“Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it– tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest– if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself– you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say “Here at last is the thing I was made for.” We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we all still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose it, we lose all.” (C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 146.)

Spinach burger. Lime potatoes. New tastes. New leaves. New roads.

A kind of strange, industrial-feeling shot taken above my steering wheel, the sun lined up just right with a radio tower to produce an interesting orb.

I don’t really know what to make of this. I took it at my desk today– a reflection of the arbor and sky. A nice view where there shouldn’t be one. Add it to the list of unexpected things from today… a reminder in Problem of Pain that God actually goes to great lengths to make us better. Part of what it means to be loved by Him is to be forcibly changed to be more like Him. And that is painful, but good.

Don’t try this at home.

I was driving down the interstate and saw these most interesting clouds today. Like a canvas. From my iPhone.

I upgraded my press coffee maker recently and have been very happy with the results. This, of course, is equally the responsibility of a new batch of Primavera Coffee, which remains (in my humble opinion), the best Coffee east of the Mississippi. Charlottesville doesn’t hold a candle… yet I digress. Let me sing the praises of a larger press: you can make as much or as little coffee as you’d like. With the smaller, 6ish ounce press, I could never get the proportions right. Although this was probably my fault, the larger one has given me new reason to make coffee. I use the Bodum recommended proportions: 1 heaping Tablespoon grounds to 4 ounces of water. This morning I brewed Kenya AA Gichi. Mail ordering coffee, it turns out, can be worth it.

At some point, we all have to grow up. An occasional smoke on this beautiful churchwarden will certainly help.

Beautiful vineyards on a beautiful day.