:Naiahdot

There I was, at the end of my senior year of high school. I had forsaken prep school, and even all potential college plans in hopes of a marriage after graduation that dematerialized a moth or two before school let out. I had spent the last nine months or so building my entire life around a plan that was now defunct. The cost of that building had often been the damage or destruction of relationships with those closest to me–my father, my family, my friends. There I was, left standing in the midst of the ruins of what had been my life. It was time to rebuild.

There was one place, one area of my life that wasn’t in shambles–my church. I was a member of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) congregation. Their doctrine suited me, though, like most, left me with a feeling that there must be more. There, though, unlike in other denominations, I felt like that longing was supported and encouraged. Alexander Campbell had been a seeker, like me, and his legacy fit me just fine. I had always been spiritually inclined, even as a child–much to my family’s dismay. Faith was fools’ business according to my grandfather, and my father has always been an agnostic. My ability to catch a taste of the spirit was often chalked up as part of my eccentricity. I prefer to think of it as one of my most beneficial assets.

With no teenage romance consuming my every free moment, I found a new level of spiritual depth in my participation in church. I found myself ruminating over doctrine, writing about it, seeking through the Bible, attempting to reconcile it all. I went to my pastor, to discuss my newfound feelings of enthusiasm and satisfaction. We decided that I should pursue a college course of religious studies at one of the two colleges in the area owned by the church, and even look at going on to seminary after that, and become a pastor in my own right. I agreed and was declared a ‘Timothy’ of the church by my pastor (someone to whom the stewardship of the church shall pass, like Timothy in the New Testament).

I had this sense of a given mission, a task undone; something was driving me on. I could feel that I was on to something, but I couldn’t shake this need to ‘reconcile’ it all, to pull the missing pieces of logic together that would finally solve the puzzle and ‘perfect’ Christianity, find the missing parts, fix it, if you will. Yes, I sought to be a pastor, but I approached it with a mindset less of adopting that church’s doctrine as it had been established, and more of adopting that church’s willingness to experiment upon the word.

With my pastor’s help, I secured interviews at both colleges, even though it was well after the application deadlines. My father and I visited them both, and in the end, opted for the one closer to home. That one was Hiram College. Hiram even had an unclaimed scholarship for a Disciples student intending on joining the ministry. I was more than happy to claim it. I had a great first year, as a pre-ministry religious studies major. I took some great classes: ‘Virgins and Witches: Medieval Christian Women,’ ‘Comparative World Religions,’ ‘Paul and His Opponents.’ Add in a smattering of general education credits in the liberal arts tradition, and it was a pretty yummy, well-rounded year, academically speaking.

My faith was still strong, and my desire to be a pastor continued, as did my resolve to ‘find the rest of it’. I couldn’t shake the idea that Christianity, as I had seen it practiced everywhere, was missing something. I just felt like some fundamental point along the train of logic had somehow been overlooked, or even lost. I was careful not to say that I thought the Bible was incomplete or flawed, but I did not rule that theory out in my private thoughts–”It’s like somewhere along the way some scribes just didn’t feel like copying it all, and a little fell away here, and a little fell away there…”. Little did I know that it would not be the Bible that would lead me to turn the corner in that vital search.

For an English class, we had to read the book “A Study in Scarlet,” the first of the Sherlock Holmes novels. I don’t remember much of the book beyond its portrayal of Mormons. I remember Brigham Young seeming like some kind of tyrant, people being shot for trying to leave Utah, and forced polygamous marriages. I remember being quite shocked and wondering how anyone in their right mind could belong to such a group. As I did not know anyone in my life at the time who was part of them, I just filed it away and really didn’t even consider it again until the end of the school year, when I met the first Mormon of my adult life, and everything changed. Everything.

1 Comment

It was a vector point. I didn’t even know what a vector, let alone a vector point in one’s life was, but it was one–one of the biggest in my life, actually. What’s a vector point? Well, it’s one of the moments in your life where one decision you make sends you in a completely new direction, headed towards a new slice of fate. The neat thing is that these are rarely obvious at the time. Usually, vector points can only be picked out from the countless other minor decisions that we make every day in retrospect. This is one that would not become obvious to me until years later. If my life were a movie, this one scene would get really special music and camerawork; it really was, in a cinematic kind of way, my “moment of destiny.”

Oh, What’s a vector? Um, I used them mostly in my various Physics classes over the years. You may or may not remember from any Geometry that you may have studied, the difference between a line segment and a line. An actual line is infinte, going “forever” in each of two directions. A line segment has a specific length. It could be two millimeters or two feet or two light years. If it’s not infinite, then it has ends, and therefore it is a line segment. A vector has only one end. Think starting at one given point and then heading to infinity in one direction; the trail you would leave would be a vector. Vectors are used to describe direction as well. With one fixed end, there’s a lot of directions from it that the vector can point. Therefore, they have become a powerful image for me in “charting” my life. Vector points are where my current/past direction ceases to head to infinity and I’m knocked a couple degrees one way or another. Ok, so sometimes it’s more than a couple. This was one of those times.

It was the summer between my junior and senior years of prep school. I was home on vacation and spending the time doing usual 16-year-old kinds of stuff. I decided to take my brothers to the Summit County Fair, and upon arrival, I saw that a whole slew of my good old friends from public school, whom I had not seen since the 8th grade were volunteering with their scout troop in the parking lot. Considering most of my “typical 16-year-old stuff” consisted of watching ridiculous numbers of Star Trek: The Next Generation reruns while cross-stitching, I was overjoyed to see them. I remembered these guys mostly as “my Christian friends.” Given my devoutly atheistic upbringing, it was somewhat of an unusual marker in my various associations. Some were great pals, one was an ex-boyfriend, and a couple were new to the crowd since I’d been away from home at school. We decided that after the fair we’d all get together.

One of the new guys’s parents had a house on Brady Lake, and, as luck would have it, they were all planning to head out there that evening when they were done. I agreed to come along, and after hanging around for hours at the fair, followed them out to a structure that could be called a house only in the loosest sense of the word. It was more of a cross between a cabin and a summer kitchen, but like we cared. We were mostly really good kids. Out at the lake, we were good kids with plenty of space to ourselves and no parents around. Ok, so we were still good kids. The evening consisted of lazing around on a hammock, watching a meteor shower, lighting a decent campfire (c’mon, they were Boy Scouts!), and hanging out on the beach.

Even though most of them had known me back in junior high, it was a little like being “the new girl on the block”–in the best sense of the phrase. Perhaps I should rephrase it as “belle of the ball.” I had had three years of growing-up since they’d we’d last seen each other, and that ex-boyfriend was making eyes at me, as well as one of the new guys. My lonely 16-year-old heart was all a pitter-pat under the attention. As the night wore on and the sky took on less of a “dark” and more of a non-descript soft glow that kind of came from everywhere, teenage romantic tensions were running high.

I was very aware of their attention, their intense attention. At some point the stalemate of intensity became palpable–for everyone. Something had to be done. Someone had to do something. Breathing was getting uncomfortable. Mind you, we were all outside on the beach still. There was plenty of air. Ok, so all of it around us was laden with levels of pheromones of longing that could only be created by two teenage suitors determined to sit each other out. Finally the discomfort inherent in the inertia of the status quo became too much for me, and I announced that I was going for a walk.

Even in the moment, I could not have told you which of them I hoped more would stand to join me, as I really did not know. Predictably, they both did. In a scene that was nothing short of phantasmal, we walked along the beach, and everything was bathed in that surreal night glow that’s not-quite-color yet not-quite-black-and-white. The dew point was such that mist curled in random tendrils right up from the water. We stepped over logs and rocks, three abreast. I was in the middle. I was so aware I was in the middle. I was in the middle of their chess game. Who would outlast the other? I felt a little like an unwilling Scarlett O’Hara.

Again the inertia began to grate, and again it became clear to me that I had to be the “outide force,” but what should I act on? What to do? How to resolve? Whose feelings to hurt? No, wait, it was simple–Which hand to take? Which. Hand. To. Take. I had to decide. Sure it was tense in the moment, but the seeming at the time gave no hint of just how weighty a matter it actually was. I was just a silly 16-year-old girl, and, had I even been looking ahead AT ALL (which, of course, I wasn’t), all I would have seen would have been a potential summer romance, nothing more. I had not even the slightest notion that the hand I took would determine the course of my life, the course of my eternal life. So, with seemingly no perspective of all, I reached out with my fingers and took a hand.

There have been times in my life when I would end this story saying that I took the wrong hand. I don’t know that I can say that now. I took the hand that I did, and maybe it was the hand I needed to take. Certainly, my road was bumpier along that path, but it certainly landed me in the right place, for the right preparation, for the right choice later on. How can I say that it was bumpier. I guess I need to retract that. It was what it was, and what it would have been otherwise would be completely academic to explore, not to mention pure conjecture.

With teenage abandon, and little or no deliberatioin, I opted for adventure and took the new guy’s hand. After a bit, the ex-boyfriend wandered back to the fire, and left me to embark on what would turn out to be a very long-term (well, long-term for a couple of high school seniors), hideously unhealthy relationship, way too heavy for our age that had astoundingly far-reaching consequences. Due to extreme insecurity and pressure from him, I would leave prep school behind and complete my secondary education at his public school. I would plan to marry him after graduation, which meant that I did not apply to college. I would fail out of calculus. I would end up spending months living with a foster family because my father and I were at such odds over him. I would get cheated on by him with a girl from work and find out from his little sister. I would get my heart broken by him when he chose said other girl over me. I would find myself by the end of the year alone, and having poured everything in to him and him alone, nearly friendless. I would find myself begging a dear friend (now my husband) to drive back form college so that I would not have to face my senior prom dateless–as I was too broken up to try to forge a new friendship with anyone at my school. As part of my heartbrak, I would seek out a local church, become apprentice clergy, and end up going to a college that I had never heard of before that was owned by that church as preparation to going off to seminary to become a pastor.

Needless to say, I did not make it that far. The college was Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio. You know, that Hiram. Yeah, that Hiram. It was the perfect place to end up, but it never would have happened without a broken heart, which stemmed from a tough, tough year, which stemmed from one moment. One choice. Whose hand to take. Suffice it to say that a lot happened in Hiram, for which I am amazingly thankful, even if it did include a tornado, getting ‘dunked’ in a river, and eventually losing my scholarship but that’s all for another flashback.

3 Comments

I’ll get back to Adventures in Mormonism in just a bit. Right now, I need to quit procrastinating going through my statements for the year.

This is them, written 10/31/04

My statements for this year.

And so I say, “Gratitude!”

Weeding: I did great on this one, but it is still uncomfortable for me to do. I am a compassionate person, and I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt a little too often–allowing people who prehaps are not so good for me to ensconce themselves in my life closer than perhaps I should allow. So, yeah, a few ties had to be and were cut this year. Some of the ‘weeding’ actually resulted in transplanting a little further out in the garden, a healthy distance further out in the garden, which is perhaps better than complete removal.

Refining: My level of self-awareness and self-honesty has really gone up a notch. My willingness to look at aspects of my life and ask and answer honestly “Does this serve me?” has improved exponentially. I no longer feel saddled with unwanted baggage; if it doesn’t further the journey, it’s out of here. Ongoing, but phenomenal progress was made on this front in the last year.

Choose: Coosing, deciding, acting. Even down to the minutia of my day, to where my very minutes are spent, I am living consciously, not wishing, idling, or wasting a day. A+

Establish beliefs and seek those who share them: In the last two months of this year (Sept/Oct), as I mentioned in my last entry, I have taken on a whole new paradigm. I spent so much energy this year hammering through What I Believed, and in the end, unexpectedly, I came back around to where I had once been and am now surrounded with people who share my same worldview. Never would I have guessed a year ago that I would have reclaimed my membership in the church. Never. No way. No how. I’m not going back. Oh wait, I am back. The result here was completely unforseen, and a bit of a 180 from where I expected to be, but still, it is right and good.

Gratitude: Still, every minute, every day, I am thankful for all that I have, am, and may yet be. Only now (see above) I have a better focus for my gratitude–which in itself I am grateful for. This is an emotion that was an occasional sensation that has become a mindset for me–a welcome change.

Past choices: There are some in which I never will be able to revel, some that I regret, of course, but when I wrote this I was referring to what I had done with my life in term of marriage and children, and I do still celebrate both intensely.

Seeking beauty: Alas, my aesthetic self is somewhat neglected in recent months. Ok, pretty much in the whole year. In fact, she’s so mad at me for the neglect that we’re not even on speaking terms right now. It is in my nature to love even the simplest hint of microbeauty, and that is perhaps why this goal fell by the wayside. It has been a year of intense work, and indulgences have just had to wait.

Seek and share love: Always.

Mundane: I am, and I do. I have really been able to pull my focus here in to the house and the kids. I take joy in my daily routines, and have had some amazing realizations about family happiness, and how to run a home as a result.

Mother and partner: I certainly strive. I have areas where I still fall short of excellence, but I am constantly trying and improving. I am a focused, caring, attentive, active mother, and my children get the best that I have to offer. As I am always improving myself, what they get gets better all the time. I have pictires of perfection in my head, but I know that neither I nor anyone will ever match those, but I excel where I can, and where I can’t, I accept and then work to improve. As a wife…this year has been huge. So much of the aforementioned refining has been done hand-in-hand with my husband. Our communication and understanding both each of ourselves and of each other, our moods and modes has grown exponentially in both breadth and depth this past year. The change is almost too dramatic to be stated without sounding maudlin. We first loved each other as teenagers, and for all that we are not anymore, we married somewhat like teenagers. We’ve grown up together, and things are solid and still growing and going forward. It is amazing.

Grow: obviously

Learn: I have learned a lot about myself and my interactions, but I gotta say, I have a pretty bad case of hungry brain. I need to acquire a new skill or really geek out hardcore on something in my life. Need more academic input in the next round.

Claim: Oh yeah. This is mine. What’s it’s been, what it is, what it will be–it’s all mine.

Create: Almost no art was made, which I will officially label as Bad. In life, there’s been a LOT of creative activity, and that is perhaps where all my energy on that score has gone to. More art.

Humility: Though you’d never know it from my grandstanding on here, I have come a long way on this one. I have further to go, and will always work to cultivate humility in myself.

My me: Yes. For the first time in my life I am really just being who I am and really liking it.

Naiah: I have promised for some time to tell the story of the evolution/etymology of my name. That will probably still need to be a post unto itself. For now, all I need to say is that yes, the name is right, and it will stick–as a nickname. I will not be changing my name. Taking a name of my own has been good, but my legal name is still mine in a sense, and to attampt to change that would cheapen both names, for me. So, my name is Christina Albrecht Earhart, but you can call me Naiah. I’m keeping it because it suits me. Even though one of my major oppositions to my legal name has evaporated, I feel no need to cast this one aside. It’ll be a token of this time in my life that I will always carry with me. A symbol of my own choice in life.

ASISG: For so long, it filled in for “amen” for me. It filled in well, and as I said, gratitude has found a place in my Self, my everyday, present self that I hope always to keep. Like my name, this is something personal of my own creation, and I can’t just cast it off. It will still be in my prayers, I am sure…and so I say “Gratitude!”

I’m drafting this version such that they will be examined on my birthday, which is in June, when I’ll be thirty.

My statements:

I will delight.

7 Comments

Birthdays are fun. Even blog birthdays. Just two days.

Three years ago day-after-tomorrow, I started blogging. Yeah, it was pretty lame; I know. I got better! < / John Cleese > Like the people who write them, blogs change over time. Luckily mine, when I write in it, has been steadily changing for the better over the last few months since jumping ship on livejournal and launching Naiahdot.

It’s time to ruminate over my statements for the year and draft new ones. I’ve been very aware that this time was coming for the last few months. It’s the time that I’m supposed to make a permanent decision about my name, as well as check up on how I have done on the goals and values that I chose to focus on over the last year. It seems simple enough, and yet, after the unexpected major life change in which I found myself in early September (and still find myself, actually), I have been in a near-constant state of moral reconciliation.

I have mentioned in passing what happened, trying to keep it’s focus small, but it has taken up a great deal of my thought over the last few months. It seems that my long strange trip of the last three years is at an end. On September 4th, with her father out of town and unable to take her, I gave my daughter a ride to church. Innocuous, right? I figured I would just ‘dress the part’ and participate politely, and come back home the same as I’d left. I was wrong. Oh, I dressed the part just fine. When I walked in to the kitchen just before leaving, Rob looked up at me from his chair and drawled out “Mormon Up!” Ha. Ha. Ha. I was so amused. Granted, he had reason. I was wearing a denim dress with lovely cross-stitch flowers on the front. I like that dress; that’s why I never got rid of it, but this wasn’t exactly the kind of stuff he’s used to seeing me in. Happily costumed, I participated just fine, bowing my head and raising my hand at the right times. On the narrative level, my ‘masquerade’ went of without a hitch.

Sure, I was sticking to my planned actions, but under the hood I was a mess. Operation Covert Church Attendance carried a danger I had not anticipated. I have spent the last three years convincing myself and anyone who would listen of how justified and just plain right I was to have broken with the church. Here I was, though, in the middle of it, and unable to escape just how good it felt to be there. My mind was not full of indignance or superiority, or pity for all the poor fools who believed this stuff. My heart pounded in my chest with an intense–and intensely confusing–sense of truth. The Spirit. The still, small voice. Home. Welcome. Welcome Home. Time to let it go. Beat. Beat. Beat. Breathe. Beat. On and on.

Every time I bowed my head as a prayer was said, it was like a sound of rushing wind in my ears. My chest cavity did not feel big enough to contain the pulsing, pounding renewed life I felt. It was as if, like the Grinch, my heart had grown three sizes that day. There I was, my head so sure, and my heart so sure–only sure of opposite truths. I felt a little ill, a little dizzy, and a whole lot scared. My base assumptions, the foundation from which I looked upon the world and built my views had undoubtedly been shaken. Shaken to it’s core. Sitting there, in a peaceful church meeting, I was *so* ‘fight or flight,’ and yet I could do neither. Surrounded by people, I still felt all alone, and then, it happened.

Brothers and sisters reached in to my storm and called me out. I’m not talking the polite “Oh hi, nice to meet you; thanks for coming.” I mean, real, genuine, engaging interaction–one after another. Freindships, connections, and trust founded brand new on the spot. I wasn’t going to get out of there unnoticed, and, frankly, at that point I didn’t want to. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be back, but I certainly wanted to be real and honest with these people who felt to me like unmet family.

In Relief Society (the women’s meeting), I stood to introduce myself, and my head did it’s best to get my prickles out to guard my vulnerable uncertaintly. “I probably won’t be back next week, but I’m here now,” I blurted out at the end of what I was saying. Some part of me needed to push away all this warmth and kindness that I hadn’t expected. It was stifling my negative thoughts and constructs that had maintained my distance from this Truth right out my mind. I did the best I could to hold that distance with faltering arms and quivering muscles. When the third hour was up and it was time to leave, I felt as if I’d just barely been able to keep it all at bay.

That week was an odd meander through a dark cloud of uncertainty. I was walking around with this huge delta between my head and my heart. My head still blamed a lot of people for a lot of wrongs that had hurt me badly and driven me away, but my heart could feel that it was time to let it go. The people in this ward are so nice, and so caring. I actually worried about how they would feel if I didn’t come back. They had done everything so very right. By right, I mean to say that they were not at all fake or plastic or phony. There was no ‘friendshipping’ in their eyes (the conscious befriending of someone with the intent to get them to join the church–a practice now somewhat frowned upon), only genuine welcome and kindness. I wanted them to know that even though they had been so kind, and done it in the right ways, that I just couldn’t come back.

That wednesday, I got a call from Sabrina, the Relief Society president, and, thinking to tell her why I coudln’t come back, I invited her over to talk. Mind you, I did not talk about these things much at all–even to people to whom I am explaining why I left the church. I really consider the stories of a lot of what I went thorugh to be ‘spiritual poison,’ and I have no desire to spread that around on anyone, to any end. The missionaries once tracted in to me at home one day, and I stepped outside and calmly explained to them that I had left the church and no I wasn’t interested in coming back, and yes I had good reasons, and no I woldn’t tell them what they were because they were spiritual poison, and they didn’t need that on their missions and would they kindly not come back. As I spoke to Sabrina on the phone, though, I just really felt, strongly that it was ok to talk to her about it. I felt intensely like I needed to explain to her why I was gone and was going to stay gone, and oddly, I felt like she would be ok–perhaps by virtue of her calling as RS president, I don’t know, but there I was, asking her to come over and listen.

I couldn’t escape the feeling that all of this was happening so fast around me. In the time between her phone call and her arrival, I called Michael (my ex-husband, very good friend, and strong faithful active member of the church) in a panic, “I JUST INVITED THE RELIEF SOCIETY PRESIDENT OVER AND SHE’S COMING!” I had already explained to him some of my uncertainty, my ‘crisis of anti-faith’ and he told me to just relax and talk with her and assured me that I could call him again after. Needless to say, I did call him after she left and many many more times than normal over the next few weeks.

Sabrina came over, and I talked for ages. I’m not sure how long, but given everything that was said, it must have been long. She listened, she cried, and she asked questions that made me think. She left me with a scripture and a prayer–a welcome prayer. Then, I found myself even more uncertain. I had been telling myself, and even her, that the reason I was doing this was so that she could know and explain to anyone from the church who would reach out to me that I couldn’t be brought back. My logic was tight. Yes, I always admitted that some part of me still believed that the gospel was true, but that the church was human and fallible, and therefore flawed and not something I wanted to be a part of. I was making my own way in the world, deciding my own morality, reinventing every whit of every wheel. Granted, a lot of the wheels that I came up with looked an awful lot like the church’s, but they were mine, and I did cleave unto them, if you know what I mean. For all that I was so busy telling her why I had to stay away, in retrospect I see now that I was finally unburdening myself. I listed off all my reasons as I recapped the whole thing to her, literally ticking off on my fingers the handful of experiences where things went awry. It was funny, though, that for all that I had several of them, as I listed them off all together, they did not seem so tight as they had before. My ‘proof’ was wearing thin.

Laying everything out to Sabrina only widened the gulf between where-I’d-been-for-three-years-and-counting and where-I was-now. With my head and my heart at such odds, I needed to take some steps to bring them back into line. I needed information. My brain needed input. I had to test this some more. My morality and values are based a lot on logic and reason. Scientific Method (observation, hypothesis, test) dictated that I do a little more poking around in here. It was time for some spiritual experiment. I decided to take out two birds with one evening out. Bellevue. I had to go to Bellevue. Ironic, eh? The center of spoiled well-to-do housewives, overpriced mall shopping, and suberban snobbery just happens to also have, almost right next door to each other the perfect venue for potential spiritual experience, and a great source for brains needing more information on spiritual topics. (A good adage to live by–When all else fails, go to a bookstore.)

I have always maintained, over these last three years, that one of the things I miss the most about being active in the church is the Temple. A couple of times, I have even teared up while driving by on 90. It was something that still called to my head as well as my heart. If I went there and that call fell flat then I could write all the confusion and emotional sensation as a fluke. As for the bookstore, I had a pressing desire to find a certain book, a book written to me, something to map out my potential road. I also wanted to pick up a new copy of the Book of Mormon. Just before that fateful sunday, President Hinckley had issued a challenge to the membership at large to read the entire Book of Mormon, cover to cover before the end of the year. I felt impressed to give that a try. I still wasn’t sure what I was doing, but it at least gave me a place to start, and I needed one–badly.

Mind you, I already have two lovely leather-bound quad-style copies of the scriptures, but I coudln’t look at those now. My old notes and highlightings were in them, and I felt like I needed to see these words anew, with fresh eyes, with the eyes of who I am today. Thus a stop at Deseret Book was doubly called for. So, we went.

All week, I had been wondering when sunday came if I would be going again to church. I really did not know. I thought, if anything, in the name of experiment that I would go and see if it felt the same. Of course, just after deciding on that, I would think that perhapes I needed to stay away and let the feelings cool, lest I get too caught up in it. The experiment of a trip to the temple made the decision, the call did not fall flat. Kneeling on the cement by a little tree with my daughter, we said a prayer together, and, there it was, my confirmation–clearer than all that spiritual noise I’d been hearing at the church. It was that unmistakeable, palpable spiritual ‘lift’ that one feels when faced with Truth divine. Carrying that sweet confirmation with me, I still wandered with an uncertain mind.

My trip to the bookstore did not yield that hoped-for book, but I did come away with the sense that, perhaps, I need to write that book. I did pick up a teeny-tiny Book of Mormon. It just felt right. I could keep it in my apron pocket during the day. (Yes, I wear an apron. So what?) I managed to score one of my favorite kind of scripture-marking pencils in a nice, little set, and thus I was ready to tackle to Book of Mormon in it’s entirely. For those unfamiliar with the Book of Mormon, it is somewhat akin to the New Testament, by way of length & language, and certainly of the same profound nature. It’s not exactly light, saturday afternoon reading, but like it’s fellow scripture, it has rewards a-plenty for those who choose to plough through it. Little did I know that I’d find my first, and most profound, on the very first page. The title page, to be exact.

This is getting pretty long, and I need to go get Katy at the bus stop in a few minutes. I’ll pick it up there later. Heh, I’ll edit it later, too. Sorry about typos, etc.

5 Comments