Sunday, April 16, 2006

AUC Alumni Weekend

I went out to AUC for church yesterday. It was Alumni Weekend. It's always interesting to attend the church service to see who shows up and how many I recognize. The biggest surprise was running into Jack and Laura Ferneyhough on my way out after a very long service (it ended at 1:30). I almost didn't recognize either of them, but checking out my Cedar Lake yearbook for 1979 today, I saw the resemblance (he was the business manager and she was the assistant girls' dean. They actually look fairly similar except she has blonde straight hair (it used to be curly and reddish brown) and he is grayer. I wonder what resemblance they saw in me to the 23 year old beginning teacher I was when I worked with them. I know I've changed a lot as a person and a teacher since then. To me, the exterior change doesn't matter nearly as much as the interior ones do. And yet, the exterior is all we really have time for when we meet ever so briefly at such things as reunions. There really is no way to put character out there on the surface for people to see and know how different you are from a time long past...and yet surface is how we are judged too often...

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