I won't pinch your cheeks.

I  won't hug you if you are the non-hugging type.

I googled "animals hugging" and found lizards. Cool!But, I will tell you how great it is to see our alums come back year after year during homecoming weekend! For several years of my life, I was  always the one going somewhere. As the Billy Joel song says, "Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes,I'm afraid its time for goodbye again." As I traveled as a solo backpacker around the world, I said my goodbyes to my hosts, my travel partners and my fellow hostel residents.

For 9.5 years, I have been a campus minister at WFU, saying my "hellos and gooodbyes" to people who come and go from here. It is interesting to be in such a transient place as a university campus. I have also worked at a youth hostel and a homeless shelter, both of which had their own transient residents.  But now, I am the one who stays in one place and interacts with all sorts of great pepole and know all the while that ou rtime together is precious because college is not an end unto itself, but is a means to an end.

Just moments ago, I was updating a paper I had written several years ago to present it to some WFU administrators. It has short bios on several of our students who have gone on to do great things in the world. To be the one who gets to stay here, at the same vantage point, while these young people are at WFU for a few years is such an interesting and unique position. Somebody somewhere said "You never step into the same river twice" (click here for a very unacademic attribution of that quote.) So it is here, where students come for four years (or for the lucky biz students, five!) Or for a year or two of graduate school, and then they are off, making a home in Chicago, Texas, New York Charlotte or Whittier, NC. They send emails announcing engagements, marriages, births, advanced degrees, professional achievements and updates about where they are and what they are doing.

Folks, we love this stuff.

So please, whether you are going to be on campus for Mass on Sunday (1130,8,10 in Davis
chapel) know that we love hearing from our alums. Even the smallest thing. You just moved into an apartment and got a poodle? great! tell us about it! We love updates. I cant wait until Sunday!