I don't know, either.

Five years ago today, I graduated from high school. Some days, it seems impossible -- if I woke up tomorrow and rolled into Stimson's first period physics class, it might take me a day to realize that that was out of place. Other days, it's hard to believe that I'm that person and that those boys are these boys...we've been a lot of places since then.

I had lunch at Rico's today, our home base taco shop. It was full of underclassmen celebrating that school was out.

I was reading something recently about people who talk about what has happened to them instead of their dreams for the future. I think I'm one of those people. It's not that I don't have dreams for the future. I have many. But sometimes it feels like they're far away. And that I'm in this weird place in between great things. Five years ago, we knew we'd been having the time of our lives. And a year ago. And maybe, in the theme of senior years, three years from now, we'll feel the same.

But what does that say about today? I don't know, either.

This weekend was awesome.

I have awesome friends. If you do not know this you may not be able to read because holy mo it is all I ever write about.

But this weekend, I got to spend about 24 hours with some of my favorite people in the world. And all we did was celebrate. Two of the best people to ever live, Eric and Abby, married each other on Saturday! They were beautiful. Here they are having a super great time:

And here we are, beforehand, being pretty and stuff:

And here are the boys, doing dumb boy stuff:

And after the wedding, we went to see Dispatch at the Greek (which ruled super hard even though we were only there for like six songs), and then to Fenton's for inordinate amounts of ice cream. All in all, it was a great day to be alive.

Coincidence?

Have you ever met someone and just, like, had a feeling about him? Like, you couldn’t figure out exactly why, but you just needed to know him? Maybe not in any epic, life-changing way, but just…needed to? One of my fellow interns walked in this afternoon (he’s in a different group and our CPE paths will not cross again after this week) and I immediately felt this way. I didn’t know anything about him, he hadn’t said anything other than his name (Matthew), but I was intrigued. It turns out that Matthew is from a small town in North Carolina, and is an Episcopalian seminarian in Alexandria, Virginia. Why is he doing CPE in southern California, you might ask? Well, because he’d been out here before living at a Vedanta Monastery (right?!) and met a Sufi teacher there (obvi?!) and thought he’d come back out this way to live with her while he went through CPE. If I’d had to pick his backstory, I would never have come anywhere close to that. So, it turns out, Matthew is an initiated member of a Mevlevi order, and is, “living that tension” with his Episcopalian tradition, as he put it. He and I recalled experiences in Türkiye – cave churches in Kappadokya, Rumi’s tomb in Konya, Mary’s house in Efes – and expressed joy at finding another person so committed to a Protestant tradition but also enamored of Islam.

Matthew interviewed at CDSP but decided to stay closer to home – he sounded a little jealous of my life in the GTU, in the end. We said, though, that we will hang out when we can (like at lunch the next three days) and when I’m at St. Joseph for class (instead of at Mission for clinical) we’ll try to meet up. And he wants me to come some weekend for Dhikr. Alhamdulillah!

So, I wonder, what are the odds? That I would see Matthew and instantly feel a connection to him, and have it unfold that we are both reverent of the same outside tradition? And that we are both committed to the harmony of the three peoples of the book in our own ministries?

I am amazed.