But when you do...
Scattered and unsure of anything but a very warm feeling and an overwhelming desire to escape work for at least one more day.

So we're back from Mexico, First Church and I, from over a week with children, seeing ourselves through their eyes and vice versa. Warming sun and warming lights of love and faith and such remarkable strength and maturity that I want to find a way to admire without romanticizing their poverty. Because they are so poor, with Mothers who call to take them out to a movie tomorrow afternoon and don't show up. But he can't cry, can he? Besides, it's happened four, six times before. But there's faith nonetheless.

And our ragtag group of physicists, teachers, consultants, a doctor, a pastor, a six year old, and this college boy came together and transcended. We pastored and shepherded and parented one another all week long. Support, warmth, tensions, but I think in the end honesty and reconciliation were the balance of it.

I think I'm here, in Eaton whittling away an hour before class with emails, photos, and reminiscence first because this trip had its own LiveJournal, fcsinmexico2008 which you ought to check out, but also because the warmth in my belly and peace I'm feeling has a bit of high school to it. Perhaps?

Molly and I have grown close, especially what with that bottle of wine we split in the O'Hare hotel, with Raphe and Bonnie and such a memorable and youthful night of talking and connecting. Molly just said today, it felt a little guilty but God wanted it after all. We deserved it, I've said, we deserved the massive bill and the time with just us four. God had a hand in sorting that standby list as we waited over the course of 10 hours and 4 flights, watching a few of our eleven get onto each flight, eventually leaving just five to shack up in a 5-star hotel on Jules' corporate account. There was something of a predetermination to it.

And I guess that's ultimately why I'm here. Riding across the quad from dropping off an overdue library book, thinking about coming to this familiar little space of the internet to put down some thoughts, thinking about the faith I believe I found on this trip, through Molly and through so much more, just as I thought of the beauty of it all and spun by Goddard chapel, the bells chimed 5 o'clock and played me a song. And every day since we left, that is how it has been. I could never see it and could never believe it, but when you get a hint, when you see it, you really do. I really do.

Funny how this ties in threads of other self-discoveries over the last few weeks. That I need to see the messy totality of things before I can even understand a part of it. I needed the messy totality of Molly's humanity before I really plugged into her as we are plugging now. And I think I needed to dig into something or have that one-two punch or whatever (I don't yet know) and then could begin to connect the dots on my life and God's role in it. Twenty-one isn't too early or too late, right?

Oh, photos are up on flickr. Funny that after so much disuse, I think this place has as many readers as that darn blog I spend so much time on (here).