Labor Day Weekend

I know I'm a little over due for a blog post, so I'll do a few to make up for it :)

Labor day weekend I took my room

mates home to Seattle!  It was awesome... well... at least by the end. It was transformational for our community for sure.

My parents were visiting the rest of the fam in the bay area for the weekend, so we had the house to our selves. When we first showed up, I was nervous as usual, about to invite my roommates deeper into my life - I felt pretty exposed. They were all in awe of the trees, and excited to be in such a beautiful home, going crazy sliding across the wood floors... but I was pulling back thinking to myself "why the hell did I bring these strange people to my home. They don't get me. This is weird. I just want to go hide." So I did. After everyone was set up with a place to sleep I went to bed first.

Saturday, I woke up early and went on my usual run through the woods, and came home refreshed and de-stressed and ready to play hostess and tour guide. We had an incredible day doing all the touristy things you gotta do in Seattle: walked from Capitol hill where my roommates met my friend Whitney, through down town, through pikes place, ate the donuts, watched the fish be thrown, got coffee at the first Starbucks, walked to the space needle, then ended with a nice happy hour back on Capitol hill. That night we went to the JV party at the Seattle Cherry Abby house and were suprised to be greeted so excitedly - EVERYONE was awaiting the arrival of the GRESHAM house. Who knew we were so popular? But this is where we really bonded - we were our go-to people, we danced together, we drank together, we had fun together. It was 

great.

Sunday I took them all on a very wet hike to Franklin Falls (pics at top), then we had a nice after noon of movie watching and warming up with some tea. Then I took everyone to my home church to give all my catholic roommates a taste of my protestant upbringing. It was so good to be home. It really showed me what I'm missing in my spiritual life during mass. And then during communion the band played "Be Though My Vision," the song I sang at Ian and Annie's wedding - and I lost it. My family was all together, without me, in California. I was home with these people who are slowly getting to know me better, and there was no one at the 6 o'clock service that I had expected to see. I tried to hold back the tears, but I couldn't. After the service I tried to compose myself, but ended up sitting down and crying in the narthex in front of my roommates. I eventually recovered, and we headed to a coffee shop on the Ave to discuss how we felt about the service and had some great discussion about where we are all at in our spiritual lives, what we value in our faith journeys, we talked a lot about catholic culture and guilt, which is so foreign to me. Then we finished off our intense conversation at the Compline service at St. Mark's on Capitol hill and left the service of Chanting monks a little more relaxed and reflective.  A great day.