Thinking about weddings...

Andy and Sarah got married today at the Mount Timpanogos Temple and it has been a GREAT day ( I am actually being sincere, not using my default sarcastic tone)....

It has actually been a GREAT few days and I am sitting here while Travis packs for our 9:48am flight trying to get one last post in about our whirlwind trip...I won't spend lots of time relating the details of specific events (the rehearsal dinner on Tuesday at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, the temple this morning, the fun times preparing for the reception this afternoon or the beautimous reception itself---see, I slipped a few details in there anyway =) ). I am just going to let the pictures and a few captions speak for the past two days of awesomness....

I do, however wish to say a few things...I haven't wanted this blog to be a place to be poetic or creative (I do that profusely and pervasively in another form) but tonight I might end up saying something that leans on the sensitive/poety side.

Really all I want to say is this: Martha and I had a mini-discussion at the reception tonight about criticism of others etc... Martha made a very good point about how little we know about the deep down details of what it means to be another human being and therefore, when its all said and done, we are quite ill equipped to be critical of another.

Remember, this discussion is all taking place in the midst of a wedding reception--a place where the people gathered, obstensibly, know each other better than any others. We were all family and close friends--and of course, many new friends =)-- And we were all SO happy. So glad to be in each others company. And when it was over, and we all have to fly away to corners of the country and state, how sad we are to part...

It made me think that even in this intimate and joyful of a setting, with so many who know me so well... even here--I am still unknown completely, through and through to others, and they to me. Knowng this, I am still in awe of how thoroughly happy I am in this moment with my family and close friends... why?

And then I thought of something Scarlett Hanks Sobrowski said up at Old Mission this past week about marriage--she said it took her a long time to realize what marriage was--it wasn't finding the person you wanted to be with--it was accepting the person you were with for who they are and loving them just as they are and then becoming better together...

I find myself so humbled by how little I know right now--and so grateful for what I do know. So awake to how mysterious and unknowable another human being is, and enthralled with how simple it can be to just love others. How joyful it can and should be... I find myself (such an odd phrase to describe a realization) I find myself grateful for the idea of marriage, for the idea of two people taking responsibilty for the other, responsibilty for this unknowable being, taking responsibility for all of them. Through and through...unconditionally. I find myself grateful for those who have taken responsibility for me and I find myself wanting to expand and extend this loving circle of responsibility for each other to all those I see and know. To not criticize or find fault, but to just joyfully love and try to know what it means to be human. I am grateful for blogs that let me read what others think and wonder at how I think that way too--or not, for photographs that let me see another face and wonder at how much I look that way too--and not--for language and music that lets me hear others, and for the embraces that let me feel what it might be like, for just a moment, to know another human being as I know myself...

I think in the end, what I realize is that love is great. Being known is a gift, being touched and heard and touching and listening and all of that is really great!

So I haven't had much sleep and thats why this blog kind of got super cheesy and how the pieces started to not stick together so well toward the end--but--hey--its just a blog.....

love and peace and hope and forgiveness forever!!!

Family Pictures: yearning for what's ahead and longing for what's left behind

To begin--here is Sarah doing her best to merge aesthetically with the location...
A great day somewhere in American Fork where Katie Benson (nee Griffiths) created portraits of the ever growing Wright clan...
it has really proved impossible for any of us to explain where exactly this took place. As you can see from the photo documentation, it was a locale part farm, part junk yard, part yard sale, part...I have no idea.



It was great fun with the grand kids playing with rusted wagons and plows, riding on mini-automated steel airplanes and being attacked by the caged roosters--oh it was also a treat to have that Utah desert wind blowing the cottonwood right into all of our mucus membranes! At any rate, Travis got some great shots of the evening's action! Enjoy!

legs and arms akimbo

So, we've made it to Utah. But as you can see--this post is about Michigan!!!This means we've already taken the airborne journey from LGA to TVC (LaGuardia to O'Hare to the Cherry Capital Airport, which looks like an enormous tiled hunting lodge--). We flew in fine and rented a lovely vehicle which the Budget Rental Car attendant herself referred to as looking like a hearse. I think it looked like a hearse for midgets, excuse me, little people.
We got in around 3pm and drove up the Old Mission Peninsula, but because of a xanax induced subduction, the usual excitement with seeing the blue, cobalt, azure and glass white waters of the bay didn't thrill me. We found Logan and asked if we could sleep there. He put us up in the train room-and at 8pm I finally succumbed to the xanax fog and didn't wake up until 7am the next morning. Travis tried to wake me sometime around 9pm, I am told, to come with him to pick up Linda and Deb at the airport...didn't happen.

The next day Travis and I decided to take the time to race out to Empire and the Western Shore of the open Lake and take pictures at Otter Creek and Sleeping Bear. And as you can see from the amazing pictures, it was a clear, bright and blustery day. WOW.


On Esch Road we found an "on your honor" asparagus stand and bought four pounds for 1.25 each. Later on that night we ate it as part of the Brickman's annual pre-Bayshore pasta dinner.

Coming back from Empire we stopped in town and ate at Hanna so Trav could get the best lobster Bisque. He says he can't find anything like it in NYC. We went to pick up our numbers at Traverse City Central High School and met Linda there. They wouldn't let me upgrade into the half-marathon, so thus began my plans for infiltration. It began with Travis' suggestion that we use Scarlett's tie-dye color to turn my 10k white bib number to the sky blue of the half marathon bibs. We called Scarlett on the way in, and she said whatever she had was ours. When we got there however, Scarlett had a better plan: Her daughter Tiffany and their neighbors, Karen and Mary Kay had registered (on time) for the half marathon. Sadly, Karen had recently torn her Achilles tendon and was unable to even walk it. So, Scarlett suggested I use her number--all that was printed on it was the number and Karen's last name Creazer. I was about to use the timing chip as well, when Linda and then Travis (Travis Sobrowski-Scarlett's Travis) pointed out that I could end up winning or at least placing in the 45-49 women's age division and it would appear rather suspect when I crossed the line or tried to accept the medal, and OKAY--it would also be unfair...

So at 6:20 we all loaded into Karen and Mary Kay's Explorer and went down Sleepy Hallow to where it meets up with Bausch and Bluff to start the race. I got separated and ran the whole thing alone--my time, the best I could tell, was 1:37:11. Checking my pace by the man who I was neck and neck with, I averaged 7:26. I was the first of our group across and I think I ate up all the cookies they had--I tried to stick to the bananas and orange slices but the cookies were calling in all their cookie abundance...

I began to worry about Trav, his IT band has been bothering him alot and he was even considering not running--but everyone at Old Mission rallied behind him and shared stretches. Karen even gave him one of the bindings off her walking cast to use after Travis Sobrowski, the ultra-marathoner, explained some possible treatments. Travis, my Travis, finished in just over 2 hours...very good for being in as much pain as he is.

The rest of the day we rested and took another trip into Hanna. Grandpa Ed was up with Rebecca and Dave for the week-end and it was great to just sit with Grandpa on the beach while Dave and Rebecca were on a walk and listen again to the story of how he acquired the cottage and the lots at Old Mission. Now I pay attention to the stutterings, the pauses, the cadence and every intake of breath that leads to a stumble in his narrative. I love that story. I can't count how many times I've heard it.

Trav worked on Linda and Deb's boat and then they were nice enough to take us out to the Grill and we had a great dinner and talked. It started pouring in that familiar Old Mission summer evening way and we raced to the car, drove back up Center Road, up Sleep Hallow and then down Forest Avenue, dropped Deb and Linda off, hugged goodbye and went back up to Logan's to pack and have a farewell sauna with Logan before we went to bed, exhausted, at 9:45 pm.

We were up at 4:10am and flew out of the Cherry Capital over the open vast blues of Michigan as the sun rose and the rain clouds parted.

We're in Utah for Andy and Sarah's wedding. The next blog...

Painful Progress

We are going to Traverse City on Thursday. Flying. And I feel fine. Trav is going to run the half marathon length of the Bayshore Marathon and I am running the 10k. Imagine that....I couldn't get into the half, so I had to settle for the 10k--maybe I'll sneak into the half.

So after that it is off to Utah for Andy and Sarah Louise's wedding. It will be the first time the whole family will be together since before the twins left on their missions. It will be great. Family pictures, barbeques, arguments about religion, geography and politics squashed by mom before they ever become arguments, and the beautiful Utah mountains.

Then it's right back to NYC for Matt and Cassandra's wedding, where I, Cleric Wright, will be officiating. I am officially a Marriage Officiant in the city of New York. Come on, The line starts here!