Yesterday I had the peculiar pleasure of meeting an old friend for the first time.

Which is to say that Julie Davis, of Happy Catholic, was in town with her husband and daughter, and Jane and I got to have an extended lunch with them. It’s an event I hope will be repeated as often as possible, given that we live almost 1500 miles apart. Conversation were constant for two solid hours, and then I had to tear myself away to go back to work. I have no idea how long Jane continued talking with them in parking lot after I left.

I found Julie’s blog back when it was fairly new, when as a victim of the shipwreck of the Anglican Communion I was first beginning to discover what Catholicism is all about. Julie’s sunny and practical take on being Catholic was one of the examples I followed into the Catholic Church, and for that I cannot be too grateful.

I don’t recall quite how it all worked, but I know I linked to her blog, and she linked to my blog, and mutual linkage led to e-mails, and the long and short of it is that we’ve been corresponding on and off ever since. Glory to God in the highest!

This week has been outstanding in its overall dreariness—a few shining points of light, a few bright gems, but the gems have been set in rusty pot metal. In that setting, lunch with Julie and her family yesterday gave me a much needed and much appreciated lift. I expected no less; but isn’t it nice when things go the way you expect?

(Julie also gently encouraged me to do more book-blogging. We’ll see how that goes. 🙂