The Bells of St. Patrick

Grass blows in the wind above me
Trees, planted on balconies, brave Canada’s cold…

Perhaps the start of a poem. Likely not. Either way, I’ve made it to Montréal, where I’ll spend the next three days taking in as much Buddhism; Buddhist Philosophy; Buddhist-Christian Studies; Comparative Religious Ethics; Philosophy, Religious studies, and Humanism; Buddhist Critical/Constructive Studies, Rethinking Secularism, and whatever else I can find (that’s just workshops and panels for tomorrow and Sunday morning).

It is soooo good to be here.

The studio loft I’ll be sharing with another AAR’er. Just a couple blocks from the main conference center. Lovely. Very modern, with cement floors and open 14-foot ceilings.

Basilique St. Patrick, across the street from us but mostly obscured by more modern architecture. Pitty. Churches here, though, are a dime a dozen it seems. Apparently the city is overwhelmingly Catholic, French Catholic mainly, but enough Irish to have a St. Pattys Basilica, thank Jove.

And, just in case you didn’t think that academics of religion were cutting-edge enough. Our exhibition hall is so advanced, it’s already in the year 2010. Ha.

In addition to panels, I hope to meet up with Brian a new friend and colleague from my China travels this summer, Amod, another friend and fellow philosopher of a somewhat Buddhisty inclination… Oh, yes, and Ven. Yifa, fearless leader of our China escapades. Lastly, there’s the ubiquitous job-search (the grown-up version of the Easter-egg hunt, or so that’s how I think of it) and Monday’s paper presentation (a grown up version of the spelling-bee).

Can you believe I lost my 5th grade spelling-bee on the word “yearn”? I swear the announcer horribly mispronounced the word, something like yoohhh-urn. It totally threw me off. Plus it’s at the end of the alphabet. I had albatross through caribou down cold.

Some things, like 5th grade spelling-bees, you never get back. Easter egg hunts on the other hand, come every year.