Nick's parents have been in town for the past week or so, and so it has really felt like Encinitas summer. [The part where the sun came out properly may also have something to do with that.] For the past few nights I have been sitting in their living room talking for hours with Mark about absolutely everything. It's so good to hear his chuckle (though Nick's is about the same) and hear his opinions and have him hear mine [that's a really important part of my love for Mark]. There's so much crazy going on in the world, and Mark and I see eye-to-eye on so much of it -- I didn't realize how much I missed our conversations and our affirmations of the other's worries about and solutions to the world's problems. As always, we talked politics, religion, and baseball. Our top three favorite things in the world.
Mark is not a religious man, per se, though he once was and has much to say about the grandeur of what the church once was -- that is mostly just show, for him. But we talk about how there are people who are going to make the religious world a better place (he means me). And we talk about the state of the world and the idiocy of the Tea Party and how anyone can think that Barack Obama is a Muslim (1 out of 5 Americans!) and how we should be responding in the Gulf and why we aren't out of Afghanistan yet and why instant replay should stay out of baseball and why the Padres are the hugest surprise and why people should read better Biblical translations and how all religions of the world fit together...it's like everything I think about all day can finally be word-vomited out with Mark like it can with no other person. The part where Mark and I do not live on the same coast of this country anymore has really hampered this. Next week, I will move to Berkeley and Mark will return to Troy, NY. We'll meet again in Encinitas sometime, we know, but it will never be quite like high school was or these summers have been. But knowing that I am not alone, that Mark is not alone -- that helps.
Today's Verse and Voice shares our opinions and solidifies our hopes:
Because of our faith in Christ and humankind, we must apply our humble efforts to the construction of a more just and humane world. And I want to declare emphatically: Such a world is possible.
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
from his Nobel Lecture
Join Mark and me in making such a world possible.
Mark is not a religious man, per se, though he once was and has much to say about the grandeur of what the church once was -- that is mostly just show, for him. But we talk about how there are people who are going to make the religious world a better place (he means me). And we talk about the state of the world and the idiocy of the Tea Party and how anyone can think that Barack Obama is a Muslim (1 out of 5 Americans!) and how we should be responding in the Gulf and why we aren't out of Afghanistan yet and why instant replay should stay out of baseball and why the Padres are the hugest surprise and why people should read better Biblical translations and how all religions of the world fit together...it's like everything I think about all day can finally be word-vomited out with Mark like it can with no other person. The part where Mark and I do not live on the same coast of this country anymore has really hampered this. Next week, I will move to Berkeley and Mark will return to Troy, NY. We'll meet again in Encinitas sometime, we know, but it will never be quite like high school was or these summers have been. But knowing that I am not alone, that Mark is not alone -- that helps.
Today's Verse and Voice shares our opinions and solidifies our hopes:
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
from his Nobel Lecture
Join Mark and me in making such a world possible.