Some photos from the weekend in Hamilton and Toronto:
Making faces in the mirror.
Sheila shoots me reading about South East Asian tribal civilization at the Royal Ontario Museum.
Sheila is all distraught that the "gems and minerals" exhibit is under renovation.
But at least she was pleased with the dinosaurs.
Another photo of me in clothes I don't actually own and can't really afford.I got back from Hamilton early this morning. I took an overnight bus out of Toronto, arriving in New York City at 7 am. The air was cold and Penn Station was already full of people on their way to work. I took my luggage and descended into the subway and promptly caught the 1 Train headed uptown. I arrived back at my "home" at about 7:45 am and went to sleep shortly thereafter. I got two hours of solid rest after ten hours aboard a moving and shaking bus.
Life has been moving far too quickly. I think I owe it to the curious readers to explain some of the more important decisions that Sheila and I have been making and our upcoming life changes. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which have been my desire to support Sheila as she pursues medical school, to establish my personal career bearings and rest from the frantic, almost destructive, pace of life at Columbia in New York City, I have decided to take a kind of sabbatical. Upon graduation next year, and after our marriage, I will be moving to Hamilton. I will seek employment to help support our life together. My ambition is still to complete my studies in physics at some reputable university, but in precisely which specialty or at which university is still unclear to me. I have feared accusations of squandering my talents, or derailing my future, in taking a course of action that removes from academics for a year or more. To my accusers I reply that they do not understand the full weight of this decision, the personal struggle that both preceded and followed it, nor my changing perspectives which place a greater importance on the integrity and unity of the marriage relationship that Sheila and I will share. During our joint stay in Hamilton, Sheila will be challenged with a more demanding phase of medical school and it is not one that I would wish her to face alone. For myself, I believe it necessary that I withdraw from formal academics while I weigh my career goals for the future. The timing of everything seemed awkward at first, but at present we see it with greater clarity. It makes more sense to us this way. Once Sheila's tenure at medical school is complete and she engages residency opportunities, I can make my own graduate school applications together with her. Then we will see what opportunities open for us, and which doors God opens and which He closes. It took a great deal of emotional turmoil for me to reach this conclusion, but now I have peace over it and I have great hope and great anticipation for this chapter of our life together.
This past weekend was spent in Hamilton and Toronto, together with Sheila. Though I had visited on two occasions previously, this time I saw it with new eyes. I looked about Hamilton, what felt like a sleepy old steel town, as my new home. This strange sensation overtook me in almost every shop we entered. These would be my neighbors. These would be my new haunts: the bookstore with the surprisingly rich collection of literature; the coffee shop with the mishmash of old wooden chairs and small tables, original artwork on the walls, and a proprietor that seemed to switch between this very imperial British accent and a homey Ontario one. Stuck onto the glass of her cupboard in her little shop was a cutout photograph of Queen Elizabeth. Old artifacts of British loyalism abounded in this steel town of a half million residents. This was especially funny for me to see after being raised in French Quebec and then spending several years in the American liberal epicenter of Manhattan. I found the street names (York, King, Queen, James, Locke,...) strangely comforting.
The people, too, were generally quite friendly. Even the teenagers, for all their rebellious ostentation, still shouted their thanks to the front of the bus before debarking. I found this amusing. The contrast was clear when this morning, in Penn Station, I saw expletives adorn one individual's shirt as I moved among the crowds of busy people.
There was one more remarkable experience I feel I should write about and that was our experiences at the church we visited on Sunday. Sheila and I both feel like we have found our new "home" church. Philpott Memorial was very welcoming and the pastor spoke with genuine candor and conviction. He struck us as a man of great learning and great character, knowledgeable in philosophy and psychology, deeply appreciative of the arts, and full of grace. His vision of Christ's gospel is much like the one I have come to love at my New York church of Apostles. It is one of grace and justice; hope now for a fullness of life and meaning, restoration from brokenness into community with others, with Creation, and with God. The pastor confessed that his own personal disposition was one of melancholy (much like my own), but that he lived for a hope and power that could trump that nature and imbue life with fullness, with "zoe".
All these things greatly encouraged me, and it was a really refreshing weekend to spend with my fiancée. I'm sorry that I have been so slow to update, but I hope that you found this interesting and worth reading.
I was perusing Amazon.com for a toaster about a month ago, because my roommate wanted to get one for the kitchen. We kept it pretty vanilla, in the end, but I was terribly tempted to get what must be described as a toaster from outer space! Check it out!
Isn't it wonderful?! Ironically the brand of this toaster is "Back to Basics."
