my life is beautiful

i had the best weekend. i feel sometimes like it cannot be possible for my life to be any better than it is right now. although i guess when i finally get to OChem and Developmental Biology and Ways of Knowing and [oh, i hope] the Dante class...

anyway, i just have a beautiful life.

i wish all my PA readers could come visit the early church with me. i love it SOOO much. i feel this huge sense of love and belonging and grace when i am there. yesterday i was at church and - i love how they pray. at the end of a service they have "the prayers of the faithful," where it is open for anyone to pray out loud, and when they are finished, they say "We pray to the Lord," upon which everyone else says [loudly] "Lord, hear our prayer!" Ron says - pray with excitement! You know what an exclamation point means! This is how God asks us to pray!

after church was over, we went to a house affiliated with Our Community Place to eat lunch. a man who is somehow involved with OCP [I think...i'm a little sketchy on details here] got an award from MMA. there are a few houses near each other and they have garden space around them. apparently people can come and help work the gardens and in return get some of the produce. and the one house has rooms inside for people to stay in and a little chapel...

there were so many people there. people from the early church and people from other churches who knew the guy getting an award. it was beautiful because it was so - odd. like - there was a girl there with bright pink hair. there were beautiful little kids. there were older people. i was listening to conversations and i heard these two old-ish men talking about the misconceptions they have held in their heads and hearts about the homeless. oh, it was so beautiful.

there was so much food! all of a sudden i felt like concepts from my confusing Ethics class sprang to life before my eyes. by this i mean: we all had enough. there was abundance brought out of scarcity. and the man who was sort of in charge of setting out the meal was speaking of the gardens and "putting them to sleep for the winter" - this reminded me of all of the times we have spoken of land care in Ethics.

so we gathered, sang a Jewish folk song that someone had learned in one of the New England states at a Passover Seder, and ate. Thia, Rebekah, and I ended up sitting with an older couple. You will NEVER guess who they were.

Do the names Joe and Hannah Lapp mean anything to any of you?
let me explain: FORMER PRESIDENT OF EMU. we had an entire conversation without finding out who they were. and then, casual as anything, he says, "Do any of you have a class in the President's room? You might see me there." And i was just like NO WAY. Ah! because i DO have a class in the President's room and I know that the portrait of every EMU president is hanging there. so i sort of did a very quiet freak-out and then i told him that i have a mug with his name on it. rinn gave me that mug; i told them that, too, and they remembered her! It was so awesome.

In other news: I'm sick. blech.
And sometime I need to write about "Morally Responsible Investment in Palestine" and Honors from last week: chirality

I can't wait for Thanksgiving.