I’m wearing a scarf for the first time this season. That to me marks the beginning of winter. There might be another warm day or two, or maybe not. The real shift is in our own endurance. The first fifty degree day feels real chilly, it requires a sweater, but today’s the first day it’s below freezing with the sun up and things going on. That feels different.

Roby’s wearing a fuzzy wool snow suit to church, her little white dress doesn’t cut it. Not for the trip from the car to the big doors at least. I’m confident people will comment about how dang cute she is, because she’s really dang cut. The thing has ears.

We learned that one of the kids at church, he’s maybe 7 or 8 now and keeps it together pretty well, used to spend all of liturgy running and running and running. He wouldn’t touch anything or bump anything or pull anything down, and he’d even refrain from hopping up on the altar, knowing that didn’t feel right.

It’s a comforting thought, that that was allowed.

We let Roby wander fairly far afield, but she’s a little aggressive and might try pulling down some tapestries or tugging off women’s jackets, we’re not sure how far she’d go because we tend to put a stop to it when we see her walking with purpose towards something we’d rather not see yanked, of which the are are loads of things.

Our house is largely yank proof, and the stuff to yank is ours, so it’s okay if it gets yanked, it’d be our fault and our wound. It’s harder at other places where the things that Roby might yank are not ours. I’m sure the church would be gracious, I’m sure it’s happened before, but let’s not let it happen again.

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I wrote that this morning, and I’m writing this in the evening. The first starnge evenign after daylight savings. Waking up feeling good about waking up so early! becomes feeling realy weird that you’re so tired even though it’s only, what? Seven thirty.

I spent some time with a new friend today. Our kids are about the same age and it’s nice to see them grow together. He is secular, and we are fairly similar in many ways. We get along and I could see us becoming pretty good friends eventually. 

It seems pretty clear that he feels a little uncertain about the whole religious thing. The way he’s made comments in the past, something I’m far more aware of these days, or the way he responded to my having gone to a monastery, and my reason for having done so, or the way he responded to Roby’s toy of prayer beads (not a rosary).

I want him to like me, and I don’t want him to be uncomfortable. That and I still feel strange and potentially ironic every time I talk about religion with someone who isn’t Jack or Abby, and even then, I’ll sometimes feel weird. I played it down, justified it, softened it in this context of new friendship. I talked about meditation when what I meant was the Jesus Prayer, I talked about mysticism when what I meant was a belief structure so far removed from materialism that he wouldn’t be able to recognize it.

You’re not supposed to deny him, that’s very important, and I don’t think I did. But I also didn’t not, not totally. Where’s the line between denial and a style of excited evangelism that I think is also bad?