What the What???

That Liz Lemon catchphrase popped into my head when I got up yesterday morning and realized it was the first day of the fall semester here at Duke Divinity School. What the heck happened to the summer, anyway??

Ok nerds, it's time to hit the books again. And what better way to get ready for that than Opening Convocation, a service at Duke that is so medieval it makes me giddy. (That is, because the awesomeness of most anything increases in direct proportion to how medieval it is. Except the bubonic plague, of course, which is just the opposite.)

Our processional hymn for the convocation was the great hymn of St. Francis of Assisi, "All Creatures of Our God and King" (#62 in the United Methodist Hymnal). The final verse is so powerful that I wanted to share it with you as a fitting way to praise our Creator at the beginning of a new academic year:

Let all things their Creator bless,
and worship him in humbleness,
O praise ye! Alleluia!
Praise, praise the Father, praise the Son,
and praise the Spirit, Three in One!
O praise ye! O praise ye!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

For those of you young and old who are trekking back into the halls of academe during this time, may you go with a song of praise to the triune God on your lips and in your heart.