"Hi Mum and Dad,
It seems like a long time since I've written. I've been waiting for some things to coalesce, and waiting, and waiting, and studying madly (yes, I really am--not just covering up lots and lots of procrastination) and so far nothing really has coalesced except for the grace of God and a growing sense of confused wonder.

one of my favorite books is called To Say Nothing of the Dog. Connie Willis wrote it, and I feel like Ned the protagonist: I have to get shuffled off and stuck in the middle of a nighttime thunderstorm in a half-complete cathedral in the 12th century so that whoever's in charge can actually fix the problem I've been trying to solve since the beginning of the book and have only been mucking up.

except that the Grand Designer is using my fixation with one problem to muck around in all sorts of wonderful ways in my life and teach me all sorts of important things and fix tons of internal stuff i didn't know was broke...without actually doing anything to make things better in the one problem i'm fixated on. all that other stuff is really nice, boss, but [edited] is what i wanted you to help me out with, dagnabbit. :)

i really am smiling right now. so, i think, is that mysterious presence out of the corner of my vision with the just-possibly-mischevious twinkle in his just-barely-visible eye.

the only thing that's coalescing right now is the grace of God and my growing realization of its all-encompassing presence. i feel like i jumped off one skyscraper to another, missed, am now hovering strangely in midair, midleap, and just found out that i'm in my underwear and now i'm desperately hoping that no one miles below will look up and find me out until i can sort my way out of this strange limbo. but i'm getting used to the limbo, too, and it's a heck of a lot better than plummeting to a messy, and embarassingly unclad, end. and maybe whatever it is that's holding me up here has some kind of master plan that involves...staying in this odd unresolution for a while.

well...that's wierd. but i'm a wierd guy. and in celebration of that wierdness, check out the lovely picture of me on my friend tagan's bloggything.