peace out.

I am certain that I won't have time to blog tomorrow. I shouldn't be taking time to do it right now, but I'm at a good pausing point. Packing is going slowly, but it is going. I am going to leave some stuff here and pick it up when I come home for Julie's wedding. I know that most of all I will miss all of my friends here. It's been quite a time to be home and I wouldn't have made it without all of you. I am part of a group called the framily, we have dinner about once a month and hang out and they are some of my most favorite people in the world. We usually eat at one friends house and she has fiesta ware so for my going away present the framily got me my own fiesta ware. I'll have to make a Richmond framily :O) They also gave me a card that has the definition of framily, I thought I'd post it here because it's just so beautiful. Goodbye from State College, I'll post something Tuesday when I get to Richmond. It's going to be 85 there! Thank goodness for air conditioning!! love you all, hugs. r

framily- 1. group of friends who have developed such an intimacy that the term friend no longer is able to capture the intensity of their relationship 2. a relationship guided by unconditional love and embracement of broken humanness 3. a unit whose members care for and serve each other 4. a way of living that welcomes an overlapping and intertwining of lives 5. an interconnection that transforms its members because they challenge one another 6. a bond that is never broken, not over time or distance.

"Giants are just like us...only bigger...much muuuuuch bigger"

So I'm packing today. I had lunch with some friends and then went and got a new wallet and picked up a printer (that works, yay!) from some other friends. Now I'm in my room surrounded with a mess. It is, as my sister in law says, a "functional" mess, but it's still a mess. I've done lots of packing today, gotten clothes out of my dressers, organized the closet into clothes that are going Tuesday and clothes I'll wait to take and I'm doing laundry. feels pretty productive. I'm going out with a friend late tonight so I have lots of time to stay awake and get things done. So, while i'm cleaning and packing I need something slightly distracting on my TV, so I'm watching the Stephen Sondheim musical "Into The Woods". This musical is hilarious, I first found it in high school when I was in a musical theatre class. It's witty, smart, creative, the music is fantastic, and the lyrics are just genius. The story includes a lot of familiar fairy tale characters- Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Cinderella, and my favorite, Prince Charming. There are two prince charming characters and they are hilarious. I'm telling you that if you have any tolerance (or love!) for musicals and haven't seen it, the princes are worth it. I discovered that someone has uploaded the entire show onto youtube, so you can check it out there. ok...back to the packing! happy thursday!!!!
r
oh the title is a line from the show :O)

hey there

hello everyone! sorry for the lack of posting, i've been busy trying to pack and clean and get ready to move. it's an overwhelming task that i'm not so good at tackling right now. i think as long as i'm not packing i guess i can pretend i'm not leaving. but the reality is that a week from now i'll be in my dorm room, just completed my first day of orientation, i'm sure i'll be tired and probably a bit overwhelmed. i think it's just hard to up and leave. i have a community here that is loving and supportive and filled with amazing people that i am going to miss very much. i'm just not in a hurry to peace out, you know? sigh. but it will happen. my sister needs my dresser this weekend, so i suppose tomorrow i'll clean it out and move it upstairs so that she can pick it up. and i'll do laundry. and pack stuff up. i suppose i don't need all my clothes for the next week. oh my. it will be ok, right? right. i hope you're all having a great week, i'll attempt to post again, but most likely it will be more rambling about leaving. love and hugs. r

Welcome to the new blog!

Hello everyone! I've decided to acknowledge the new part of my life that I would start a new blog. It just is another way to honor the changes to come. The title comes from an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert, who was asked what God was and she replied "Gee, that's an easy question. What is God? [Laughter.] But, actually, I sort of do have an easy answer for it. It's something from the Gnostics who said that God is the perfection which absorbs. I think that's the loveliest and simplest and least politically controversial possible definition of divinity—that we are not perfect, as humans, and yet, we have access to a perfection that's beyond us that we can become absorbed in, sometimes just for five minutes, sometimes for a whole year, sometimes, if you're really a blessed saint, forever."

So I'm off to seminary, to seek God and find new ways to connect with God, and new ways to serve other people. And of course, to blog about the whole thing :O) The old site will eventually go away I think, it will become my own diary of the last year of my life. I won't update it anymore, so you should all replace that bookmark with this new address (Yes. I'm sure you all have it bookmarked :O) I'm also going to attempt to use correct capitalization! Wahoo! English dorks rejoice! Since I'll have to be writing papers and whatnot, I figure I should get back in the swing of capitalizing things, makes it easier to remember to do it when writing the papers.

So happy reading! I hope you enjoy the new blog, I'm looking forward to writing it. Have a great day everyone!
love and hugs, r