Spring has arrived!

Spring flower by Linette Popoff-Parks
It's been a seemingly endless winter, with snow and ice taunting us well into April. But we're finally getting season-appropriate weather, and no one's complaining. We see students come to class in shorts, people pull out lighter jackets, buds take shape on tree branches, and many of us feel a touch of hope in the air.

You'll also find a touch of hope in the contributions to this winter 2018 issue of MU Voices. Jesse Cox finds God's home in his grandmother's kitchen; Jayson Grayson writes about a life-changing book; Angelica Rivera tells a ghost story driven by love; Joshua Johnson shares his incredible drawings; Jackie Pruitt shares words of wisdom; and Matt Murphy suggests a solution to gun violence in schools. Photos from MLK Week and the Detroit March for our Lives shows Madonna's commitment to the greater community. Barbara Glover's stories reveal the potential of cooperation and new beginnings.

No matter how overwhelming final class projects are, how distressing the national and international news is, how urgent our worries feel to us--let's stop and absorb all these signs of spring and new life. This may be God's way of telling us that better times are coming. We have to believe it.

With milder weather, we are waking up and lightening up. A former tutor shared a quotation from Thomas Merton: "There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around, shining like the sun."

-- Frances E. FitzGerald, editor

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