An Exercise in Depth:

Today is our two month anniversary of being married. Sean is in class right now, I am sitting at home on our bed, thinking about what we will have for dinner. Probably eggs. We've been eating a lot of eggs lately--eggs and blueberries. When you live on a pretty strict budget, you wind up in situations like this. At Trader Joe's we found the most plump and juicy container of blueberries and we both wanted to bring it home with us--but how could we? So many blueberries, and just two of us--and we struggle to eat all our food before it goes bad. But we couldn't leave the blueberries behind--so we made a commitment to the blueberries: we would eat them diligently, and let not one of them go to waste. So we ate blueberries around the clock: blueberries in cereal, blueberries in oatmeal, fruit salad consisting of mostly blueberries, AND blueberry pancakes. We ate them all, and felt good about ourselves. Then the Sywulkas gave us a coupon for a free dozen eggs at Target. Well, we had just bought a fresh dozen of eggs already, but who turns down free food? Especially a cheap, delicious, and healthy source of protein! So, we made a commitment to the eggs. This has lead to the odd combination of eating: green beans, potatoes, and scrambled eggs for dinner.

But I am avoiding the main topic: It's the first late summer/early fall in EIGHTEEN YEARS that I'm not starting school. No wonder I feel so strange. And a little lost. While Sean was out this morning, I found myself flipping longingly through his school notebooks--envying his syllabi and homework assignments and reading projects, and my fingers practically itching to start all his work for him--or just to complete assignments along with him. I wouldn't describe myself as jealous or envious--just slightly wistful, and a little confused as I try to adjust to my new roles of wife and full-time employee. I've lived comfortably in the role of student for so long, and in some ways I will always be a student--because I'm committed to life-long learning. And I may yet go to graduate school. But just because a role or situation in life is comfortable doesn't mean we should just camp out there, and I think that part of my longing for school is a longing for what is known, and shrinking from that which is new, and mysterious, and will require much growth from me. I am mostly peaceful. I am ridiculously happy, but more so even than that, I am confident that I am where God wants me to be right now. But to be where you are, to accept God's present positioning of your life is an enormous responsibility. It is so much easier to live in the projected future--when I was in high school, I dreamed of college, in college, I dreamed of being married, now married, I dream of being a mother (and being a student again)...and where will it end? When will I stop wishing my life away and embrace the present? The irony is that the present isn't bad. I LOVE my life. I married the best man I've ever met, we live in a little guest house that I couldn't love more if I'd designed it myself, we're surrounded by a beautiful neighborhood, great friends, the adventures of California, a worshipful church, and supportive family. Sean is attending school at an excellent seminary, and I was handed the job of my dreams from which I come home every night saying, "I LOVE MY JOB--I can't wait to go back!" The problem is not in my circumstances, but inside of me. You see, I am lazy, or perhaps a better way to say it is: I tend towards laziness. It requires strength to rise up and greet the day--to shape the way the day happens instead of letting the day simply happen to you. Sadly, it is often easier to shield oneself in discontent and restless looking to the future than to straighten your shoulders, look the goal in the eyes, and ride out to meet the day.

It's not just about my tendency to laziness, but also my resistance of order. I operated under the gross misconception that structure destroys freedom for far too long. I think that this is the truth that has been missing from my life up to this very point. Maybe it's a bit of a paradox, but I feel that for the first time I'm gazing upon the reality that structured time and an ordered life actually provide the space in which we can be most wholly and joyfully free.

It's been a very, very long journey coming to this point of realization and the desire to do things differently. I wouldn't even have the words to think of these concepts without the books and prayers which have, through one way and another, wound up in my hands: The Psalms, Liturgy, The Book of Common Prayer, the writings of Madeleine L'Engle and Kathleen Norris, and the words and examples of many monks and nuns. It's a strange literary and spiritual journey, and frankly, one that I didn't even know I was on. While I stuffed myself with all these words, I practically refused to write a word of my own. I'm not entirely sure why--I know that laziness was again involved but also I suspect fear played a significant part in my reluctance to write. Writing, for me, has always been an exercise of introspection--evaluating the state of my soul, and seeking to know God more by being willing to contemplate the life he has given me and the ways I react and respond to it. I love to write, and I've been a writer since I started keeping my first diary at age 6 or 7....But I'm not a crafter of stories, I do not, and sincerely doubt that I ever will write even the shortest work of fiction. Writing is the act of assessing my life--and all the life spread out before me--in light of Truth.

It's been a long time of silence for me--silence with God, silence with myself, silence of the world speaking to me...and today I begin to hope for the first time in a very long time that it hasn't all been for nothing.

"Deep water and drowning are not the same thing." --James Baldwin, "Sonny's Blues"

A Prayer:

"Grant us, Lord, the lamp of charity which never fails, that it may burn is us and shed its light on those around us, and that by its brightness we may have a vision of that holy City, where dwells the true and never failing Light, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

--The Book of Common Prayer

The Moon:

I drove home last night going East on the 105 from Manhattan Beach to Whittier. I drove under the full moon, listening to Steinbeck's Travels with Charley on audio book. He describes autumn in New Hampshire, and how he asked a woman there if she ever got used to all the beautiful colors of Fall. The woman responded, "It is a glory, and always a surprise." That's how I feel about the Moon. Every time I see it, it surprises me, and takes my breath away--because somehow during the day I'd forgotten that it exists, and that while I'm working, and reading, cooking, and eating, it is slowly traveling back to my little corner of the world.

A couple of summers ago, my sisters and I drove down to the Main Library in downtown Fort Lauderdale, parked in a big parking garage next to the IntraCoastal and took an elevator up five floors to the top story of the Library: to see a Moon Rock--just a tiny bit of that luminous orb, entombed in a glass case in a little library on Earth. I stared and stared at it, marveling over the most foreign and far away assortment of matter that my eyes have ever seen. I wanted to ask it what it is like in outer space--whirling around in the emptiness, just a little bit closer to God than we are here on Earth.

Perhaps we love the moon not only for its mystery and beauty, but also for its barrenness. Perhaps the cold, silver starkness of its landscape makes our planet seem all the cozier. Steinbeck asks, "What good is warmth without cold to give it sweetness?"

Loved This Line While Driving Home Tonight:

"And finally, in our days, a beard is the only thing a woman still cannot do better than a man."

John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

So Long Sweet Summer:

In many ways our magical summer is drawing to an end. Today ends my week of vacation: I start back to work tomorrow, and Sean starts graduate school on Wednesday. Neither of us are sad about these facts--we're both rather excited actually. I've missed the family I work for, and Sean is already reading his books for school. But we figured we should end summer on the right note, and so yesterday we took the 105 West, past the surprisingly smog-free skyline of Los Angeles, to Manhattan Beach. We took our beach umbrellas which we bought in Hawaii last January, and settled down to read in the sand at the edge of the Pacific.





I did read a lot, but I mostly feasted my eyes on all the beauty around me. The beaches of the South Bay are so beautiful because the coast wraps around both sides and lines them with purple hills and mountains. I read Annie Dillard, and watched the waves crash endlessly, watched the sun begin its slow, sparkling descent over the water, watched the children playing in the surf, watched the planes taking off from LAX and disappearing into the blueness of the sky. As the sun sank, the sky turned the color of a nectarine, and Sean and I sat together on his red dragon towel, cool but not cold in the chilly evening air. I remembered the last night we spent in Hawaii, watching Sean play in the waves of Waimea Bay while I sat in the sand and read The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, and wondered how we can bear to love another person so much--a person who may be taken from us at any moment, but whose existence is so essential to our happiness.

It's a fragile world, and I suppose that's what makes it so beautiful.

Tonight Sean and I went for a walk at dusk in our neighborhood, walking slowly in the soft, gray light. Homes look so friendly at twilight, trees stand so elegantly with their silhouettes and shadows, and the moon shone like a newly minted dime in the depths of the watery sky.

The realization came over me tonight that if I don't create space in my life to see and wonder over beauty, it will pass me by--and, even worse, I will become blind to it.

Incredible:

"The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but that we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. We bound ourselves to the fickle, changing, and dying as if they were rock."

--The Maytrees, By Annie Dillard

FINISHED!

Last night at 2:30 a.m. Sean and I finished our 2,000 piece puzzle of San Francisco. Sean bought it for me last Christmas, and we decided that it would be the first puzzle we did together in our new home. We listened to Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers while doing the puzzle, and it just made the time fly by. It's good to know that we've accomplished something during my week off! =)

Marriage:

"I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever."

--Ezra Pound, The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter

Weekly Review:

So I believe that it's time for a little update on the Thomas family. After celebrating Harry Potter's birthday at the Magic Castle, we've been thoroughly enjoying the first week of August. We made a budget, and stuck to it this week (and we have high hopes for the next week as well)! We're working out a pattern of regularly grocery shopping and keeping our house clean, which is a bit of a challenge for two highly unstructured people like Sean and I--but bit by bit we hope to create a structured life that works well for us, and still leaves room for our laid-back personalities. On Tuesday Sean registered for his Talbot classes, and now he's really excited about taking Roman Catholic Theology, as well as three other classes, in the Fall. We spent Monday evening with the three Moothart boys, and had an absolute blast with those three clever and adorable boys--especially because they persist in believing that Sean is my dad, haha! We've been doing our laundry at the Sywulka's house, and in exchange we give them avocados from our tree. Sean has also started taking piano lessons from Karissa, in exchange for helping out around their house/construction site. Now he knows where Middle C is!!! On Sunday evening we ate dinner at the Sywulka's house, and Greg and Lauren came as well...Elizabeth made fettucine alfredo for everyone and it was delicious. Last night we ate cheese quesadillas, chips, and Mrs. Sywulka's guacamole--which I kept insisting comes from heaven and not from earth. IT IS SO GOOD! Tonight we had our favorite: breakfast for dinner--with hashbrowns which we bought from Trader Joe's. All week we've been working on a 2,000 piece jigsaw puzzle of San Francisco while listening to The Two Towers--it's been so much fun! Sean is reading Father David's (our priest) science fiction series: the Starman Saga, and I am re-reading The Brothers K--the one by Duncan, not Dostoevsky. It's taking me a little longer than I'd like (my reading has slowed down considerably since I'm working full-time and I'm married), but it's alright because it's such a great book that I don't want it to be over. I'm also listening to Anne of Avonlea on audiobook, and reliving so many of my favorite Anne-moments. So far, I'm still really enjoying my job--I met another American nanny who works just across the street for a little girl, so on Friday we took our two charges to the park and we got to talk. It turns out she's also a Christian, which was really encouraging to me to be able to relate on that level. On the way home, we met a dog named Tracy Jane who is a Wheaten Terrier, and now I HAVE MY HEART SET on having one!




And now we're on the eve of another week--may it be filled with God's grace and blessing! Love to all family and friends far and near--we miss you all!

Do you believe in magic?

I do!

After a visit to the world famous Magic Castle, a prestigious magic club located in downtown Hollywood, I am convinced. The Club is so exclusive that you can only get in if you're a member, or the guest of a member. Thankfully, Karissa's brother Jonathan is a Junior Member and last week was Future Stars Week at the Castle, so Johnny took Karissa, Sean, and I along for the night!

The Magic Castle is a huge old mansion built in the early 1900's and turned into a Magic Club in the 1960's. You walk into the front hall, get approved to enter, and then turn to the bookcase on the left wall and say, "Open Sesame," and the bookshelf opens before your eyes and you enter into the one of the most twisting, turning, confusing mansions imaginable.

We walked up and down staircases, through dimly lit hallways and past shadowy rooms and secluded alcoves. We got in line for the first Parlor Show of the evening, at which Karissa was called onto the stage to assist the magician in one of his tricks.

The moment that really changed my life was when we were all crowded in to a tiny little room down in the lower level of the mansion to see Magic Mike--a 23 year old magician who was one of the funniest people ever. Anyway, I was selected to assist him in a trick, which was very thrilling! The trick went like this: he flipped through the deck and had a random person in the audience tell him where to stop. Then, right where he stopped, he split the deck in two and handed me one of the piles, and told me to count the cards in front of everyone. I held the cards up high and counted 14 cards. Then he told me to put the cards someplace no one could get to them--so I sat on them. Then he had another girl in the audience choose a card out of the deck, and she picked a three of hearts. So he said that he would magically add three cards to the pile I was sitting on. He did all kinds of magical movements, and then told me to take the cards out and count them again. When I did, much to my utter amazement, I found SEVENTEEN CARDS IN THE PILE!!!!!!!!

How did he do it?????????


Jonathan's show was amazing! And I'm so glad we decided to stay for the stage show att 11:15 because it was mind-blowing and most of all FUNNY. I laughed so hard I had to cover up my face and put my head down because this one kid named Kyle had written his own routine and it was the funniest thing I have ever heard. "The nostalgia is overwhelming!!!"

The best part of it all is that we went to the Magic Castle on July 31st: HARRY POTTER'S BIRTHDAY! I mean, how fitting is that? We arrived home wearily at 2 a.m. after a very magical evening.