it was a good weekend. friday night was an impromptu dance party, kicked off by chrissy and her weekend visitors from cleveland. five girls and one bathroom for three whole days? good thing we had gourmet cupcakes (in flavours like cosmopolitan and elvis) over which to bond!

saturday i studied, worked out, watched a couple episodes of black books (brilliant show), blah blah. my entire day was made complete when nick showed up unannounced at the door after clocking a few hours’ practice at calvary. i knew it was a good idea to live close to church!

and yesterday! one of the readings was from nehemiah — the part where they read the law to the people, and the people weep with conviction. i haven’t done that in a long time, and i find myself perilously close to praying that God brings me to that place again. the problem is that He has a 100% track record of actually doing it, and the instant He so much as points to a treasured delusion or a carefully-rationalized sin, i instinctively whip it behind my back. silly God! what are You looking at that for?

studied a bit more in the afternoon (and it occurs to me now that a very good plan would have been to open my Bible, or even to get rid of all distractions altogether, but… no). chrissy and elizabeth were gearing themselves up for a long winter hike through frick park, and i stood in the kitchen with them drinking mate for a while until they declared themselves suitably nourished, and then i dashed upstairs with the mad hope of dyeing my hair, on my own for the first time, with 45 minutes before i had to catch a bus for duquesne. and i did it! it’s purple-red, but it’ll warm up to beautiful auburn after a few shampoos. i had to throw it up in a bun dripping wet without even glancing at it in order to catch the 61A, and therefore had to ask jake’s opinion when i had finally arrived at duquesne and hopped in his car and we were bound for the final destination of elizabeth’s house. ever helpful, he informed me that it was “dark”.

anyway, elizabeth’s house opened itself up to some of the most entertaining people i’ve met. besides elizabeth and cj, there were three byzantine catholic seminarians and their families (including two babies and two toddlers!), a byzantine priest, a roman catholic couple, and jake and myself. nick would’ve rounded out the ranks of the romans, too, if he hadn’t been tired. as it was, we had a delicious dinner of spring salad and bleu cheese, fresh bread with oil & herbs, fettucine alfredo, and chocolate mousse swirled over fresh fruit. and the table was strewn with tealights in beautiful glass stands, and we listened to rossini, and drank merlot, and talked about weddings and the hungarian liturgy. when the babies began to get antsy, father jack led us all in a prayer and a few songs, and we kissed his little silver cross and murmured “Christ is here, and ever shall be”, and he walked into every room of their apartment, sprinkling holy water as he went. and it was so beautiful. we left full, full of good food and good thoughts and just general goodness.

as an aside, i’d like to share with you something on almost every page of thomas merton’s the seven storey mountain. but instead i’ll just encourage you to read it, and share this one particular gem from page 224.

“And my First Communion began to come towards me, down the steps. I was the only one at the altar rail. Heaven was entirely mine — that Heaven in which sharing makes no division or dimunition. But this solitariness was a kind of reminder of the singleness with which this Christ, hidden in the small Host, was giving Himself for me, and to me, and, with Himself, the entire Godhead and Trinity — a great new increase of the power and grasp of their indwelling that had begun only a few minutes before at the font.

“I left the altar rail and went back to the pew where the others were kneeling like four shadows, four unrealities, and I hid my face in my hands.

“In the Temple of God that I had just become, the One Eternal and Pure Sacrifice was offered up to the God dwelling in me: the sacrifice of God to God, and me sacrified together with God, incorporated in His Incarnation. Christ born in me, a new Bethlehem, and sacrified in me, His new Calvary, and risen in me: offering me to the Father, in Himself, asking the Father, my Father and His, to receive me into His infinite and special love — not the love He has for all things that exist — for mere existence is a token of God’s love, but the love of those creatures who are drawn to Him in and with the power of His own love for Himself.

“For now I had entered into the everlasting movement of that gravitation which is the very life and spirit of God: God’s own gravitation towards the depths of His own infinite nature, His goodness without end. And God, that center Who is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere, finding me, through incorporation with Christ, incorporated into this immense and tremendous gravitational movement which is love, which is the Holy Spirit, loved me.

“And He called out to me from His own immense depths.”