Pennies, pennies, everywhere!

Well, to start out, Happy Easter! I was contemplating making this weekend a 3-day getaway to see family for the holiday, but ultimately decided against it since different family members are recovering from surgery and colds and other stuff and it would have been a minimum of 14 hours of driving.

I can't say that I did anything special with it being Easter today. Since I had a lazy morning and campus is closed down for the weekend, I found a church in downtown Green Bay for evening mass. During his homily, the priest talked about a friend who wanted to feel God's presence in everything he did. The friend saw a penny on the ground one day and felt compelled to pick it up. The priest said that his friend started to see pennies everywhere he went, which he would go and pick even going out of his way to get them from a street interaction and an airport bathroom.

The priest's friend thought about why he felt compelled to start picking up pennies in the first place. The priest said that God was speaking to his friend by saying that every person has worth and is worth that effort to see as another being of value. I did like that the priest said "standing here as a representative of the Catholic Church, there are some individuals that the Church is struggling on how to act, but those individuals still have worth", indirectly referring to the GLBTA community (at least in my opinion).

Before the priest gave his interpretation (or that of his friend's, I forget) about God's message with picking up pennies, I had my own in mind: little efforts in the moment can build up to something great. Growing up, my dad would have us look for loose coins when walking around town. While we didn't peek in public bathrooms, Dad would always have us pick up those loose pennies and nickels. Then, we would put the coins on the kitchen windowsill, separated by person. It made for a fun little game, although Dad was usually the winner more often than not.

When the total on the windowsill got to be around a dollar (or if the windowsill was filled with pennies), Dad would put all the coins in a little tin on top of fridge and keep track of how much was in there. Then, when the tin was full, he would go to the bank and turn it into savings bonds for my sister and me. To be honest, I don't remember how many times Dad went to the bank, but I'm pretty sure the bonds he would make would be for $100 at a time and those bonds have definitely hit their maturity date. I know it doesn't have the full impact without some big dollar amount, but I definitely think there's a life lesson with knowing that a decent chunk of money came to be by picking up those pennies in the city hall parking lot or walking to the car at Target.

The only non-Easter holidays that pop up for today are National Deep Dish Pizza Day and Plum Pudding Day... and yeah, didn't eat either of those. Hmm... I know I've shared the fact that I got into grad school, but today is the first day of Explore Your Career Options Week, and I shared my acceptance on Facebook and wiped the dust off of my LinkedIn profile. I do have a checklist for grad school things this week, so I think it's right up that weekly observances' alley!

DFTBA