Beyond thought and time.

My favorite season is spring...and I'm really starting to miss it.

Winter is nice during Christmas, but now it's starting to really be gray and dreary. My car keeps getting stuck, and although I'm decent enough at getting it out (sometimes with help) it doesn't help that Winter is just plain depressing in January and February. Stark contrast to jolly December.

I find I am much more relaxed talking to girls now. I like being friends with members of both sexes, but whenever I would develop a friendship with a woman, I was always worried that I would send a wrong message, or that people would see me as "prospecting" them. Now that I have a girlfriend I don't have to worry about that as much because women will know I'm not interested in them in that way.

It was in talking with one of these good girl friends that I realized how much I missed the spring time. My friend had not gone on Alternative Spring Break before, a service program held over Spring Break, and I emphatically stated that she had no idea what she was missing.

I remember it now. Campfires, mud fights, liturgy of the hours and mass as a community, making dinner and having conversation with everyone, meeting new people, writing poetry on a mountain top, hiking, the world around you just being so big and beautiful...watching the stars revolve around the globe of the sky! What a beautiful world you can see if you can just reach beyond thought and time. Eastern Kentucky is just one of those places. It also happens to be one of the poorest...

...Poorest in the monetary sense, at least. I found that it was rich in love and beauty. Perhaps that's just me.

Last spring was one of the biggest periods of spiritual growth I had, and due in no small part to my new outlook on the world. I really attribute a lot of my spiritual growth to ASB and spring. The structure of ASB and the beauty of God's creation unfolding before me really helped me to feel God's love and to yearn to grow closer to him. Right now, Winter is just really being a drag. Don't get me wrong, my love for God doesn't change with the seasons, it just makes it much harder. And the stark visibility of God that I could see in my friends and in His creation made it very easy.

I can't wait to go back.

There was a dream that I dreamed, and that dream was for eternal springtime of the mind.