.......yesterday i was reminded of where i was a year ago

Yesterday, I found myself looking through photos of my trip to Italy. Today, it's about just a week short of when I went last year with thirty other college students.

Having read my friend Katie's post the day before, about her experience of where the two of us were a year ago, I started thinking about those longings I had in my heart then. Katie and I were just beginning to get to know each other, and I think we both hoped we would become better friends living with each other for a month in a foreign country. But what drew our hearts together most of all was our desire to experience something in Italy so much larger than ourselves. We wanted to know something so beyond ourselves, our imaginations, and our abilities. We were open vessels longing to be filled.

So,
I've been thinking about those longings I had in my heart then, and those longings I have in my heart now, a year later.

I still feel like an open vessel longing to be filled with such wonder, delight, and beauty---enough to allow me to confront the pain of being human. I am longing to be filled today in my old hometown, seeking out how to see an old place with child-like eyes. I know today, that that is what allows me to be daily present with the loneliness and the fear that comes with being human.

the view from Katie's & my window, last January

-------if you haven't heard it before, go listen to Noah & the Whale's song Old Joy