Yesterday we drove my friend Molly up to the Portland airport, where with a quick hug and a “love you, see you soon” (we were running a bit late, as per my usual), she disappeared into the terminal and presumably caught her plane back to Maryland. Gil and I went on to “adventure” a bit in Portland—we visited some good friends and ate at an absolutely delicious Paleo diner, among other things—but on the way home I had time to reflect on my visit with Molly.

I have been blessed with a number of amazing friends—friends with whom I feel confident that I share a view of what is most important in this world, with whom I can trust everything from my silliest whims to my most serious fears—and I treasure each and every one of them because each of them has witnessed an important part of my growth as a person, and each of them has left their own unique, indelible stamp on my psyche. I honestly can’t imagine my life without any one of these girls. And Molly is one of them.

Molly and I entered each others’ lives at a Gutenberg “Freshman Tea” one Sunday afternoon now almost five years ago. I’d like to tell you that we had a magical “friends at first sight” connection and that our relationship was smooth sailing from there until she was my Maid of Honor, but the truth is more like this: I latched on to her right from the beginning of our Gutenberg career—latched really being the appropriate word. Molly was the first of my friends to give me a real lesson on boundaries in a friendship; namely, her boundaries, and how I was blatantly unaware of them. Not a very pretty picture, is it? But it’s the truth, and the sometimes-ugly truth of our stories is often also where the beauty lies—because, though it so easily could have been, that confrontation was not the end of our friendship. We both adjusted, and grew, and we came back together as slightly stronger friends.

Also of particular significance to our relationship was the year that we decided to be roommates—our junior year of Gutenberg. We approached the idea with appropriate caution, I think, given our history; but I, at least, couldn’t help feeling a bit giddy about how cute we were going to make our room, how wonderful life was going to be, etc. (This is the way it goes when I approach a new living situation: the ways in which I believe it will improve my life know no bounds.) But reality, as it always does, interceded. We did, in fact, have a great time decorating our room. (It was amazing, if I do say so myself. I’ll have to post pictures of it sometime.) But it didn’t take too long for us to realize, individually, that we were stressed up to our eyeballs by the other person; by our communication, by our lack of communication, by our assumptions, by our fears and worries and annoyances. We got to the point where, in a lot of ways, it would have been easiest to give up on our relationship—to remain cordial roommates but not really friends.

But that is not what we did. Somehow, miraculously, we both resolved in ourselves that we were going to make this thing work, and we opened up. We took emotional risks and resolved things that desperately needed to be resolved. We dug deep enough to build real trust between the two of us—something which I don’t think had ever really been present before.

I thought about all this as Gil drove us home down I-5 last night and the sunset-lit fields flashed by my window. And I thought about how now, on this visit, even though we hadn’t seen each other for almost a year, being with Molly was as easy as breathing—how she and I have both grown and deepened and settled into our own skins, and how that has only made our friendship richer. I also thought about how having a friend like Molly is pretty much one of greatest blessings you could ask for in this life and how our friendship never would have come about without a lot of hard work.

Hard work is not something any of us tend to seek out, especially in our relationships. We would much rather take the easy way out—not admit that we were wrong, not apologize for hurting the other person, not open up about our fears and concerns. So I am thankful for reminders, like my friendship with Molly, that if, by the grace of God, you can make the choice to work hard, there are great rewards to be reaped.

The cottage is enjoying (and so are its occupants) its first house-guest this week. My dear friend Molly, who graduated from Gutenberg with me last year, is visiting Eugene after a year at home in Maryland. She is staying with Gil and me, which absolutely delights me, except for the fact that I’m sorry she has to sleep on the couch. But she doesn’t seem to mind; it is a comfortable couch, after all.

When I was little, my brother and I would often make fun of my mom for taking such care to make sure the house was clean when she was expecting guests (clearly we were very respectful children). “But Mom,” I remember saying on more than one occasion, “they won’t care whether the house is completely put together.” This impenetrable argument never seemed to carry much weight with her, however, and she would still make me clean my room.

And now, in the inevitable way of things, I completely understand. It’s true, guests might not care about, or notice, the exact depths of cleanliness you achieve before they arrive (certainly, any friend who I really consider a friend would forgive me for an imperfectly clean house). But cleaning, straightening, and tying up loose ends, I’ve discovered, is an integral part of preparing to welcome someone—it’s a way of clearing your head, and your space, so that both can focus on the person or people you are welcoming into your life for a short while.

It is also a fantastic excuse to finish projects that have been sitting on the “to-do” list for too long. I used Molly’s arrival as an excuse to finally display something on the wall above our couch, which has been sadly bare since we moved here in February. To do this, I turned to some of my favorite tools: packaging twine and mini clothespins.

I pulled a few favorite photos (some old, some new) out of my overflowing photo box (another project, to be sure), and played with ways to suspend them with the clothespins. After a few failed attempts, I ended up doing this:

A length of soft brown ribbon suspended between two tacks in the wall, with photo-clothespinned lengths of twine hanging from it. And some strips of my favorite wrapping paper. Oh, and some clipboards, for good measure. It’s a bit… oh, I don’t know. Kitschy. Homespun. But it fills the space, it’s color-coordinated, and it lets me look at some of my favorite images every time I come into the living room. Why clipboards, you ask? I don’t know. I just like them. I’m sure I’ll find something wonderful to clip on them at some point.

And now I had better go to bed. This week has provided many happy reasons for staying up too late—a blessing indeed, but I think I should try to catch up on some of that sleep. Goodnight.

This is a busy week for my alma mater.

Last night, I was one of many Gutenberg students and alumni who joined the Gutenberg tutors in meeting and greeting residents of Sisters, Oregon. This event was part of the effort to raise awareness and funds for Gutenberg’s hopeful move to a new campus in Sisters. During the sample discussions and talks by the Gutenberg tutors, I had the chance, once again, to see my school shine. And I heard and saw, in the people of Sisters, an eagerness to see it shine in their town.

This coming Friday, Gutenberg College will celebrate the commencement of its 13th graduating class. Because I grew up in this little community with this little school, I have had the opportunity to attend every Gutenberg graduation since the first one, which took place on the president of the school’s front lawn. These days our graduations require a (slightly) larger venue, but they are still attended by a small, supportive community, and each ceremony is as unique as the members of its graduating class.

The Gutenberg College class of 2010, with guests Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist.

Last year, it was our turn. My class and I stood together to celebrate the bittersweet end of our four-year journey together. We had invited Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist (also known as Over the Rhine) to our graduation, and they accepted (Hallelujah). We got the chance to chat with them a bit before graduation, and Linford delivered our commencement address (which you should go read right now). I can’t speak for the rest of my class, but from my perspective, their presence and Linford’s words were the perfect celebration of and end to our Gutenberg career.

So. We were the twelfth, and now Gutenberg prepares to welcome its thirteenth. And I hope, earnestly, that we will be but among the first of many, many more graduating classes to come. But in order for that to happen, Gutenberg will, by God’s grace, have to overcome some obstacles in its way–first and foremost of which is raising the money to move to Sisters. I am not a millionaire (though if I suddenly was, you’d better believe Gutenberg would have most of it in a heartbeat), so the best that I can do is to add my voice to the chorus, saying, Gutenberg is important.

I tend to take Gutenberg for granted. When you grow up around something wonderful, it easily fades into the background; it takes the wonder and appreciation of outsiders to throw its features into relief once more. I have had this experience with Gutenberg more than once, and I had it in Sisters last night. By listening to the tutors talk about Gutenberg, and listening to positive feedback from the audience, I remembered once more why Gutenberg is important.

Gutenberg is important because we live in a world where the point of education is to acquire a job, not to put together a coherent worldview and figure out how we fit into it. We live in a world where science is our utmost authority, but few of us know how it got that power or have seriously considered whether it ought to have it. We live in a world where people have stopped asking the big questions: what does it mean to be a human? How should I live, and why? Gutenberg is important because the antidote to this sorry state of affairs is the kind of education that it offers–education that, instead of prescribing answers and facts to be memorized, provokes thought, examination, and questioning of one’s entire worldview.

I am proud and thankful to have graduated from Gutenberg College. Chances are, if you are reading this, that you have had some exposure to Gutenberg already. But if you have not, I highly recommend that you investigate it further. If it piques your interest, I hope you will consider a) attending it or b) supporting it, even if the only way you can do so is, like me, by telling other people about it. This school is a gem, folks, and I hope and pray that it will thrive for many years to come.

Oh, how I love to look out my front door and see green.

I have a little writing desk next to this door. Actually, it is an old Singer sewing machine–the kind that is folded away inside a wooden table with drawers on each side and ornate iron scrollwork for legs. It used to belong to my grandmother, who would probably have approved of the fact that I put a typewriter on top of it. She, like me, was more of a writer than a seamstress—though not unable to sew when the urge struck her.

I set the typewriter on top of the sewing machine so that I could use it on those days when computers are getting me down, and I set the sewing machine next to the door so I could look out at the lawn, and the trees, and my little potted plants, which, by the way, are the perfect antidote to a technology-overdose.

This is the first year I have ever “grown” anything. It’s the first year I have fallen in love with little starts at the farmer’s market or nurseries, the first year I have so-carefully nudged them out of their plastic cartons and nestled them with gloved hands in their prepared bit of soil, the first year I have hovered over them day after day checking for water levels and signs of health—and probably, the Negative Nellie in my head says, the first year I will KILL ALL OF THEM. I just have to shush that voice when it crops up, though… no matter what happens, it will have been a learning experience, and so far they are all just FINE.

The pot most visible from my post at the sewing machine holds my strawberries. Oh, my beautiful strawberry plants–what were blooms in mid-April are growing enticingly more and more strawberry-like by the day. Of course, my landlady has informed me that the deer who frequent the property will most likely eat them any day now. Well, there’s that voice again. Oh, and now it’s also reminding me that just buying a pint of strawberries at the farmer’s market yields more strawberries than I may see all summer, at about half the price of the strawberry plants. Hush, voice. Don’t you know that part of what I was buying was experience? Can you really put a price tag on that?

I sometimes wonder, as I’m sitting at my desk, what my strawberry plants think of this very, very wet spring/summer we are having in Oregon. Because there they are, reaching heavenward, protecting their developing fruit, and every other day the sky just opens up and dumps on them. For all I know, they love these storms. But I can’t help thinking, that if I were they, I would not like to sit around outside with my arms outstretched while God poured buckets of cold water on me. I mean, at least if I did that I would have the option of coming inside and drying off—they just have to sit there and take it.

Then again, maybe that’s in their favor. They don’t have the illusion of shelter to make themselves think they are safe from the elements–or to think that their existence is in their own hands. We humans, on the other hand, build ourselves bigger and bigger shelters against wind, rain, and God—until our shelters become so elaborate that it takes earthquakes, tsunamis, and tornadoes to remind us that wind, rain, and God are not yet quite irrelevant.

But, I remind myself, strawberries don’t think (probably), and when I reach the point that I am genuinely concerned about their feelings I know that I have been sitting at the sewing machine too long. Which is just as well, because by then it’s time to move on to some other task around the cottage–like making dinner, perhaps. Or perhaps, if I have the luxury of a few hours with nothing to do, lying on the couch where I can see out this door, and then taking a nap. (This doesn’t happen very often. But when it does, it’s heavenly.)

Last year about this time I was putting the finishing touches on a backbreaking little project known as my senior thesis. I had spent the entire year before that immersed in the work of Albert Camus and Søren Kierkegaard, two excellent writers and thinkers (though not terribly health conscious, apparently–DON’T SMOKE, kids) who had a thing or two to say about despair–what it is, and whether or not one ought to. This was and is a subject near and dear to my heart, and though the process of writing my thesis nearly did me in, I am immensely thankful that I was able to finish it. And, in the end, I think I managed to communicate at least a little of what I set out to. So here it is, in case you are interested in reading it:

In PDF Format: The Leaden Echo – Albert Camus & Søren Kierkegaard on Despair

(If nothing else, you should download it and read the Gerard Manley Hopkins poems on either end of the paper. They are some of my favorites.)