus and Borges.  Kafka: “What is laid upon us is to accomplish the negative, the positive is already given.”

So I’m savoring this halfway point on this early evening in River Forest.  We’re halfway through registering our new fall students, halfway through building renovations (new photo labs, dance studios, sculpture studios, and more), halfway through all the planning, assessing, budgeting and scheduling as we prepare for an exciting new academic year. We’ll have new courses like “Blues and Jazz Appreciation,” new majors like Clinical Psychology, new minors like Social Justice and Civic Engagement, and new initiatives like visiting international scholars --- one each semester.

Today at this halfway point, one of our current students, Drew Carson, is in England presenting a paper at a professional conference, “New Directions in Austen Studies.”  It draws scholars from around the world, and one of our terrific undergraduate students had a paper accepted for presentation there.  Quite an honor.  It’s taking place, starting today, at the Chawton House Library in the village where Jane Austen lived and worked on Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. Pretty cool that is Drew over there today in that village of Chawton in Hampshire, walking where Austen walked and talking that Austen talk.

Meanwhile, a large group of our current fashion/apparel students is in Paris all month, studying about the French fashion industry, design, couture practices, and more at the Paris American Academy.

This is also the first day of the International Association of Jungian Studies conference at the University of Cardiff, in Wales, where my faculty colleague Clodagh Weldon is presenting a paper on “Teaching Jung on Religion.”  Many more good things happening  --- too many to say.

But we’re halfway there, and I’m glad I’m here.