Santa Barbara: Week Six

This past week was a relatively quiet one at the monastery. "Guest/New Friend of the Week" honors go to a young priest from Victoria, Canada:


Scott rode his bike all the way down the coast from British Columbia to Santa Barbara! We swapped notes on the state of the Anglican Communion (note to the Global South: find something more important to do with your time than obsess about the gays, seriously) and why fewer people should be priests than are. We made plans for me to visit Victoria when I'm up in Vancouver in a few months.

In other news, my mom loved her short visit to the monastery. She hopes to return for future visits, which is impressive for at least three reasons: (1) she's a homebody who usually doesn't like staying in other places; (2) she's self-conscious about her English and sometimes gets nervous around strangers; and (3) while she's very generous with others, she usually won't spend money on herself, even for vacations. So this is a testament to the hospitality of the brothers (and, possibly, the tastiness of the communion "biscuit").

My mom and I drove back to LA on Friday because I had a couple of birthday parties and church obligations to attend. A special mention goes out to my boys pictured below:


These five guys form a very important community for me. The last four years of club nights (including "skank nites"), karaoke parties, summer vacations (Puerto Vallarta, Las Vegas, and the Pacific Northwest to date), Halloweens, and "Friendsgivings" have been spent with these boys. And of course, birthdays. This weekend, we gathered to celebrate one of the boys turning thirty. It was a fun, inebriated mess. Much of what happened isn't for public retelling. But one of the funnier moments was when I had to pry one of the drunk boys off of a straight man and explain that his accent was British, not gay.