May Grey

It is the time of year in San Diego when everything turns grey… As I write “grey” my American spell check doesn’t like it. To quote Madeleine L’Engle
“there is grey, which is English, and one very definite, bird-wing, ocean wave color to me; and gray which is American, and a flatter, more metallic color.” You see for some reason, in the world’s most perfect climactic miracle of a city about a month of purposeless clouds appear towards the end of May into the beginning of June. Though Americans would say it is May Gray, I would hope to see it as May Grey. The English are better equipped to teach us what to do with cloudy days. So I’m drinking proper tea, spending time reading, taking walks in the park…maybe I’ll go colonize something.

I’m also seeing my family a lot this month. My brother Sam and mom were here the first weekend of May for “St. George’s Day.” (speaking of colonizing, hooray for celebrating the British Empire in Anglican pomp and circumstance in California?) The Bishop preached a phenomenal sermon about “slaying the dragons of hunger, disease, and oppression,” and we marched in a parade with Bagpipes! The Dean and I caught sight of each other as we sang “God Save the Queen,” and neither of us made it the rest of the way through the song for laughing.

Last weekend I met the whole family in San Antonio to watch my sister Beth graduate. We had a really good time as a family. Beth leaves for Kenya tomorrow. She and I have been talking on the phone a lot about the weirdness of “becoming adults.” It is strange to have your family visit you in your “new home,” to feel that you have truly moved out of your old life. Beth has just begun to experience this new adult identity and like a new pair of pants it’s going to take a lot of moving around in it to get it to fit right. I think I’m just beginning to really enjoy the “adult-ness.”

I REALLY love my job. There are frustrating bits, a lot of administrata, but the chance to get to know and work with such a phenomenal community of people, to be invited into the holy spaces in students lives, to engage in mission, are AMAZING. Plus, I just got asked to be the chaplain for a backpacking trip in the High Sierra this summer with Camp Stevens! How awesome is that? Really, God has blessed me so unbelievably. It is humbling, and challenging. I can do little more than give thanks.