Closer than I was.

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts; it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

...

This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

- prayer of Archbishop Romero


And now the question isn't will you...no, what I want to know is: when?
And if it's one day or a million, I will wait for you till then.
So I hold my hope in your words and in the promises you've made.
There's not one that you have broken; there's not one I did not take.

- Third Day

Cheshire cat, hey, smile wide
raise you twenty on the other side

- JC

Be back in a few.

If I Were Leaving You

It's started, the "By This Time Next Week" game. By this time next week, I'll be beating James soundly at Setback and/or drooling on Lara's shoulder. We learned tonight that the average evening temperature in Kibogora, Rwanda is 60 degrees, perfect for smart green jackets and light grey sweaters with the arms all stretched out. We also learned that Mike is the go-to guy for Godiva ice cream and that we'll be--I'm sorry, the excitement is getting to me--expected to learn a traditional dance.

!!!!(Kim!)!!!!

I knocked off a bunch of case law today and got to spend a quick dinner with my best pal Kenji. People seem to like knowing pointless minutae about other people's lives, so I'll tell you that he had a hot open-faced roast beef sandwich, and I had a hot chicken cutlet sandwich on a hard roll with roasted red peppers, American cheese, lettuce, tomato, and honey mustard. We were pressed for time, so we threw a blanket down on the grass right in front of the Turnpike and were applauded by at least one of the local yokels. You stay classy while I'm gone, Kenji.

After our impromptu picnic, I headed to the Feays for some folding of donated t-shirts, the aforementioned eating of ice cream, the singing of various songs for presentation purposes, and the gathering of those little yellow sheets y'all have been sending in support of the trip. (Don't worry, they black out the amounts but leave your words.) That's my favorite part of this so far, I think: knowing that there are other people with their internal clocks set to African time. Yes, I'm aware of how maudlin that sounds, but it's true. I love words. I love everything about them -- what they say and what they can't encompass, what they look like in different languages, how many there can be on any given page -- but more than anything, I love what comes off the page when someone's taken the time to write me the old-fashioned way. It's a beautiful moment, the first time I see a dear friend's handwriting. It kind of takes my breath away.

In other news, there's a pool party at the Hornes' this weekend; come, and bring friends! 'Tis Marieka's and Kevin's birthdays today, and we will celebrate (or they will; I won't be there long) accordingly. I have a memo threatening to destroy my soul, a "talk" to plan, some packing to do, and hearts to break -- and that's just tomorrow!

May you know what he knows, may you see what he sees.

Love, BikerFox

Tonight Betsy made something scrumptious: fresh tortellini with mushrooms and four cheeses, homemade pasta sauce, and homemade blueberry pie. We ate it on the front porch with our feet up and the lamp lit. Betsy, m'love, this one's for you.

All You Other Brothas Can De-ny

Oh, but we are laughing. We are having a good time.

The last time I went for wings at Archie Moore's, Kenji and Bryan were still sharing an apartment on Black Rock Turnpike; and as we argued about who would eat how many wings, I called the Rwanda team leader, Josh Feay, a "smaller man."

There must be something about wings that brings out my size issues, because the conversation this time around was eerily similar. There were about 40 people in our group, but I had Tuan, Sharon, Sharon's brother Steve, Mike B. and James to contend with at my table. Mike B. and James are on the Rwanda team, and as we'd gotten introduced to the congregation at church tonight, the rest of the table was asking us some questions. Somehow we got on the subject of whether I'd get taken in a fight for my wallet. I said something about it taking more than wind to knock me down since I'm female and my center of gravity is low. Tuan said, "You? Low?! You're the second tallest girl I've ever seen!" which prompted me to say, "Yes, Tuan, but balance isn't all about height. I don't know if you've noticed that the bottom of half of my body didn't get the message that I was Caucasian. You ain't knockin' this thing down with a stick, no-how."

Disbelieving laughter from the other members of the table. Then, Tuan again: "Whatever. I have seen a LOT of ghetto booty, and let me tell you...it's a lot more massive than yours." [This is true, actually. Tuan owns a kayaking business and was hired to work for Fifty Cent a few weekends ago at a party at his house in Farmington. Through a series of unfortunate events, Sharon ended up having to relieve Tuan and missed my girls' night party. Ladies and gentlemen, when you see me, you don't see just a girl. You see a girl who's been officially blown off for Fifty Cent.]

This, of course, prompted Tuan's girlfriend Sharon to ask why he was looking. As the debate raged on their end, the jokes becoming less and less appropriate for a post-church function, Sharon's brother Steve cut in. Steve had never visited Sanctuary before, never met me, never had Archie's wings either -- but Steve had something to say.

"You know," he said, and the gravity of his voice commanded our attention, "I have a confession to make. I was praying tonight after the sermon -- " We quieted down. Tonight's service was particularly moving; there was a spirit of unity about the place that's been missing for awhile, and something in Steve's tone suggested he wanted to talk about something more pressing than dress size. Steve continued.

"--and when I looked up, there -- in front of me -- was the booty in question. I stared at your booty, Jessica. And then I went to the front to pray."

May Cause Dizziness, Drowsiness, Nausea, Fever, Vertigo, and -- Suicidal Ideation?

Guess who's home sick today?!

I started my malaria series last night. I like the sound of that, don't you? "Malaria series" -- sounds dangerous! Sounds deadly! Wanna know why? Because it is. I knew the risks involved with taking Lariam, the cheapest, most widely prescribed anti-malaria pill; I also know that side effects don't, well, usually affect me. (Did you see that fancy grammatical footwork? Effect! Affect! E! A! Even now, Mrs. Rodriguez's stern tones ring in my ears: "You EFFECT a change. You ARE AFFECTED.") I guess my turn in the medical wringer has come, however; I popped the first pill last night and spent the rest of it shivering, then sweating, then envisioning that the pair of jeans at the foot of my bed held a body. The point is, I didn't spend it sleeping. The last time I looked at the clock before I finally fell asleep, it was 5:30 a.m. My alarm went off at 6:30. I got up and fell back down -- why, helloooo, vertigo! So nice to see you! (Mike Douglas, that's for you. I'm thinking First Season of Arrested Development, I'm thinking Buster, I'm thinking Lucille Austero.) Needless to say, I didn't think being behind the wheel of a car in rush hour traffic was a good idea. Instead, I flopped downstairs and onto the couch and curled up into a ball. When I woke, I googled Lariam.

"Lariam's more common side effects include: nausea [check], vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, loss of balance [check], dizziness [check], vertigo [check], sleep disorders [check], ringing in the ears, headache [double check], muscle cramps [check], abnormal dreams, emotional instability [no comment], insomnia [check], panic attacks, hallucinations [check], anxiety, depression, paranoid reactions, convulsions, visual impairment, numbness, rashes, and itching. The use of Lariam with quinine or quinidine may result in cardiac arrest. There have been approximately a dozen reported suicides and hundreds of cases of depression among Lariam users. Furthermore, it is believed there may be links between an outbreak of domestic killings at Fort Bragg North Carolina linked to Lariam."

And here's the FDA on the matter:

"The most FREQUENTLY REPORTED adverse EVENTS ARE nausea, vomiting, LOOSE STOOLS OR DIARRHEA, ABDOMINAL PAIN, dizziness OR VERTIGO, LOSS OF BALANCE, AND NEUROPSYCHIATRIC EVENTS SUCH AS HEADACHE, SOMNOLENCE, AND SLEEP DISORDERS (INSOMNIA, ABNORMAL DREAMS). THESE are USUALLY mild and may decrease DESPITE CONTINUED USE.

OCCASIONALLY, MORE SEVERE NEUROPSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS HAVE BEEN REPORTED SUCH AS: SENSORY AND MOTOR NEUROPATHIES (INCLUDING PARESTHESIA, TREMOR AND ATAXIA), CONVULSIONS, AGITATION OR RESTLESSNESS, ANXIETY, DEPRESSION, MOOD CHANGES, PANIC ATTACKS, FORGETFULNESS, CONFUSION, HALLUCINATIONS, AGGRESSION, PSYCHOTIC OR PARANOID REACTIONS AND ENCEPHALOPATHY. RARE CASES OF SUICIDAL IDEATION AND SUICIDE HAVE BEEN REPORTED THOUGH NO RELATIONSHIP TO DRUG ADMINISTRATION HAS BEEN CONFIRMED.

OTHER symptoms: VISUAL DISTURBANCES, VESTIBULAR DISORDERS INCLUDING TINNITUS AND HEARING IMPAIRMENT[...what?], DYSPNEA, asthenia, malaise, fatigue, fever, SWEATING chills, DYSPEPSIA AND loss of appetite."

Betsy and Juli, I'm harmless. Honest. I can't even walk across the room right now without holding onto something, let alone raise the cast-iron pot over my head. Of real concern, however, is that I'll fall down the stairs in a vertiginous rage, break my neck, and be labeled a suicide.

I can't let that happen without issuing the following public service announcement, to wit, that my friends are geniuses all. Congratulations to Hillary, DTC, PHurls, Kadlec, Maura, Remmington Steele, Jill, Emily, Krish, and the Colonel on making law review/law journals! I have no right to be this proud of you, minus the small fact that PHurls told me that I was his inspiration. If I do lose my life to Lariam, a small "In Memoriam" in the front of this year's edition of BCLR will suffice. In the meantime, I'm going to go develop more side effects. Cheers!

Swallowed Up by Life

Sometimes I get a little envious of other people's lives and lose sight of this barely understood -- thing -- that is my own. When this happens, I catch my breath and find, without fail, that I have once again maneuvered myself into the center of the known universe and that, in my head, things are Not. Working. According to. Plan. A favorite musical duo of mine sings, "the darkness has a hunger that's insatiable/ and the lightness has a call that's hard to hear." This young lady, whom I don't know, says it more astutely: "I forget how burdensome entitlement is." And someone I don't usually get along with very well hits the nail right on the head:

"For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened--not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life."

Fighting the Entitlement Monster is a daily battle, isn't it? And in the continued spirit of confession, our Rwanda team leaves in 16 days for London, our stopover before Africa. We have 16 days to raise $16,000. Pray, pray, pray; and if you feel led to, give. But mostly pray.

The origins of love are stuck on you.

....are decidedly NOT on I-287. I should know. What should have been a 15-minute commute turned into a two-hour conversation with my radio antenna, as follows: "Radio Antenna, why don't you work? CD changer, why are you in the trunk? Mitsubishi, why do you squeal? Don't you know Mama loves you but it's all she can do to keep fire in your belly? Sweaty toned young running man, do you have a girlfriend? Cancerous right arm, what's going on? Unreturned emails and phone calls, where are my friends? Boys, why the attitude? Red Civic, THAT. IS. MY. BLEEPITY BLEEPITY. LANE!!!"

And so on.

But as I rounded Reservoir Road in Harrison and Jakob Dylan's "One Headlight" came on the radio, I thought of the long way home we used to take to look at the houses we'd pretend we could afford, breathing in that sweet heaviness of lilac and honeysuckle right when we curved towards the market around Rogers' Orchard. We made a deal about alternating songs on the radio, and you picked the same stupid pop-friendly hit every time, laughing because you knew my sense of fair dealing involved honoring my word. On that night, there were the same songs but sparklers and lemonade. Tonight, there's a thunderstorm and a front porch and a cold IPA. And my roommate just told me I look homeless, but that's probably because I pulled a roll out of my purse while running up our street, clicking my heels. Juli comes running out of her room with a frozen cup in hand and says, "Hark! Hark! The clouds are all a-blackened!" and I think, not a bad deal for a college girl.

In other news, my hair still curls before thunderstorms in that one spot above my right eyebrow.

Nobody calls me Peanut and gets away with it!*

Derek just emailed and said, "P.S. -- Stop checking your site referrals; you aren't that popular. Narcissist." Derek, you scare me; and in honor of your birth, I'm going to scroll down the page right now and check them yet again.


*with one or two exceptions. See store for details.

What It Means to Be from Maine

"I wrote that down, too! Except I wrote, 'We choose peacekeeping over lovemaking' and thought, but that doesn't make any sense!" - Josh King.

Three more weeks, and then -- Africa!

Excitement about Rwanda escalates on an hourly basis. We just got a tentative itinerary from the World Relief leader on the ground, and it looks as if we'll be heading out of Kigali after all. At this point, we'll be traveling down to the Cyangugu province and spending some time along beautiful Lake Kivu. I say it's beautiful because I'm told it's beautiful, but who knows? That might prove to be as false as a certain person's bold assumption that I'm going to be beaten in climbing up a certain 30-foot tree perfectly situated so that one may hurl oneself into the water with reckless abandon and all deliberate speed. This person is delusional, and I openly court his wrath as it is the wrath of a nancy-boy. And I am a pirate. Yarrr.

The team comprises a uniquely disparate group of individuals; and as genuine laughter begins to replace polite banter more often each time we meet, I'm finding that my trepidation dissolves. True, some of the team -- Josh King, Josh Feay, and Captain James van der Beek [see left sidebar; Bryan, update!] -- are old familiars, but I don't know the girls at all. And it's important to know the girls on a trip to the African countryside, I feel. FOR VARIOUS REASONS WHICH WILL NOT BE GONE INTO HERE.

I share this story with you now because I feel it ties into a post made some months ago about being less gross. It's my personal conviction that being less gross is not going to be synonymous with traveling in Africa, and so I may as well get started with the disseminating of rumors about interesting run-ins with dysentery, plumbing disasters, etc. now. I mean, it's already started: at Sunday's team meeting, I was chatting with James, Lara, and Billy about something when I felt (WARNING: the following information requires personal knowledge about the design of female undergarments, to wit, the boycut short) a little creepy-crawly creep and crawl its way from the back of my thigh towards places that I, were I a bug, would never wish to go. I couldn't very well take matters into my own hands at the moment, though, what with Lara mispronouncing Kinyarwandan words and Patty's discussing the fashion faux pas of hiking boots with long skirts. So when the tickling stopped, I assumed it was all in my head and promptly forgot about it until that evening, when I stripped down before bed only to find that one very unfortunate Japanese beetle lost its life somewhere in between the Mongolia-shaped birthmark I have at the base of my spine and the bottom edge of those boycuts. Poor thing.

And I end with another Joshism. As I recounted this tale in the science fiction and fantasy section of Norwalk's Barnes & Noble, Josh turned to me with all solemnity and said the following: "You know what I'm afraid of most about Rwanda? Not the snakes. Not the bugs. Not the gorillas in the mist or the Hutus or the Tutsis or the emotional trauma of it all. I'm afraid I'm gonna forget that I can't handle caffeine and will grab a cup and then have to pee half an hour into a cross-country trip on some Jeep with all of you in it and with no cover in sight. I'm serious."

And he was.

But none of the other kids have to blog on the weekends, Mama!

"We choose peacekeeping over truth-telling, and we call that friendship."

I give thanks for the friends and loved ones who've had the courage to challenge my stubbornness, strike at the root of my considerable pride, and point out the imperfections of my love. I'm thankful for Anna's telling me she hated the "changes" I'd made the year after I graduated college, changes that made me unrecognizable and wholly unlovely, that drew me out of myself for all the wrong reasons and in all of the wrong ways. I wasn't in a place to hear you then, Anna, but you spoke the truth in love at the immediate cost of our friendship (but a girl can hope for future "Peace Frog" and goldfish nights, can't she?). I'm thankful for you, Kim, in honestly responding to the email I wrote you several months ago when you said, "You have to love someone a lot to be this hurt." I'm thankful for you, Marieka, in knowing where I am and making yourself vulnerable to me for the sake of honesty in our friendship. And so it goes. I might write this last all night and never reach the end of it.

I'm thankful for the difficult conversations that have come before this moment, for all of the things that were hard to hear. There are things to say. I'm the girl to say them. I pray that strength keeps time with humility. I pray for the absence of fear.

With a grateful heart, I give thanks.

This just in!

Pictures from the weekend including, inter alia, an extremely disproportionate number of photos in which various femme fatales mistake sculptures for members of the male population.*

*Courtesy of Emily, aka the Gimp.

...is all you need.

But the plain truth is this: love is not a matter of getting what you want. Quite the contrary. The insistence on always having what you want, on always being satisfied, on always being fulfilled, makes love impossible. To love you have to climb out of the cradle, where everything is ‘getting,’ and grow up to the maturity of giving without concern for getting anything special in return. Love is not a deal, it is a sacrifice. It is not marketing; it is a form of worship….it is, in fact, the deepest creative power in human nature. – Thomas Merton

After conducting a whirlwind tour of New England this weekend, I’ve come to the following conclusion: I’m having a Jewish wedding.

Ah, le weekend! C’est bonne…impromptu football games, strolling the grounds with my favorite Stressie and schizophrenic, imagining ourselves as victims of “The Shining,” running down hills with the bride, coffee and bacon and omelets and good books and a silk dress so comfortable I thought about sleeping in it, dancing and dancing and dancing despite swollen feet and blistered ankles, “You are the subaltern,” making puzzles, God’s Rottweiler, Tara: “PERSON!” and Derek: “….what?”, the truth behind The Da Vinci Code, running interference, shuttlecocks, “Two such as you” and the holiness of love, and above all -- peace. I’m not going to go into details about how amazing this past weekend was other than to say this: the setting, the accommodations, and the company were all as good as one might wish; plus, the martinis were excellent. (Scandal! Scandal! JC was a wee bit intoxicated AND DANCING!) I will say, though, that this entire summer has been one incredible gift.

I started out the weekend with a four-hour jaunt to Boston to meet a potential roommate Friday night, woke up bright and early on Saturday to meet with more lovely people about the same thing, had a perfectly lovely Cambridge afternoon buying gold shoes for the wedding and popping into Toscanini’s for green tea ice cream, picked up Kate and headed to the Vermontian hills for the reconvening of all things BC Law at the wedding of Tara Rubenstein, nee Slepkow. After a brief detour, during which Kate and I really did run into traffic – cough— we found the Wilburton Inn, said a quick hello to the relevant folks, changed, and made it to the rehearsal dinner just in time for me to realize that I was incredibly hungry and had missed my law school friends more than I’d realized.

I suppose that there’s a part of me that feels as if the only thing the group of us has in common is law school and its attendant woes; but – and you should pay attention here because this name is gonna be one I throw around often from hereon out – Thomas Merton’s newly discovered wisdom, the view from my bedroom window this weekend, the words Josh’s rabbi spoke at the ceremony, dancing the hora with the couple’s families and arms linked with friends, watching Jeff’s face change whenever anyone mentioned his (sadly absent) girlfriend Alyssa, Maura’s voice as she set out my pajamas, spying on the Colonel and Sarah, the beauty of creation and the obvious care and masterful design displayed – all of these things worked together to show me that the deep, abiding love between friends is not based on what we know of one another so much as it may be based on what we notice about each other. I could go on interminably about the tiny ways in which this group of kids made law school more than tolerable this past year. For example, the whole lot of them planned a surprise birthday party for me that I never adequately acknowledged, sending me on a scavenger hunt around the law school with each clue written in a different poetic form and ending in my finding them at an amazing Thai restaurant, grins stretched from ear to ear.

But it’s more than that, more than the grand gestures, that makes me smile: it’s who they are in small moments that only two or three of us may share. Maura makes a point of sharing good music with me. Krishnan is always good for a hug. Jennings walks like an Egyptian and takes fabulous pictures. The Colonel keeps me in my place. Remgrob radiates happiness, a constant reminder that things do turn out well after all sometimes. DTC and Kate run into an aaaawful lot of traffic. Derek and his Tara are a perfect combination of sweet and spicy. Jeff constantly surprises me with his thoughtfulness. Tara and Josh inspire with their commitment to being found worthy of the other. And here in Connecticut, Betsy and Julie know what questions to ask me. Kenji can’t be anything less than steadfast. And so it goes.

Back to Merton: “[Love] enjoys life as an inexhaustible fortune. Love estimates this fortune in a way that knowledge could never do. Love has its own wisdom, its own science, its own way of exploring the inner depths of life in the mystery of the loved person. Love knows, understands, and meets the demands of life insofar as it responds with warmth, abandon, and surrender.”

In other words, Love pays attention. I can live with that.