December 10th 2006

I turned twenty five yesterday. It was really fun.
A year ago I wrote this entry in a little red journal:

"In front of a mirror I stood and was self-aware, nose to nose with myself, in a big way for the first time in a long time. Self-aware and self-confused, uncertain about how to situate myself in the world.
A big question, pointless maybe -- Who is looking back at me? I looked close enough to see the reflection of my own reflection in the wet dark centers of my eyes. Who is that?
He who drinks his lover in with the same eyes, and succeeds at stilling her heart with his words and touch long enough to have her trusting him.
He who takes the Eucharist like a child takes candy, like a glutton. Feeling around for God with his tongue between bites. Mostly hungry, but almost as desperate -- and by no means sure of which is the nobler motivation.
He who dabs at paper with his pen; or blinks through a few pages of literature; or gives enough of himself to the people around him to keep them interested and intrigued. All these things, from time to time, trying to rake out something more than an existence.
I was close enough to see my pores, to see my face that was a lot more of a child's face last time I looked that close.
Luckily my step-brother knocked on the bathroom door and startled me away from myself. But I'll have to go back. There's something in my that needs sorting through. I need to listen some more, to almost cry some more, and to stare..
Later I talked with my infant niece about the significance of the experiences that are common to life but new to me, the ones that are all bundled and tangled up inside of me right now. She laughed and gurgled spit out from between her vibrating lips."

Having done those things -- sorted, listened, started crying finally -- I expect to be right back at it this year. I may even arrive at some statements to share, if not here then in some format somewhere else. I'm feeling stronger this December 10th than I did the last one.
Today I'm driving an hour south, from Indianapolis to Bloomington, where I have an appointment to sign for an apartment there. I'll be moving come January. This feels like a big transition. I think I need to talk with EllaAnne some more; she's shaping her gurgles and spit into words now, but continues to remind me that no matter what words I might manage to arrive at, laughter probably still sums it up the best.

the sacrament of cereal

On the same morning that I gave Lauren a ring with a diamond in it (a diamond passed down to me that once belonged to my great-grandmother, reset in a whitegold band, pure and simple) she gave me a hand crafted metal bowl, unfree of blemishes, the perfect size in both width and depth. She and I enjoy cereal, enjoy the experience of sharing it with each other. We enjoy life. We enjoy each other's hands and feet. The bowl is small enough for a bowl of cereal and just big enough to wash one's hands and feet in it, or to wash someone else's hands and feet in it. I think it's sturdy enough for life.
It was July 11th, early in the morning before anybody else in the whole world was awake, that Lauren and I got engaged. And we've been that way ever since.

application unsent

a month or two ago i was filling out an application for christian theological seminary, which is just that, a seminary, here in indianapolis. i didn't finish the application cause i changed my mind, but i didn't waste my time filling things out either. i had begun a draft of my personal statement, specifically the part about what i want to be when i grow up. i wrote about wanting to be a professor because i get excited about contributing to other people's education, which is of course contributing to their formation and their process of becoming who they are. then i thought about what sorts of things have contributed to making me the sort of person that gets excited about things like that, or just the sort of person that i am in general. the influences are as many as the people i've met and the conversations i've had with them, i decided. the influences are intricate and convoluted.
my formation -- as in the lines scrawled in black across the canvas of my life, the lines that give me shape -- was initiated by things like parental influence, religious heritage, culture and my social status within it. these are the things that distinguish me as a person who belongs to a certain time in a certain place, and who bears certain expectations.
my becoming -- as in the colors that fill me in and make me me -- are such things as the decisions i have made to adventure, play, love, speak, read, pursue, be still, encounter, and desire. things like my experiences in the wilderness, encountering the natural elements, encountering God, encountering a subtlety of existence that exceeds in quality the one that exists in the midst of the always striving elements of civilization. like books i've read and teachers i've had that have told me explicitly or in disguise, didactically or suggestively, that truth is mediated to us through metaphors; that imagination is essential for deciphering the truths within these metaphors; and that it is the same with God, beauty, and hope as it is with truth. like relationships that have integrally communicated to me that i am loved and capable of loving, and in the process have periodically revealed to me how it is that i go about receiving and expressing love. like the places i have gone in response to my commitment to an established revulsion toward the status quo; the places i have gone geographically, theologically, and life-stylistically.
these are the things that distinguish me as a person who is himself and not finished and, like the rest of you, not quite definable. it is the first that give my body shape and the latter that fill it with breath.

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in the meantime, even though i changed my mind about cts, i'm still pondering and precariously close to pursuing more education. i listed a few reasons for this pursuit on the incomplete application.
--because i can't stop thinking. and a context for that, a plot of land that my thoughts can flourish in, would not be a bad thing to have. without it they might run amuck, get overgrown, and not end up nourishing anyone.
--i'm ready for some more structured intellectual stimulation.
--i want to teach, and like it or not (a lot of the time i do, some of the time i don't) i need credentials to do that.
--i want to teach, but i need to establish a big, fat, insatiable habit of learning first.

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and then the application asked about my values. i made a list on the back of the envelope that the application came in. -- listening -- awareness -- simplicity -- primacy of relationship -- blessed are the peacemakers -- significant amounts of creating, noticing, and appreciating beauty. i jotted down that i value several of the traditional things as well. things such as fidelity and honesty and ambition and hard work. further to the right on the envelope i noted that i value travel and home, reading and writing, people and solitude.

lauren and i ran the indianapolis mini-marathon together on saturday. our experience contributed significantly to my renewed appreciation for large portions of humanity getting excited with one another about doing something fun, beneficial, and difficult. when that happens that's good news as far as i'm concerned. i value that.

I've been back a year

Before coming back from Europe last year I spent my final night in the Dublin airport and sat there with my eyes squinted tight trying to see what it was that I had just experienced. The most accurate thing I determined was that I was much the same as when I had left and that I was much different.
The similarities and differences between what characterizes a human on one portion of her/his journey compared to another portion are almost always blurry. Very seldom do we wake up dramatically distinct from the person we went to sleep as. But always, I'm convinced, things are happening and shifting in us subtly. We hope for the better, but it's best not to worry about it too much.

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Right now the things I'm big on (which is to say: the things I'm thinking about, reading about, talking about, and trying to, even if ever so slightly, live about) are, amongst other things, in no particular order, the following:
-- environmentalism. I pray each night that God would help me to honor the earth and all its inhabitants. That prayer hasn't gotten fully answered yet. Neither is it any great comfort to me to know that every single person reading this, and everyone who isn't, could do a better job at it. We're each actually responsible - regardless of our faith or politics - to do so.
-- feminism. Feminism is not about angry women wanting a platform, and it's not about suggesting that only men are capable of oppression. Feminism is about acknowledging that an essential voice throughout history and in the world today is far too typically and easily ignored. It's mostly about wanting to live somewhere where mutuality and embrace are the norm rather than domination and alienation.
-- rethinking salvation. A step away from the traditional concepts of heaven and hell, toward a (hopefully) more complete desire for wholeness and justice (corporately, and then personally too).
-- rereading the bible. Trying to express an appreciation for the bible as a magnificent collection of literature - if not all literary masterpieces (some are, some aren't) than at least literary treasures. And trying to express that in such a way that doesn't warrant the assumption that I'd like to take God's voice out of the bible.
-- language. Not like cuss words and stuff. But an awareness of the affect of the words and symbols, images and metaphors that we use. How we term our world and articulate reality carries a lot. I consider the language we use to talk about God to be of specific, and even elevated, importance.

That's just a touch of the temperature of who I am or what I'm about (or what's the difference?) right now. Just a touch.

McTrees

I feel sorry for the trees off of interstate 84 planted in the picnic area of the McDonalds; situated there to give a touch of atmosphere to an otherwise plastic scene.
I feel like one of them someitmes. All tree-y and wild and connected to the earth with life and nourishment coursing, gracing through me. But my roots pressed up against the concrete of the suburbs, my soul situated in the midst of a plastic culture promising the fulfillment of plastic dreams.
It's hard to flourish beneathe the golden arches.

Panentheism

The people whose lives I am, in one way or another, currently involved in are representative of much. Their lives expose me and break me open to the layer of reality beneathe the crust of the life that I live when it's just me that I'm concerned with.
I kissed a woman's face this morning, was told that I am loved and knew it to be true, nigh on limitless.
I hold my infant neice about everday, the well being of my soul requires it. She tells me about how valid it is to be vulnerable. She is complete and whole, with her limbs filling in and beginning to flail about with some purpose and precision; but she is thorough in her neediness, adorabley so.
I walked through the hallways of an elementary school with a young girl who has been mostly unsought after for as long as she has been capable of blinking through the tears that come as a result; that come as a result of being passed from home to home, not knowing which family to fall in love with.
I held and restrained and chased after and reasoned with a six year old boy adopted only two years ago from Russia. He fluctuated from anger to adoration rapidly, back and forth, barely receptive to the love and hopes wrung tightly from the ragged lives of the teachers and parents who are everyday with him.
Another boy, eight perhaps, with down's syndrome follwed me from class to class and sometimes followed the directions I gave him. We read together. He looked at me with his eyes locked into mine and he touched my beard with curiosity.
I talked on the phone with my friend who is smarter than most friends that I have and more confused about life than he is smart.
I talked face to face with a pastor who is just as real life as I am, and at least as sensitive to it.
I traded greetings and brief conversation with my neighbor who is late into his fifties. He's a dealer, and in his spare time, like a bit of a parent, he keeps watch over his young white naive neighbors.
And then some.
And these things happening to me, to us -- if we'll just open our eyes and realize it -- are far more significant than they are transitory. They happen - snap - like that and I wake up tomorrow barely aware, if I'm lucky, that somehting divine took place when my life rubbed up against hers or his, theirs. Life is happening. All around you life is happening. So hang on tight or blink your eyes fast - whatever you need to do to cope or keep up. Your knuckles will go white and you'll blink your eyes dry before you realize that all around you life is happening. Then you'll let go and dampen your gaze. Then open your eyes wide for once and breathe in big deep breaths that tingle your skin as they enter your lungs. Let go and die. See God everywhere, in almost everything. And simply live.

Psalm 126

It was nearly seven years after I experienced the knife, which was only eight days after I left my mother's womb and first experienced exposure to this world, when I saw the lunatic spew out his prayers and poems with globs of spit pasted to the corners of his mouth.
We had been traveling more days than I could count. I was young and slow in the mind, and I could not count beyond what my toes and my fingers helped me with, but our days in the dust were beyond that number. I was young, my feet were soft and they grew raw. The beasts shriveled where they are meant to be heavy with milk and instead the heaviness was in their heads which hung down like stones on the ends of their long necks. The women took steps slowly. The children whimpered, when they didn't have enough breath to wail. The men were either quiet or violent. No one remembered why we walked. We just walked. One reliefless step. Then another. Without emotion, without purpose, without so much as a swallow of water to divide between our company. Our throats ached, cracked like the ground beneath me shoeless feet. And no one remembered why. Except the lunatic. Apparently he remembered; and his feet, toes bleeding, carried him from one clump of the travellers to another, eyes laughing and beard frothing, tiring us all the more with his rhyming racket..

the nameless one has made us
free
we dream we dream
our mouths are filled
with laughter
see
we dream we dream
my tongue alive -
wiggles, rattles, spittles song
to the nameless one
here, with us
all along
the way we dream

He raved about the Nameless One. He raved about our dreams. I don't remember dreaming. I remember being hungry, being thirsty. I remember squinting against the sun and digging sand out of my ears. But his eyes rolled up in his head when he laughed, the thick locs on his narrow head shaking. My father said to ignore him. My mother stifled a smirk. My baby sister passed gas. And the lunatic went on -- clawing at the dirt, screaming at the desert, mad with a fool's hope. He said we'd be happy. He said it in a prayer. Said we'd water the dusty fields with our tears and harvest a whole crop of happiness.
No one believed him, he was a lunatic.

At Hubbard and Cravens I talked with Jeff.

Jeff said that Paul Tillich called God the 'ground of all being' and pointed out how appealing that must be to me because I am grounded; in the sense that I like the earth, I like having my bare feet touch the dirt and the press of sharp rocks against my soles. He's right, it is appealing. Because it almost doesn't limit God. It almost lets God just be, without qualifiers and particulars. Qualifiers and particulars eventually have to get trashed. They are (and are meant to be) pretty and nice smelling at first. Then they wilt and should get dumped into the kitchen garbage. Lots of us keep the wilted particulars around because we can't stand an empty vase. But we shouldn't worry much. The garden is in full bloom.

my hippie spirituality

It begins with long hair, on my head and on my face, unkempt; and it manifests itself in the odor of my armpits often unadorned with deodorant, the hand sewn elbow patch on my thinning thrift store sweater, and a more often than not vegetarian diet. It begins there because these things have to do with me on the outside, and I believe spirituality has a lot to do with me and my body and how we interact with the stuff of the world that is going on outside of us. It continues in that my recent spiritual life has been one of less discipline; more of a barefoot, free-love, go-with-your-emotions style of (christian) spirituality. My focus has rested more heavily upon peace and love; shifted from the prove-my-point debates of the classroom, to poetry readings in a field where we all sit cross legged in a circle with smiles on our faces. Someone picking at the strings of an old guitar. And Jesus is unavoidabley central to it all, because this flimsy, free life of the spirit that I have been living has somehow sustained me and been sustained, even without the aid of drugs and sex, even with only a limited amount of rock'n'roll.

'over the hedge'

deceit. nudity. forbidden love. revenge. homicide. car chases. violence. explosions. family values. materialism. commercialism. capitalism. gluttony. secrecy. romance. mission. loss. redemption. pleasure. friendship. forgiveness. community. seduction. diplomacy. diabolical banter. world-stopping hyperactivity. satire. hypocrisy. destruction. reconstruction. pain. growth. ruin. and wonder.
plus the soundtrack is the fruits of the combined efforts of ben folds and hans zimmer.

i would encourage everyone to see this movie.

paria day four

an entry i penned during the walk through the canyon and desert that surrounds the twists and turns of the paria river in arizona/utah, an adventure that i shared a week ago with my trail mates: sparrow, friar, and mouse (aka laurence, ryan, and scott):

we were to walk with our Abba today and let Him let us share our dreams. 'what are your dreams?' is what we started the day with. and, 'let your heavenly Father whisper to you about you.'
my dreams, or the metaphors for them, are changing -- i still want to battle complacency, but my metaphor doesn't require bloodshed anymore - or at least not the involuntary shedding of another's blood.
now i dream of sculpting awareness into the everyday moments.
i dream of helping people become aware. aware of real life situations in our local and global communities. aware of the beauty and tragedy that spins together on this globe. aware of God. aware of eachother. aware of the cries for justice, the cries for friendship, the cries for acknowledgment. i want to help people be aware of things like hunger and warfare and sickness that exist unnecessarily; and to help people be aware that the way we live has an effect on these realities - helping the realities to become worse, allowing them to remain, or aiding in the solution. i want to help people be aware of their neighbors' hurts, or even to be aware that they have hurting neighbors who need to be loved actively, not ignored, not judged. i want to help people be aware of their connection to the earth, and aware of our general disregard for it. i want to help people be aware of our connection to eachother. i want to help people be aware of our connection to Someone who most of us call God. I want to help people be aware of the general truths of the teachings of the Christian church.
mingling hard won understanding of the spiritual life with the gritty, given details of the day to day. mingling action and contemplation, the sacred and the profane, the human and the divine, heaven and earth.
i want to help people be aware in these ways and more, and i don't want to leave them there just as i don't want to be left there. i dream of joining together with the human beings around me to dance toward an appropriate response in thought, word, and deed. so i dream of being a part of a community of increasing and tangible awareness that is committed to God's dream of love and peace.
i hope for this dream to come true.

ocean sides

apparently now that i'm back home (one of them) i won't be writing as much on this weblog.
that's kind of what i expected, but the past couple weeks have seen to its being true.
i will still write sometime probably.

still sifting through the emotions and realities that go along with being back on this side of the atlantic. believe it or not, this side of the atlantic is not far off from the other side. it is different, but not even mostly different, only some. there are people that need to be loved. there are moments that ought to be lived well - both intentionally and carelessly at the same time. there are responsibilities that are sometimes daunting, sometimes delightful. it's important (essential?) to share conversations and craft memories with others; just as it is to seek the hefty peace of God in solitude.

the public transportation in indy sucks, there isn't as much cobblestone, and it doesn't smell the same. but other than that..

a forehead with a story to tell

I've got this awesome tan face, pale forehead thing going on. I wore a bandana while I was walking in the hills, a bandana and no sunscreen.
I'll sleep in a bed, under a roof for the first night in six tonight. I'll fall asleep to the sound of people snoring instead of sheep bleating.
I'm going to miss the sheep.
And a whole lot else too no doubt - but I'm ready to come home. And I'm coming home.
Flight number 93, Dublin to Chicago OHare, Tuesday 10.45am.
Peace..

a plea for fencelessness

Even the tiniest fragments of life shared has the power to quelch great furies of lonliness.
Broken bread and the common cup, Bonhoeffer's 'Life Together', the doctrine of the holy Trinity, People's Market in the park between Sandycove and Dun Laughaire -- we are meant to commune; by these things and more I have been convinced. And the idea of such communion, not to mention the brief and often whispy but very real glimpses of its realization, is absolutely saturated with the staggering hope of what some of us call the gospel.
I'm ready to live this, and to know it, and to spread it like the contagion that it is.
Now how do we go about it?
I believe it begins and ends with laughter.
I believe along the way it is just as full of tears and honest struggle as it is of the playful endeavor of creating memories of joy.
I believe it means we begin loving one another even and especially when it makes us sweat and feel pain. I believe it means we begin loving not only each other but also the others we label as 'them' until 'they' have disappeared into the all embracing 'us'.
I believe we ought to take seriously, and maybe even literally, some of the things that Jesus more-than-suggested; some of the things we have failed to include in our white-picket-fenced gospel of personal space and private property.
We should pray. We should want it. And we should try.

"The new story [which is also the oldest] is about communion, and it will be up to us whether we experience it as a taste of heaven or as a dose of the other place." (a.jones)

re-imagination

Reading 'Re-imagining Christianity' by Alan Jones, Episcopal priest and Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. He tells about how 'the monks who prepared him for the priesthood taught him that the life of faith was like falling in love.' He says, 'the monks told us that three experiences would be ours: pregnancy, suffereing, and communion. These three gave life its dramatic structure.'
Pause a moment.
The images of Mary with her son, the image of Christ on the cross, and the mystery of the holy Trinity. Pregnancy, suffering, communion.
As images and art these are more prevelant in the Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox flavors of Christianity than they are in the Protestant -- but as realities I think these elements are common not only within all sects of Christianity but within all of the branches of humanity.
On the most basic level each of us each day should be able to see, if we open our eyes wide enough to take notice, that we do indeed experience pregnancy, suffering, and communion. We are, each of us at some point everyday that we are alive, pregnant with hope for something, anything. Whether it be a noble hope, for a world in which peace dominates; or a simple hope, for a kind word or just a smile from a neighbor, even a stranger. We each experience suffering, that is not difficult to admit. We each find ourselves hurt and hurting, and it is more often than not a result of a hope deffered if not shattered. Communion - we desire it, we need it, and, thank God, we receive it. And if that's not the case, if you happen to be the one whom communion has managed to ellude then go to someone, or go to God, or a tree or a lake or a bird or a flower, and extend a hand, an embrace, a look, a compliment. For such an extension results in reception, and that is communion.
How invigorating it is to me that these realities of the human situation - pregnancy, suffering, and communion - are not only represented but fulfilled in the Christian tradition. Or is it the other way around? Or who cares?

tunes

The past few days I've been dancing and humming to all sorts of tunes. The tune of the Blasket Islands across the white speckled waters on the western coast of Ireland. The tunes of the dynamic personalities manifested in Joey the Irish bus driving poet and Sherah the middle-aged, boisterous, stout, redheaded psychologist from North Carolina. The tune of rain on my face from a top the battlements of Blarney Castle. I swum in the Atlantic with Eric the quasi-agnostic Swede. The waves that took us under were just a stones throw from the hillside where the first scene from Far and Away was filmed. In Killarney I caught one final set of Irish traditional music in the pub with the fire place, and I found a book of Seamus Heaney's poetry to flip through in Adare's small town library.
Dublin welcomed me back for the night.
Tomorrow - sabbath in People's Market between Sandy Cove and that port that sounds like Dunleery, but is spelled something like Dun Laoghaire.
Monday I look to the hills..

my friend edinburgh

goodbyes are tough. and it's hard to hug a city.
a few more hours in this place that has become for me.. what has it become? it is not home, i don't want to keep on living here, but it has been.. what has it been? this place has been the backbone of my pilgrimage. and leaving it feels significant in such a way that might make me cry and will definately make me smile. leaving it leaves me happy-sad, empty-full.

many a wrong and its curing song
many a road and many an inn
room to roam
but only one home
for all the world to win
(g.macdonald)

olives with garlic in 'em

The combination of Lauren, Cassie, and Amy is a thing more to be experienced than described. If you get the opportunity I fully recommend that you embrace it. When said combination is combined with the sharing of one's favorite city, the sharing of meals, the sharing of tea, and the sharing of adventures, what results is a heart (or several) quickened toward happiness.
I love hanging out with girls. Especially the sort who play in mud on Scottish hill sides (or was the mud playing with us?), who infect you with the enjoyment they are feeling at any given moment, who buy you ludicrously delectable cups of hot chocolate and make vats of spinach pasta with olives jammed full of garlic mixed in next to the sun-dried tomatoes, and who consider the wetness of rain to be a touch of welcome, a whisper of endearment from the author of all weather, the author of all that is right and good and lovely.
You should have seen the sunset we got their first night here. God likes us, I'm convinced.

The combination of Lauren, me, and not an ocean in between us will also remain undescribed.. "for words are vain, reject them all, they utter but a feeble part.." It was poetry. The best bits of life are.

providence

My first night in Italy I went to sleep out in the open under the stars and a clear sky. I woke up out in the open in the rain. For the most part after that I slept inside under roofs, but never the same one twice.
In Vernazza, which is a coastal village in Italy not all that far from Genoa where I flew in to, I met Geoff, who is Australian, from Queensland, and he is a pentacostal. Our stories connected in such a way that we moved rapidly from acquaintanceship to brotherhood; he enriched my faith.
In Barcelona, which is on the eastern coast of Spain and a lot bigger than Vernazza, I met Chris from Berlin, and we didn't delve into many matters of faith, but he certainly brightened my day.
When I got to Pomplona at 5am one morning it was very cold and I was very alone. At about 5.17am I met Iago, who also had a backpack and also planned to walk across Spain, but he was planning to walk across more of it than I was. Iago smoked pot twice during the seven hours we were together and he said a few cuss words in English, maybe some in Spanish too, I don't know, even still I think he was an angel because I'm convinced that, without his help, I'd still be wandering around Pomplona aimlessly with a sad, confused look on my face. He helped me find a train that would take me to Leon in the middle part of northern Spain, that's where I started walking.
My first day on el Camino do Santiago (the Way of Saint James) I met Laura from Iowa, except sort of from Madrid, because she has lived and taught english there for four years. She is Jewish and is passionately afraid of snakes, but even more passionately in love with languages. Next year she is moving to Beijing because she wants to learn to speak Chinese. Laura and I shared lots of meals and lots and lots of conversations, she also enriched my faith.
I walked for a day with a German woman named Dorothy, except the German version of Dorothy which probably has dots over the 'o' and ends with an 'a'.
I walked a bit with Rainer from Austria too, he's the first person I've ever walked with, except my Grampy Mitchell, who was difficult for me to keep up with. The garlic soup at the restaurant we ate at was well worth the effort.
Gregoire, who also walks fast and far and at all hours of the night, is a culinary artist and he is who I'd stay with if I ever visited Germany.
Faith and Leslie from Ohio, who were visiting Santiago de Compostela, took it upon themselves to make a mercilessly wet and rainy day into a wonderful one when they invited me to breakfast about an hour before my flight back to London.
A significant number of things like that kept happening all throughout that made it difficult for me to not believe in providence, or at least that there is a God who likes me and has some sort of influence over the ordering of events and encounters.
I had fun learning a couple Italian words and some Spanish phrases, I patted several stray cats, made friends with a few dogs, wanted to bottle up one of the small farming villages I walked through so that I can pull it out and sit in it when ever the world gets too busy and hurried for me, and I walked all the way to the Atlantic, went for a swim.
Aunt Doris made my life more beautiful before and after my adventures by receiving me into her home, feeding me at her table, and beating me at Skip-Bo. If everyone had an Aunt Doris the world would be a better place.
Speaking of beauty, there's a good bit more of that on her way to me now, but I'll write on that later.. one heart stirring experience at a time..

j&b haze

The nearly steady drizzle in Edinburgh didn't keep Josh and Beth and I from exploring the streets by foot, taking it all in - glory and graffiti alike - though it did probably push us into the pub a bit more frequently than we may have gone had the sun been shining bright on our days shared here.
And we went to the Isle of Skye - I'd tell you about its splendor but you wouldn't believe me, you'd say that my contact lenses must have a rose tint to them, and maybe you'd be right - but there's no denying: it was the stuff of dreams.
Ewan McLeod was our guide, the driver of our bus, and a storyteller at heart. He enjoyed profanities like a school boy enjoys sweeties (which is what Ewan and most other Scotsmen call candy). He was packed to the brim with energy, creative information, and convictions that rubbed pleasantly though not comfortabley on my soul.
We played cards. One time I got twenty-one points and Josh and Beth only had two or three if you added all their points together. It's really fun playing cards with them because they bicker like they've been married for at least fifty years. We laughed a whole bunch. And we ate almost the same amount.
They left yesterday and I am assuming, after a long day of travel, got home to the Belfast that isn't in Northern Ireland safely.

I'm leaving Edinburgh for a few weeks and I may or may not be writing stuff here on 'aramgorn' during them. Still pray for me though, and chances are I will pray for you a time or two.
Bus tonight to Canterbury, my Great Aunt Doris lives there. We're going to play Skip-bo and tell tales - Canterbury ones.
Thursday March second I fly from London to Genoa in northern Italy. Thursday March twenty-third I fly from Santiago de Compestelo in northern Spain back to London. I'll let you know about the in between stuff after I find out about it.

"And he felt the joy of a traveller discovering a new, unfamiliar, and beautiful world." (tolstoy)