Last night was the first time my church (Restoration) met in our new shared facility. We switched to Saturday night services, and I think I'm going to really like it. After the service, Chris, Meredith, her former roommate, and I went to Waffle House with the high school students from church... it was a good time. Since it was still fairly early, we decided to entertain ourselves by driving around to various places to ask people if they would be in a photo with us. For each of the pictures, we asked strangers to hold this ugly wooden duck from our house and wear a silly paper hat. We went to a gas station, Kroger, Whataburger, Blockbuster, and we also found two police officers who were willing to participate. I do love Texas! I love that nobody had any problem with our request... in fact, most of the people acted as though it were a completely normal and acceptable thing for us to be doing. I think that people back home are way more skeptical of strangers and would be far less likely to cooperate.

After our little adventure, I finished reading 'Teachings of the Christian Mystics.' I have to admit that even though I could name a few Christian mystics and had all sorts of vague ideas about what Christian mysticism is about... I didn't really know what specifically made someone a mystic. So I looked online for a while to try to get a better understanding and then also discovered a beautiful definition in one of the online dictionaries...

mysticism 1 immediate consciousness of the transcendent or ultimate reality of God 2 a belief in the existance of realities beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible by subjective experience

The book was excellent, and it was a surprisingly easy read. Although there was great depth to most of the passages, they were all very short. There was a lot in there about Mary, and I realized that I know very little about the Catholic beliefs about her. The book was insightful, but I want to understand more. There were a hundred amazing things that stood out to me... this is one quote I especially liked: "Jesus, it is your arms then that must be the lift that will raise me to heaven. To reach heaven I do not have to become great. On the contrary I must stay little. I must become even smaller than I am." -Saint Therese of Lisieux

It doesn't feel like Sunday.