Hello everyone, and welcome to Speaking with Joy, a podcast to fill your soul, challenge your mind,

and make you brave. I'm your host, Joy Clarkson, and an evangelist for all things good, true, and beautiful.

So make yourself a cup of tea, find somewhere comfortable, and let's dive in to this week's episode.

Be praised for all your tenderness by these works of your hands,

suns that rise and rains that fall to bless and bring to life your land.

Look down upon this winter wheat and be glad that you have made, blue for the sky and the color green that fills these fields with praise. Hi, everybody, and welcome back to a brand new

season of Speaking with Joy. I am your host, Joy Clarkson, and after a lengthy break since Christmas,

I am delighted to be back with you all. I am speaking to you today from my empty apartment in Scotland.

Joel is away for the weekend, and so I have the whole place to myself, and it's been a gloriously

free and luxurious

Saturday after a busy first week at the university. It has been a very long January, as all

Januaries are in Scotland. The days are very short, sometimes five hours long, and the town is

absolutely desolate, totally deprived of students,

which has meant that I've gone a little bit crazy, but also gotten a lot of writing done on my PhD.

But things are starting to look up because the grocery stores have one pound, by which I mean the currency and not the measurement of weight, one pound

bunches of daffodils. And so spring is winking at us and maybe not that far away. And so as I dive

into this new semester and probably the final semester of my PhD, I'm excited to welcome you back to speaking with joy.

Now, before I begin this new season and this new episode in earnest, I wanted to share with you

a few things about what this season will be like, what these new episodes coming up will be all

about. And a part of that is a little disclaimer that because this is my last semester

of really writing on the PhD, I will probably not be quite as consistent with posting these episodes

every week. So it might be every other week, or maybe some weeks I will do one every week.

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