...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.