There was a women’s social and a dinner at church tonight. Chocolate torte #3 has been dispensed with.  But before I left, Richard was reminiscing with a chuckle over the time when someone at another potluck there had asked, in a bit of indignation, “Who assigned the Hydes SALAD!? I was looking forward to that torte!”

When the typecast fits, bake it.

So there I was.  Brian’s grandma took me aside and told me–I wasn’t sure if she said it was all of them or just the one–but at least one grandchild, then, went to bed last night with their hat firmly kept on their head and in the morning, there it stayed.

She couldn’t begin to know how much that meant to me and that she’d told me.  Moments like that keep me knitting.

Meantime, I finished the shawl for the nurse fighting cancer this afternoon, rinsed it and laid it out to dry in the round.  It’s always so magical, that moment when a glob of random yarn loops transforms into its glorious self and you step back and actually, finally, after all those hours, get to see.  It was such a sense of accomplishment, and its purpose so close to who I am and why I do what I do that, even though I tried, I could not get myself to settle on any new ball of yarn to start something else.  Not yet.

It felt so strange to walk out the door with no knitting project.  I mentioned that to Nicholas’s mom at the dinner.

She looked at me and smiled. “It’s okay to rest between projects.” I think she’s right–but note that I had to think about it awhile first.

Okay, that’s long enough.  I’m home.  Cast on!

I didn’t realize till afterwards that what I’d been waiting for was to see them receive them in person.  I hoped each one would choose and like their own particular hat–but you never know. What is a given, though, is that kids are transparent in their emotional reactions to things and I would know if someone still needed soothing afterwards with something they liked better. I think I needed to know that.  And so I’d hesitated.

Only the baby was having none of it, even when we tried playing peek-a-boo from under the wool, but he was tired and it was something unfamiliar.  Tomorrow he’ll be grinning and cooing and playing happily.

So the story is this: word was that Brian’s family was here visiting grandparents for a day or two. I knew that grandparent time is precious; I knew that when there is great pain, a family gathered round in the strength of home may feel intruded upon by outsiders who simply can never quite entirely know.  I hesitated for several hours–but at last, I called and asked if I might borrow a moment of their day.

They readily welcomed me on over.

I told them how, several years ago, one good deed begat another good deed till, to my delight, a surprise box full of Blue Moon Fiber Arts yarns from Tina at BMF arrived on my doorstep–and then, I told them, every time I went to go knit the Silkie, trying to honor her gift by making good use of it, that one yarn just kept telling me, No. Not yet. For nearly three years it would not let me knit it. Last year at Stitches I bought two more skeins in the “Love” colorway, and it too resisted my needles.

Until recently.  Now I knew why.

So except for the first hat, before I figured out what I was doing, all the hats had a strand of Silkie; they were all individual, given that I knit in two strands, but all my hats were in the same family.   (Even the non-Silkie had the other strand overlapping.)  I pointed out the one hat that was completely different and described my longtime online friend Karin driving six hours round trip to finally get to meet me in person when we were in Vermont a year and a half ago; she’d wanted to knit a hat, too, for them, to convey her support. I told them how the folks at Purlescence had wanted to offer up their own goodwill towards them and wouldn’t let me pay full price on the matching yarns.

They loved them.  Each child picked one while making sure the others got one they liked, too; I was impressed.

The dad lined everybody up, seated me in the center, hats on all, and I looked around and went, “What, no bunny ears?!” The kids cracked up. (While the baby tried to pull his off.)

Their second-youngest son was whittling away on a stick during most of this, as happy as a knitter with cashmere in hand, and he grinned at me with his turquoise hat on his head.

When I left, he was outside in the garden, whittling away some more, totally immersed in his creation, hat on head, totally happy.  Yes.  Oh, thank you, thank you! I wanted to tell him.

When he gets older and his fine motor skills mature, maybe we’ll get some really cool knitting needles from his woodworking. You never know where a moment will take someone.

The Minions of the Pointy Sticks were laughing and knitting when Gigi pulled out her cellphone for me and called her son.  Just to make sure he was home. (Try to make sure he doesn’t leave!)

And then I excused myself, got back on the freeway, and headed toward their house.

Maybe I’ll embarrass him if I tell on him that he was vacuuming and didn’t hear the doorbell. (I hear he’s already spoken for in the has-parents department, sorry, you can’t have him.)  So I knocked hard.

Sam opened the door to a chocolate torte being offered up.  He’d mentioned last week, out of my earshot, how much he’d wished for “the best chocolate cake I have ever eaten in my life before or since,” after I’d made him one for his pushing my chair at Stitches five years ago, and by his sister’s indignantly-teasing reaction I knew I had to hear that one and made him repeat it.

I tell you, that wish was definitely my command.  That’s an easy one.

Standing in his doorway tonight, he told me how much I’d turned his day around five years ago; I told him how much he’d turned mine around too, oh my goodness most definitely, and I thanked him again for last Saturday.

Any time.

Any time back atcha.

(Time to go wind that second hank of suri.)

Last January, Richard ran into our old friend C. at Stanford Hospital; she works there as a nurse. Her kids and ours grew up together, we’ve known each other for ages, and she greeted him joyfully.

And then she stopped suddenly and asked–Wait–does this mean Alison’s in here?

That shawl project I mentioned yesterday?

I bought the hand-dyed Cherry Tree Hill suri laceweight at the DBNY sale.  When it came, it was wiry in the hands and very thin and I knew it would never get knit by itself.

So I went looking for something to tame it and add weight to it.  I found two blue laceweights in my stash, one dyed by me, one dyed by Lisa Souza, that I knew would look stunning with it.

But I also had some 20/20/60 cashmere/silk/superfine merino in Verdoso from Colourmart that matched the fairly small bit of green in that suri. I’d already hanked, scoured, and balled it up, which you have to do with mill-oiled cones; it was in the color of life growing upwards in the spring anew.  It was so soft now and it was ready to go.

I liked the blue. I preferred the blue. I wanted to do the blue.

But the green said, simply, No. Me.

We argued with each other for a few days.

No, the green flat-out declared, I said me, and that, honey, is that.

Rargh.

And so I got started, and as I got the yoke worked on, I thought, you know, I think I’d still like that blue better–maybe I should just frog this so I could prove to that yarn that I do know better than it does, thankyouverymuch.

Green it was.  I tried to get as much done as possible before Stitches, and then, like I say, my hands had to rest for days after wheeling around there.

It was such a relief to be able to get back to work.  I put a fair amount of time into it yesterday and today, feeling like this needed to be ready–if for no other reason than that then I could dive into the fun new stuff.

And yet.  I’ve learned time and again that when something is that insistent, there’s always a good reason for it.

Maybe I shouldn’t blog the whole thing yet, just wait for the day I go to give it, while probably wearing a different one to offer to trade, because, you see, this insecure part of me always wants to whine, But what if she doesn’t *like* it?

And yet.

I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday and the nurse there exclaimed, Oooh, that’s *pretty*!

That helped more than she could know, and then, today, all the more.

The mail came this afternoon while I was knitting away.  A letter. It was from C.  She was throwing a party, bringing old friends together as she tries to do about once a year–and this time also hoping to raise money for breast cancer research.

For the sake of a young co-worker of hers. A single mom with breast cancer.

Who is a nurse at Stanford.

In a department I was in last January.

I had two nurses by that first name.  They saw me near death’s door. I am well now. For all their hard work and their caring, I am where I am now. I owe them all so much.

“Wear green!” said the invitation.

Oh, honey, and bring it, too.  I shall bring it, too. And I will tell that young mom that that green cashmere blend knew what it was doing.

And she will see me healthy.  I will take the colors of growth and new life with the first bluebell flowers of spring sprinkled here and there, and wrap them around her shoulders from all my heart.

Hey, KarenL, remember helping me tie this quilt in high school with the frame set up in your living room? Simon and Garfunkel playing in the background: Wednesday Morning 3 A.M., and I forget what the other album was.

Michelle’s comment about peacock tails got me reaching for peacock colors afterwards. I knew I was about to go off to Stitches, about to go buy gloriously gorgeous new yarns, but I just couldn’t have a day without a project!

Yeah, well.  I way overdid it with my hands on that chair Friday. (Thank you, Sam, so much for taking it over on Saturday!)  I simply had to wait, with all that lovely yarn staring at me, not that I wanted to confess that to the blog. Not Going To Happen Right Now. No Knitting Allowed. Heal.

Today was dark and stormy, the kind of day for curling up with a good yarn; I was doing better and gave it a go.

I’m actually glad now that I have something in my way that will take me a good dozen hours to finish up:  time to be creative in while keeping my mind open to what the first of the new wants to be when it grows up.  I knit so much and with so many yarns: they come, they go, it’s on to the next.  But, unlike some skeins, I don’t want to just play with these from Lisa, Dianne, and Melinda–I want them each to be in the perfect design from the get-go. They’re just too pretty not to be.

Knitting time. Thinking time. It’s all good.

(Oh, and yes, I found our certificate from when we tied the knot. Phew!)

I’ve been staring at this blank page.  Where to start.

(Maybe if the yarn weren’t all in hanks. But it is. And I am too tired to wind it up into balls.)

But still.  All these glorious, glorious yarns and colors.  And a thank you to Dianne’s husband for running out to their truck for my Waterfalls Elegant hank from their stock.  Where to start.

I tell you, it’s going to be a very fun year.

I got to see Lisa and Rod, so dear to me for so many years, and Sheila.  Dianne.  The folks at Blue Moon.  Karen at Royale Hare, Melinda and Tess at Tess.  I got to meet the folks at Malabrigo: to my surprise, I found myself in a conversation in French at one point, but we all spoke yarn. And I got to see so many, many friends who were simply walking around trying to take it all in, too.

To Jasmin’s brother Sam, who pushed me today, sparing my hands and arms for knitting, Michelle and I plan to get that manufacturing cream on Monday–you earned that chocolate torte! (Recipe in comments, actual cake forthcoming.) Thank you!

And I have now held an actual vicuna-blend hank of hand-dyed gorgeousness, 15% vicuna and still in the qiviut-ic stratosphere.  Which is a good thing. Pay those South American ranchers well.  Shear a wild vicuna, save a vicuna by making it worthless to poachers, save a species–well done, Peru!

And someday I will afford some and knit some.  (No, new skeins, that wasn’t a sheep shot.)

They teach us patience when they’re little so that we have it on hand when they become too big to scoop up into our arms and make it all better with the simplicity of a hug.

A young mom with two adorable boys ages three and one-something and one on the way was one of the speakers at church today.   Her topic was repentance.

She said there had been an incident, (for which the details were irrelevant because the whole thing was so universal), but basically, her older boy had done some behavior in public that she had felt in a moment of fatigue had made her look bad as his mother.  She’d been cross with her sweet little boy.

And then she’d felt horrible.

Okay, is there a single mother out there who can’t relate to that?  Who doesn’t understand that yes, you are the mother and yes you should be in control of your own reactions, but who nevertheless gets what it’s like to have little ones out in public acting normal for their age in a society that looks down on them unless they’re behaving like little adults with an absolute decorum that even adults don’t always master, to be sleep-deprived, tired, pregnant, and–well, just plain needing a moment in the time-out corner oneself. With perhaps a good pillow.  Or a mug of hot cocoa and a little me time.  You know, I got seriously back into knitting when my own kids were little: it was something creative and of my own choosing, beautiful, and–this is important–that Stayed Done.

She described repentance as being when she and her pride have a stare-down contest in the mirror.

And so she’d apologized to her little boy for her flare of temper.  He, of course, had simply thrown his arms around her and told her “I love you Mommy!” with the complete and utter adoration of a small child. Total heartmelt.

She likened God’s forgiveness, which so easily blesses us when we seek it in acknowledging our shortcomings, to the pureness of her little son’s.

And I sat there and thought, and the other thing God gives us? Grandparents for your children. I include in that category anyone whose own little ones are bigger than they are by now, who remembers the days, who would love to be charmed by that all-NO!-ing toddler, ready to smile or play or sing them out of it to give the moms a chance to regroup.  Even just a smile in a needed moment can make all the difference.

Totally count me in.  That’s what I’m here for.

No project! (I know, you heard that line a few days ago.)  So I grabbed some yarn and my book on my way out the door, figuring inspiration would hit me one way or another.

The Newsweek also in my bag didn’t stand a chance.  I was a few rows into a Concert scarf, (Fleece Artist, very soft Wool Silk, one skein will be plenty, I’m 20 g out of 100 and 15″ into it), sitting in the exam room for a quick appointment to catch up on some old questions and fill Dr. R. on where things have been since the last surgery.  Waiting…

…And he walks into the room.  Looks down at my hands. “You’re knitting. This is such a surprise.”

I think he’s on to me.

(”How ’bout this, too?” asked A Child Who Shall Remain Nameless.

“No, I don’t think so!” from Nancy in tandem with my “Not on your life!”)

Nancy, who is in the process of selling her house and has been busybusybusy, came over today anyway, to my great delight. I’m clearly doing better than I was, thank goodness, but I warned her about my cold, fever gone or no. (Hey, anybody want a house in Mountain View with a beautiful indoor courtyard? Her turtle swam with the fishies in a fountain in there for many many years.)

While trying to stage her house, she’s also a co-chair running CNCH (a Stitches West-type event for handweavers) and she’s teaching handspinning classes. Hey! I had some Romney roving that needed a home: Romney is one of the best wools for teaching new spinners with, not too short but not rough like some of the longer wools, but I am no longer a beginner and I like my wool softer than that.

(Side note here before Don asks: roving is the term for fiber that has been washed, carded, and if need be dehaired of any coarse outer coat and removed of any hay the animal might have rolled around in and is now ready to be spun into yarn.)

A solution could be found here, don’t you think? And so off it went with her, freebie supplies for her students to make everybody happy.  Then I threw in a nepped-at-the-mill (not on purpose!) Rambouillet fleece for extra practicing on.  The Boy Scouts had gotten a large bagful for stuffing in their shoes on long hikes to avoid blisters; now the second bag had a good use.

Although, I did spin one good project out of that Rambouillet years ago; its tested micron count was very fine and it was such soft stuff.  It was half-felted as well as pilled by the time it came back to me (the mill I sent it to bought better superfine equipment after that learning experience), and though it was like trying to spin rubber bands, it did make for very soft, cushy slippers that I knit up for my daughter’s high school biology teacher.

That teacher’s name was one of two on the bio textbook.  She was so inspiring in that classroom that she changed my daughter’s life entirely.  Handspun handknitted slippers as a thank you for my daughter wanting to walk in her shoes was the least I could do.  And that was based on what I knew then.

Sam’s finishing up her microbiology PhD now.   I hope her old teacher knows that Sam not only tried her shoes on, she loved the fit.

A last thought on yesterday’s post: at the time Kurt’s wife and my father-in-law had that conversation, probably 15 years ago, I remember wondering why it was so important to her to know something that had happened years before–and why now, finally.

A little older, a little wiser, I get it now: she was trying to cope with the death of her brother by searching for a way to be thankful for the dramatic good that had been given him in his life.  To express gratitude towards a person who so much deserved it, to let him know his heroism and his kindness had never been forgotten.  (Or, by that point, to at least tell his family so as to make sure they knew that part of their father’s story, too.) And at the same time she wanted the comfort of knowing for absolute sure that all that was real.  It was.

And so Life–whatever way one is most comfortable describing it is okay with me, for me, it was a clear sign of a loving God–let it all come together for her to ease her pain.  I remember my father-in-law, after we got home from church that day, marveling over and over, Nobody else could have told her. Nobody else in that room that day is still here to tell the tale.  I’m the only one!

And I marvel at that meeting having been scheduled at just the right time, the driver from another town coming in for it and being at that one intersection at just the exact moment…

Which would have been meaningless had he chosen to just pass on by. But he did not.  He could never possibly know how many lives he touched by his caring that day.  The good that we do does live on.

Now.  In the where-moth-and-rust-doth-corrupt department: nine hats in nine days, and my fingers were starving for something back in my own comfort zone and routine. I had this marvelous skein of Creatively Dyed’s calypso-line Tempest laceweight that had been impatiently waiting its turn.

But it was so fine.  I wanted more instant gratification.  Let’s see, that Cashmere Superior in the stash, as long as it’s a splurge project anyway…

And thus Michelle came in and saw me working on this yoke.  In real light, the Cashmere Superior is a fairly subdued rust color, much improved by the Tempest. (I’ll try for a better photo in the daylight tomorrow. )

Now, as a parent, you can never teach your children all the things you know, and I’ll never learn all the things they know.   She’s a generation removed from the art-dealer-daughter life I grew up with.

And yet. She instantly recognized what I’d been thinking, and told me that “All that colorwork”–and she gave recognition in that word, the way she said it, to the actual and extensive work that had gone into creating that colorway–”is lost in that rust.”

“Well, not lost, but it is subdued.”

“Yes, but if you put it with a black strand it would really pop out.  Or red.  But better black.”

I looked at it a bit stunned.  She was absolutely right.  Black hadn’t even occurred to me.  (Wait–maybe because I have like about zero black yarn in my stash.  Knitters?  Or at least older-eyed knitters? You with me on that one?)  I said something about art dealers and backgrounds and how I ought to have picked up on that, and she grinned, “Well, I know clothes,” and went on to describe her best friend’s new outfit that was in exactly the Temptation colors and black.

Wait–(man am I slow)–that might have been a hint.

656 yards of the Cashmere Superior before I run out, 1200 of the Tempest.  If I use a slightly heavier yarn and bigger needles the second time around, I can definitely try it with black later.

(One for each Taylor kid, done, but I think I’ll redo the fire one in Silkie and the Sumoko that gave it that orange so that all eight come from the same yarn family.)

The reason I threw in the detail yesterday that Kurt’s brother-in-law Les had raised his family in my hometown was that there was a story to be told there. Today I’ll tell it.

Les passed on younger than one might hope for, and Kurt’s wife coped with the loss of her brother by wishing to somehow find out the long-unanswerable details: years earlier, in his moment of great need, who had come to his rescue?  Someone had, hadn’t they? Les thought so, but he was pretty hazy about it all and exactly what had happened to him the day he’d been in a terrible car accident.  Les had testified at the trial of the other driver that, Your Honor, my brain’s not too clear yet from it all and I don’t rightly remember…

It had been years ago.  And now he was gone.   Which court was the trial even held in?  She sent out letters, but there seemed no way to know what she wished for.

My in-laws came out here visiting around that time, and when Kurt’s wife found out they were from the DC area, she mentioned her brother’s name. Why, yes, of course we knew Les! Then she mentioned how very much she wished she knew more about what had happened that day.

There had been a stake leadership meeting that day. A stake is a collection of wards.  My father-in-law had been at that meeting.

One man had come in very late, in very intense emotion, needing to tell what he’d just seen and what he’d just done.  On his way to the meeting, someone had run a red light and had hit the car in front of him so hard that the other driver was ejected from his VW Bug and he was lying in the street, fading in and out as this man had pulled over and run to him.  He thought he might recognize the man as a fellow Mormon, although they weren’t in the same ward and he wasn’t sure. He asked him if he wanted a blessing, got the faint answer yes, administered to him, attended to him, and waited with him for the ambulance to arrive.

And then he went on to that meeting, hoping terribly hard that Les would be okay.

And so Les had pulled through.  One can only imagine how much it had strengthened him not to be alone there as he lay so badly injured in the street.

Les’s sister had wanted so dearly to know: who had helped him? Who had been his Good Samaritan? There had been someone, hadn’t there?  And what exactly had happened?

There was only one person alive by then who could possibly have answered her questions and to reassure her that someone had indeed been present for her brother in his hour of great need.

And, having flown across the country to visit us, he just happened to be sitting by her right there at church.

Kurt spoke briefly today.  I remember him when.  It was inevitable, but it’s still somehow surprising week after week to see a man who’d been riding his bike dozens of miles a day on into his late 70’s now needing help to walk a few steps; when I asked him recently how his grandkids were doing, he both laughed and sighed and admitted he couldn’t quite keep them all straight anymore.

He is the oldest member of our ward (congregation), he proudly reminded us today, and, he said, he hopes to have many more years to reminisce over.

I found myself wishing I could tell the newer members of the ward a little of the back-in-the-days.  You know that when that happens, I end up inflicting it on you-all.

Kurt’s wife’s brother raised his family in my hometown, and the young woman growing up that Kurt’s older son would later marry was also from my home ward in Maryland; meeting Kurt and his wife when we moved here was like putting a little piece of our hometown puzzle together.  Understand that there are many little stories of surprise and small-world overlappings embedded in that sentence.

His daughter-in-law’s grandparents were the founders of a large international business that, if I told you the name, you would instantly recognize it.

So here’s the story, going back to when my kids were little.  Kurt had a tradition of having his sons and his grandsons fly into town here every summer to go on a big annual Scout camp-out our ward held,  Kurt coming along too.  Just like old times for him and his now-grown kids; there were new memories to be made with his sons as adults now and with grandkids–sometimes granddaughters too–to get to know better, up high in the Sierras with a pack and a tent or two in the clear bright air. (My John adds that Kurt and his older son would race to see who could be first to swim two miles’ distance in forty-degree water, and that Kurt did 200 push-ups a morning.)

There was a young dad in our ward, father of a little girl about a year old when he got called to be ward scoutmaster.  So Steve was in charge of those events.  Now, I have no idea how much camping experience he had, but he was game.  Steve, tall, blond, and gorgeous, had met his Hawaiian wife while surfing in the Islands.

She missed home and he missed Hawaii too, and eventually they moved back there.  He got a job working for a large corporation for the necessary nine-to-five end of life. He was bright and good at what he did, but his boss tended to write him off as something of a beach bum.

Fast forward a few years. People move, people you don’t often see anyway you lose touch with, it happens.

Kurt’s son, who was by now a corporate bigwig in his in-laws’ company, and his wife, were out strolling along the beach on I think it was the Big Island, talking to the head honcho of the local facility.  I’m sure the man was nervous; or rather, at least, I know I would be, if I didn’t know the two he was talking to but only their Names.

And all the sudden Kurt’s son was running! Running, and throwing his arms around one of the manager’s employees, that beach bum dude, going, “STEVE! *STEVE*!!  How ya DOIN’!!!” Thumping each other on the back, thrilled like little kids, the wife joining in, wanting to catch up on old times, talking about back in the day, how are the kids, forgetting business entirely.

While the manager stood there stunned, wondering, What just happened here?! How do they…? How on earth!?

I’ve been told Steve got a nice promotion after that.

Kurt may not remember all his family’s stories in his old age.  But we younger folks can help him write down memories of some of the good he created in others’ lives and remind him and cheer him in his old age.

What to do.

Dithering: I hanked 1550 yards of white merino/cashmere/silk blend off a cone and scoured it. Wound 440 yards of suri alpaca into a ball.

I wanted to knit a hat.  A good, useful, guy-type thing, right?  I bought some Zara merino Friday at Purlescence because it was so soft yet tightly spun–but when it came right down to it, I realized later, it was thinner than I had any desire to knit in ribbing.

Yesterday at church, Brian’s oldest sister was thrilled when I gave her the scarf made from Liz’s Belisa cashmere and Robin’s Cashmere Superior; they’d danced beautifully together on the needles. Then the purple cowl for her little sister.  Their older brother stood there, delighted at how happy the one sister was and how much the other one was about to be.

I’d already planned for him to be next. Zara, don’t look at me like that.

And so I got those other useful-later tasks done while not-knitting.

Finally, I pulled a tub of yarn out of the closet, opened it up–and felt, oh, at last.

Now, you can never get ahead of nice people; I once surprised Tina Newton with a shawl, and she surprised me right back with not only more of the same Geisha yarn so I could go make me one too, which I did, but also a whole whack of other stuff too.

But the Silkie (link is to the colorway) in the lot had refused to budge. Its time hadn’t happened yet.  I wanted to thank Tina by putting it to good use, and all it would tell me was, Just you wait.

Today, as I looked at the Zara and that open tub, the Silkie went, Told you so.  So there.

It’s just a plain watchman’s cap in 1×1 rib, but the colors came out in a slight diagonal all over that delights me. Leigh Witchel’s basic 2×2 hat formula I riffed on, here.

Three younger siblings done, five to go.

On a lighter note: Friday, one of my husband’s co-workers saw my husband and stopped in his tracks in the hallway, incredulous, going, WHAT are you DOING?

Another colleague was working from home that day, and going past the guy’s office, Richard had noted the camera on top of the man’s computer there.

So on impulse he’d danced into the room, holding his fingers in the requisite rabbit-ear V’s, jumping up and down dancing and singing the little-kid song, “Little Bunny Foo-Foo, I don’t want to see you…”

The guy at home saw him, though. I imagine it’ll be one of those office stories they laugh over for years.

The teachers and administrators did a marvelous job of teaching about upholding freedom of speech and of the values of America while teaching the children how to cope with being hated without a cause. I read today of another poster being held up by dozens at the high school: “There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope and its endurance. Love will never come to an end.”

As for the protestors, telling–a child!–whom you know nothing about except that she lives in California that you are actively wishing for her violent death–that is absolutely, unless there is serious mental illness involved, the essence of evil.

Perhaps that explains it.

At Stanford, a bagpiper played an emotional “Amazing Grace.” Forgive.

Well done.  Brian Taylor would have forgiven them.  It certainly doesn’t come easy, it requires honest prayer for their souls and my own; I’m working on it.

Speaking of Brian.  His funeral was today. His uncle spoke of their worries and grief as his schizophrenia got rapidly worse–and yet he was everybody’s favorite patient, a sweet soul, so much so that a doctor who’d tried hard to save him flew from LA to be with the family today.

Last Saturday, the uncle’s daughter had woken up from a vivid dream of Brian coming for a visit, seeing her, being absolutely radiant and telling her with joy, “I’m all better now.”

There was so much love in that dream and the experience so intense that she told her father over breakfast and they rejoiced in it, hoping and praying it meant there had been some breakthrough with the medications at last.

And then the phone rang…

They will always have the memory of that sense of joy that came first.  The God of love granted them comfort to last a lifetime in the hours between Brian’s death and when they knew.

“There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope and its endurance. Love will never come to an end.”