deepbrew

After reading a wild and funny and inspiring letter from an old school pal, the incorrigible Peter Goertzen, I am in the mood to write a few lines myself.

My life has been fairly amazing lately. One week ago I managed to have another birthday, and would you believe it, I turned twenty-five! Twenty-five—it’s hard to believe. But it seems to be a fairly solid number, and may indicate another stage in the growth of manliness. Let’s hope.

On that day, just one week ago, my mother surprised me with the most extraordinary birthday party ever. Sunday morning when I was in Harrisonburg, where I had been hanging out with excellent friends and relations, and hearing my old time prof Melvin Lehman’s excellent expose´ on missions, my mother called me and told me a friend of mine had called and was going to stop in to see me that afternoon around 3:00. So I was of course dying to know who this might be, and was sure to make it home by three.

Turns out she had invited a TON of my friends from the community, and they came and filled the house and we sat around that packed living room eating chocolate birthday cake with coffee frosting, enjoying each other and the richness of it all. You should have seen the things they brought me. It was out of this world. These people bestowed me with several pounds of the best coffee in the world, some Colombia from Starbucks, a whole pound of freshly roasted Java beans from a little shop in Staunton, and a nice little bag of Hawaian Kona from the farmers’ market up in Dayton. And just the day before the Brown Truck had left a little box sent by a friend, a box with a whole bag of Starbuck’s Sumatra and a generous quantity of Cappucino snack mix. It overwhelmed me. After being gone from this community so much that I no longer had a clear sense of home, this kind of experience with home folks felt very good indeed.

The next day in school all my students were charged with a mysterious energy. There seemed to be a lot more communicating going on than normal. I knew something was afoot, but I had no clue that all the dads would show up for a birthday party. But show up they did, and we ate ice cream cake and drank Colombia from Starbucks and played volleyball all together, and it was as glorious as the day before.

And so my life has been quite good. This morning I am super happy and energetic because of this amazing extra hour. Why don’t we do a time change like this every Sunday morning? Y’all take care.