friends, books and memories

This picture of a portion of one of my bookshelves includes enough memories to keep me blogging another lifetime or two. That may not (literally) happen but the interim may include a couple of anecdotes, including a smile that the picture brings forth (most of the memories are connected to the books and the points in my life when I first acquired the paper and attempted to acquire the authors' thoughts).

The couple in the picture are two of my best friends (one of them is my wife). Without consultation, they each chose a scary costume for our Fellowship Halloween party (some years ago now) and the serendipity was a splash at the party and a wonderful time later at a late-night piano bar with dim, indirect lighting that partly obscured the other, mostly convivial, patrons.

We had a really good time and when my friends (D & A) took the dance floor, it was almost a religious moment, a Kazantzakis moment of bliss: if we had had the wherewithal to pass a straw basket, we might have met the pending building fund at the Fellowship. Alas, so wrapt were we in the moment, that we perhaps lost a chance at an extra square yard added to the religious education wing of the new building (I'll try to remember to show you a picture of the final building later).