These are my friends

If you're friends with me on Facebook, you're probably sick of my Bunnygate posts this week. I can't really blame you for that, but my friends John and Angela, who've been heroic in their vigilance to these matters,  posted about our community tonight and reminded me again why we are all actually fired up. They shared some memories from their past with us, and offered context as to why some of us are fighting so hard. It occurred to me that it would be good  for me to do the same. I haven't written a blog post in eons, but this seems like a worthy post.

The people in my community are a strange mix of home-schoolers, professors, and Washington DC guys who can't- tell-me-what-they-do-for-a-living-or-they'd-have-to-kill-me. We are in the same clubs, troops, and home-school classes. We belong to local parishes that share our youth group. Monthly, we get together at our place for a pot-luck dinner and rosary night where we all wrestle with squirming kids. We eat together, talk about our life, break up our fighting kids, and try to teach them to pray. We all want the kids to see that they grow up in a community where our faith matters and should be the litmus test for our actions. We fail at that example an awful lot, but we keep trying.

 Some of us did better than usual this week, no doubt by Gods grace. When given the opportunity to do what was right and what was easy, they chose to do what was right. Even when that meant their whole world would come crashing down around them. So, the flurry of posts from the rest of us, are really an effort to stand alongside the people we have come to know and trust, to support the friends we pray with and play with. At times we may seem to flail a bit in our efforts, but I can assure you that our intentions are all good.

I don't generally do much picture taking at our gatherings cause I'm usually too busy talking to do so.  This year though, my friend Chris asked me to take pictures of all of us at Christmas time for one single purpose. He said, "Ellie, you should take pictures tonight because it would be good to look back at them some day and remember how happy we all were,  for some day when we might need them." So despite my usual aversion to pictures, I actually walked around that night and took shots of my friends. These pictures aren't of some newsworthy professors. No major social justice advocates came into focus in my lens. No one in the room appeared gutsy enough to sacrifice themselves for the good of others that night as we joked and chatted and made merry like we always do.

Tonight, I offer you some glimpses of the people who have been making national and international news all week. Fred found some more from Easter, and a few days in between. Maybe these glimpses can help you put a human face on some of the really wonderful people that I call my friends. Maybe you will understand why some of us are fighting so hard to keep them standing.