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Sunday

I'm too tired to have any coherent thoughts, but it's been a few days since I've written anything, and even more since I've written anything about my day-to-day life. Today I went to a baptism after church with a few friends. It was a backyard affair. You know, the jacuzzi types where everyone standing in the crisp autumn air half-envies the baptizers for getting to lounge in the spa. Someone got stung by a bee.

They were the words-of-wisdom types. I really love those people, though I know I'll never be one of them. I'm alright with that. Not that I don't understand them, and not that I've never felt led to share a word, picture, idea that God has given me with someone... but there's a kind of community in which it becomes the predominant practice of their gatherings of faith to interact in that way. And that just isn't gonna be me. At least, I highly doubt it. It's like driving past a familiar street knowing you'll never make it down that way, but you recognize that it's got a really nice view. Something like that.

A while afterward, we went to Crystal Cove. There's something about that place that's just good for the soul. Also good for photography. Carissa's camera's loaded with beachy shots of all of us. I think we may have even taken a few of her just before the battery died. Home to no-bakes that wouldn't set and Catch Phrase at the living room window. There are lots of reasons to like that game, but the main one has to be watching it played by siblings and close friends. When they leap up and shout, 'oh! Oh! that time!! with the ferris wheel!' and the other one goes, 'penguin feet!!!' like it's the most certain and clear-headed association in the world. The eeriest games are with Stuart and Spencer. I'm pretty sure I remember a time when Stuart just glanced up from the word, without having said a thing, and Spencer blurted it out like a genie. The very word. Straight from one man's brain to the other. Creepy. Fabulous.

Now it's bedtime. This has been more than fourteen hours of straight socialization, and I admit to being a bit exhausted. It's more than I've had in a very, very long time. But it was good.

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