it’s been a good weekend.

barbecue at amy boots’ house on friday: we ate homemade mac’n’cheese and burgers from wright’s meat-packers down the road (which i find amusing), amy’s mom gave me recipe for this amazing buffalo chicken dip, we played badminton until after dark (amy’s dad hooked up a floodlight so i felt like we were playing an important championship game or something… except for the part where we can’t hit the birdie) — then we jumped around on the giant trampoline, which always feels deliciously sinful to me since mom never let us. (and actually, it’s probably a lot more dangerous now that some of us are over two hundred pounds, but hey.) and then we had ice cream sundaes and sat around a campfire, and i lay back against nick and looked at the stars and breathed the clean, fresh woodsy air. in all my exciting plans for summer in pittsburgh, i forgot about summer at camano, and i don’t know what i’ll do without it. pink kitten heels and ruffly skirts and wet cappucinos and nights at the opera are all very scintillating, but sometimes a girl just needs to run through the woods barefoot and climb trees and write and float around in rowboats.

yesterday amelia and i slept in, and wandered around downtown in search of amusement — and found my new favourite store, nicholas coffee company. they roast myriads of different coffees and sell hundreds of different teas, and import lots of different goodies from europe (like hazelnut wafers amelia ate in germany, and barry’s green that we drank like water in ireland) and the whole place smells like warm chocolatey wisdom. then we had a dinner of easymac, apples, nuts, and vitamins, and it was off to the festival of praise (fop) in steubenville, OH. it encourages me so much to see hundreds of people singing God’s praise — and this time i experienced my first eucharistic adoration (when the priests process in with a cross – but it has a fancier name than that – which is the embodiment of Christ’s actual presence). jake and i, both being protestant, were like, “hm…” and i couldn’t quite wrap my mind around the fact that pretty much everyone else in the auditorium honestly thought that was Jesus right there, as fully as if He’d been standing there in the flesh. i want to learn more about how that tradition started because every time i’ve scoffed at a Catholic tradition, nick has patiently explained to me how it started, and even if i don’t agree doctrinally, at least i can’t conclude that it doesn’t make any sense. still… i don’t understand the basis for believing that this special cross holds the fullness of Christ. it seems nothing less than sacriligious. that said, i wept for the first five minutes after it was brought in, because the entire auditorium fell to their knees and while i didn’t feel right bowing to what i consider an empty symbol, it did feel right to be so overwhelmed by God’s holiness and to abandon “normal” behavior for the sake of being completely caught up in His presence. anyway, i definitely foresee another lengthy theological discussion between my favourite Catholic and i in the near future…

so we got back from the fop around 10:30, and nick and i rented the pianist. what an incredible movie — gut-wrenching, all the more so (and as it should be) because it portrayed an actual event — the holocaust. my stomach was upset afterwards, and even now i’m thinking about the genocides in darfur, sudan, and recently rwanda and even thailand. it doesn’t seem possible that people can commit such atrocities against each other. i guess all it takes is a deliberate or unconscious overlooking of our common humanity, each made in God’s image. i loved the music, though — the soundtrack includes one of “my” chopin nocturnes, plus another incredible piece (nick guessed liszt) that maybe i’ll learn in a future life. he played so expressively, hauntingly — the essence of beautache.

then today there was church — smiling at babies, listening to an excellent sermon about God as shepherd, even one of my favourite hymns (“The King of Love my Shepherd Is”), and a healthy lunch while watching My Super Sweet 16 (which makes both of us gag but somehow we can’t stop watching it). and amelia’s home for the day, so i’ve been lounging around, reading, listening to the pattersons’ version of the handel-halvorsen passacaglia (one day, kelli, one day) and k.d. lang and other soul music… yes. it has been a good weekend.