sunday mornings

are not the best times to try and be social at seminary. As you can imagine.

Again, I can't really complain. Life has been nothing if not pleasant this week. I have been able to be productive with many, many breaks for movies, walks, alcohol and giggles. My friend Erin in particular has kept me sane. Some tiny new glimpses of what life will be like here next year have been pretty encouraging. Yet I still feel that tug of loneliness. Like something is missing for me. And I get embarrassed about that. Like I should be independent enough not to need my romantic relationship to feel like a whole person. But as my newest soulmate writes, "the dignity of human existence is in the power of reciprocity".

I think if this wonderful writer were my grandfather and I could have a conversation with him, he would encourage me to seek reciprocity where I can really get it, but he would at least understand my feeling of lack. I am writing my paper on him for my Image of God class and he reminds me of the wonder of simply living.
“We are pregnant with a thought for which we have no image. We endowed with a song which we cannot utter, with a word we do not know how to spell. Then we open a Psalm, and there is the song and the word. Only then the song within us grows. We pour it into a deed. We fashion it into words, but the song is never exhausted. What we need to do is to nurse the song in the recesses of the soul. Over and above all frustrations is a certainty that we are never alone in doing the good. We love Him who loves the world.”
Such writing for brief moments makes my overdramatic problems seem very far away. I really can't wait to read for pleasure this summer.

For now, I am going to resist the urge to call friends until I find someone who is free, and I am going to go for a walk by myself which, on days like the ones we have had lately, is not half bad.