Married

This will be my last post on this xanga and my first as a married woman.  Edwin and I have started a blog together at eledlin.blogspot.com, so you can find our thoughts there in the future.  As a conclusion to this website, I would like to share some of the things I have been learning about love and marriage over the course of my recent experience with them.

There are many good reasons for wanting to get married: security, companionship, children, etc.  Mine in particular, as I told Edwin a month or two after I came back from Wheaton, was that I wanted to learn how to love better.  He thought it was a strange reason.  After some introspection, I understood that it came from a combination of Ravencrest and the teachings of our pastor, Peter.

My loneliness the year I was at Ravencrest caused me to go to God for comfort and strength.  I learned to depend on Him, and as a corollary, I learned that because I had God, I didn’t need other people.  He would take care of me, I didn’t have to wait for anyone else to meet my needs.  The latter conclusion was, of course, incorrect theology, but I never voiced it to myself, so I didn’t realize how deeply rooted it was until the question of marriage came up.

It was because of this attitude of self-sufficiency disguised as God-sufficiency that caused me to give such an unconventional answer as to why I wanted to get married.  I didn’t think I needed marriage, so I had to have some kind of disinterested reason for wanting it.  Peter gave one to me in his teaching about love.  He took the position that the best way to learn how to love is in the context of marriage.  I took his word for it, and since I had come to believe love is the most important thing in the universe, I wanted to learn how to do it.

As Edwin and I talked more about my answer and my reasons behind it, he still thought it was strange.  He said it wasn’t right that I felt as though I didn’t need him.  People are meant to need one another, especially a husband and a wife.  He was right, as he is about virtually all things of importance (I mean that), and we decided since I don’t do this whole needing thing very well, we can learn how to do it together over the course of our marriage.

As the wedding day drew closer, the subject of love and need kept being brought to my attention.  I can’t remember the catalyst now, but eventually I understood why my answer was strange: the question was too abstract.  We had been talking about “Why marriage?” and not about “Why marry Edwin?”  Once I narrowed it down to something more specific, everything became clear.

Part of the difference between the two questions is their difficulty: I had to think a long time about my reasons for wanting “to get married.”  I had to consider my motives and dissect my reasoning before I could come up with something.  When I asked myself “Why Edwin?” the answer was easy: just look at him.

I wanted to marry Edwin because I was in love with him.  I was in love with him because the more I learned about him, the more I wanted to know.  I loved him because of him.  Because of who he was.  There was no way I could make a list of characteristics he had, that would turn into a comparison of pros and cons, and this wasn’t about quantifying advantages, it was about wanting his entire person.  And then I understood the real difference between the abstract question and the specific one: “Why marriage?” is another way of saying, “What can marriage do for me?”  “Why Edwin” changes the focus to be on him, where it should be.

If my reason for getting married is “Because I want to learn how to love,” then it doesn’t matter who I marry.  I can find some random person off the street, marry them, and then by God’s grace, do whatever it takes to love them.  But that kind of marriage is not yet love.  I married Edwin because I already loved him, and that means it matters who I married.  I could not have substituted anyone else to give me companionship or security or children or anything else, because they would not be him.  I want Edwin, and no one else will cut it. 

This new understanding of marriage cleared up another question I have had for the past three years.  Another thing people at Ravencrest talked about a lot was loving God disinterestedly: not for what He does for me, but because of who He is.  “I will worship You for who You are,” etc.  I struggled with this, because when I was honest with myself, I couldn’t do it.  I needed God too much to be able to disassociate that need from my love for Him.  Eventually I came to accept this as good: God made us to need Him as a way of bringing us into a relationship with Him.  But through my marriage to Edwin, I came to see something more that God wants for us.

Through my marriage, I have already learned more about love.  I have learned it cannot be abstracted, it cannot be spoken of in general terms.  It is specific, specific enough to choose one single person out of a world of six billion.  Perhaps, if I can learn to see God in this specific way, to see how He is different from everyone else, to learn what His personality is like just as I learned about Edwin’s personality, maybe then I will fall in love with Him, too, and learn to love Him for Himself, for who He is.

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but do not have love, I am but a resounding gong and a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophesy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all that I have the poor and if I surrender my body to be burned but do not have love, it profits me nothing…

Now I see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.  Now I know in part, but then I shall know fully, just as I also shall be fully known.

- 1 Corinthians 13

Another story.

Edwin and I are hoping to be married soon.  At the moment we're pushing for January 1, 2009.  However, all of this has been going too fast for Edwin's parents, so we are currently in the process of talking to them and (hopefully) bringing them up to speed with where things are.  We want them to be involved in the process, so until they are ready for that, we cannot set a date for sure.  However, since New Years is rapidly approaching, and www.theknot.com tells us we have 74 items overdue on my to-do list for this month, we have to start planning the wedding both before we are sure of the date, and before the official proposal.  On Thursday, something happened that encouraged me to continue hoping that January might really work.

This past week, I had been looking online for pictures of wedding dresses, to try and see what styles I liked.  I was looking through the Maggie Sottero collection, and opening new tabs for any particular gown that caught my eye.  I worked my way to the end, then looked back at the tabs across the top of the screen, each bearing the name the designer had given to that particular style.  I did a double take when I saw "Edwina" on one of them.  I clicked on it to look again at the dress.  If you know my style, go look at the picture and you'll see why I was so drawn to it.

I made an appointment to try on dresses at Elegant Lace Bridal for Thursday at ten in the morning.  Beforehand, I printed out some pictures, Edwina among them, to show the attendant at the store.  Neither my mom nor I expected to find anything for sure.  We thought I would go and try as many dresses on as possible in order to narrow down my style preferences, so that I could come home and look online some more.  Before we left, my mom asked me what our price range was.  I told her absolutely no more than $1,000, and ideally between $500 and $750.

We walked into Elegant Lace, and were introduced to Daisy, the attendant.  She asked to look at the pictures I had printed out, pointed at Edwina, and said, "Oh, we have that dress.  Here, I'll show it to you."  Then she gave me a stack of red plastic rings, and sent me over to the racks of dresses so that I could mark the ones I wanted to try on.  The gowns were all in clear garment bags that crackled with static electricity as I brushed through them.  When I used up all the rings, Daisy brought us over to a dressing room next to a viewing corner, with a velvet-covered pedestal and mirrors all around the walls.  The first dress she lifted over my head was Edwina, and when I walked out to step onto the small platform, I couldn’t stop smiling.  It fit.  It was me.  I looked more amazing than I ever thought possible.

I tried on five or six dresses at Elegant Lace, none of which could really compare to the first.  As it became clear that I had made my choice, Daisy started turning up the sales pressure, trying to earn her commission.  She told me and my mom that it usually takes four months to order a dress, that the shops on the East Coast close at four pm on Thursdays, that if we did not place an order within the hour, the ship date—even with a $100 rush fee—would be pushed back an entire week, which would place the delivery date at the end of December: too late for me to get my dress altered in time for New Years.  “I’m not trying to be a pushy salesperson,” she said, “but you need to order a dress today.” 

My mom is stubborn like me: she hates being told she has to do anything.  As soon as Daisy started implying and then insisting that we had only one option: pay $1500 for the dress now, my mom dug in her heels and refused to budge.  It wasn’t even so much the price (although it was out of our range) but more the principle.  Yes, we do have other options.  Stop trying to make us think we have to do what you want.

For myself, even though I didn’t like the fact that Daisy was being so manipulative, I didn’t actually feel any pressure to do what she said.  Somehow I was given enough clarity to see the situation for what it was.  At one point, it became perfectly apparent to me what our options were: faith or no faith.  Daisy was trying to convince us to choose in favor of security.  We needed to secure the dress now, regardless of the cost, or we would never find one in time.  She didn't mention we had the choice to trust we would find that dress, or a better one, for a lower price.  As soon as I realized what the dichotomy was, the answer was obvious.  My mom and I chose faith.  I smiled at Daisy and went along with whatever she was saying up until the actual moment of decision, at which point I took my mom’s arm and we walked out the door.

In the car, we called Bay Area Bridal to make another appointment to try on dresses.  We had an hour until then, so we went home for lunch, and I opened up a search online for Edwina.  In less than five minutes, I found, on Ebay, the exact dress I loved in my exact size for $749.  Including a veil. 

The Scoop

Part I: Pre-Wheaton

So I was quite happily going along with my summer.  I was really busy: working at a tutoring center in the mornings, doing some extra tutoring on the side, teaching the youth group on Tuesday nights, leading a small group of high school girls on Friday nights, and going on trips galore during the first month of vacation.  In the midst of all this, I was hanging out a lot with people from church.  

One of the people in this group was a guy named Edwin, whom I had known about since I was young and had played cards with once over spring break, but had never really talked to.  Over the course of the card- and video game-playing, I got to observe him a bit.  He was very good at games, he won a lot, but he never got mad at anyone.  Even better, I got to see that he was interested in people.  He was always asking questions about how people were and what they were up to.  He loved giving rides everywhere.  He laughed a lot, and he would direct the group attention towards other people, instead of trying to get it for himself.

I didn't start liking him at the time (this all took place from the beginning of May through mid-June), I just started noticing who he was.  Apparently he started noticing me at the same time. 

In mid-June Edwin went on a missions trip to South Africa.  Between his sharing about his trip and hearing what he said at planning meetings for our college group, I got to see that he knows and loves God very much.  There was this one planning meeting that I especially remember, because while we were going through the agenda, Edwin was so chill and so comfortable with joking around.  Largely due to his demeanor, the meeting was turned from business into fellowship.  I enjoyed that time so much because I felt that we were all pouring into and supporting one another.

When Edwin came back from South Africa, he started treating me like a good friend.  This was mid- to late-July, and it was the busiest three weeks of my summer.  Edwin knew my life was crazy, and he made a point of asking me every time he saw me about what all I had done since the last time he saw me, and whether I was tired.  At first I would try to give some kind of vague answers, because usually people don't want to hear all the details about what you're doing, so I didn't want to bore him.  But he kept asking to hear about the details.  And because he wanted to talk to me, it made me want to talk to him more.

The first time we had a real conversation was after college group one Wednesday night, the mini-golfing night.  We talked for an hour and a half straight without running out of anything to say.  It wasn't in an enclosed area or anything, we were standing to one side of a big room where everyone was hanging out.  The main thing that impressed me about that conversation was how easily he understood what I was saying.  He was always tracking with me, and whenever he responded, it was always a response to what I had actually said—he never skewed it or changed the emphasis, like people tend to do when I talk to them about theology and stuff like that.

Since it was so easy to talk to him, I wanted to talk to him more.  We had our next conversation a couple weeks later, the weekend after I had been back from the church's youth retreat.  We were both helping out, along with some of our friends, at a basketball tournament run by this other church.  We were keeping score at one of the courts, and he started asking me about retreat.  I got to tell him how the whole thing went, and somehow the conversation transitioned to how it would be for me going back to Wheaton.  Edwin was really good about talking me through everything.  He asked questions to try and get an idea of exactly what the situation was like.

The next Monday, a group of us all went to the Aquarium.  I mostly hung out with Edwin and Kimberly, a girl from my small group.  While we were there, when we would all be looking at an exhibit, and Edwin would move on to the next one, I caught myself automatically following him.  I realized then I was attracted to him.

On the ride back (Edwin drove me and a couple other people), I told him I was giving my last lesson to the youth group the next day, and he wanted to come hear me teach, because he hadn't been working with the youth that summer, so he had never heard me before.  It turned out that he skipped a doctor's appointment to come, so it was then that I started actually expecting something to happen.  The only problem was, that Tuesday was exactly a week before I was going to leave to go back to Wheaton. 

Tuesday night, a bunch of us did our usual migration to someone's house, and it turned out to be Edwin's house that time.  The next day, me and Edwin had another conversation, this time about relationships.  Peter had been preaching about relationships for the past couple weeks, and that was actually what I had taught about on Tuesday night.  Not romantic relationships specifically, but in general what a relationship is, and what it means to have a relationship with God (as opposed to seeing him as a slot machine or something like that).  So that's what we talked about most of the time, the theological implications, all that sort of thing. 

In the evening, when we were driving to church, the theology transitioned into hypothetical questions about romantic relationships...which turned out to be not so hypothetical.  He asked me about what I thought spiritual leadership looked like, and he asked my opinion about how you can know you're attracted to someone.  The crazy thing was, this conversation was not awkward, and it had no insinuations in it at all.  It could have been a perfectly normal conversation between a guy and a girl who were only friends.  I didn't feel as though either of us were being overly vulnerable at all.  In fact, Edwin told me later that I was so nonchalant about answering his questions that he was sure that I couldn't really like him, otherwise I wouldn't be so comfortable talking about this kind of thing.  Anyway, it was really important to me that we could talk about something so potentially awkward without it being awkward.

After college group that night, everyone migrated over to my house to watch a movie.  Lots of people started out watching it, but in the end they all left except Edwin and me.  The next day, he called me to ask me out to lunch on Saturday.  Then he called me again to ask if I would drive with him on Friday to pick up some gifts in another city for helping out with the basketball tournament.  We left Friday morning, had another great conversation, still no mention of romantic interest.  That evening, while I was waiting to find out what time he was going to pick me up for lunch on Saturday, I was kind of going crazy: I was restless, and anxious, and from that reaction I realized I needed to know for sure what was going on before I left for Wheaton, otherwise I would go insane.

On Saturday, Edwin took me to get sushi and we talked about his family and my family and a bunch of the traveling we've each done.  Then we went to a park to walk around for a bit.  At one point, he asked me how he could keep in touch with me when I left for Wheaton.  I told him I didn't know how to answer that question until I knew what his intentions were for this relationship.

Then he told me he was attracted to me and wanted this to become a real relationship, as in, a romantic one, if I felt the same way.  The entire time, he was so good about telling me where he was and how he felt without ever expecting me to reciprocate on the same level.  He left me completely free to feel however I wanted, and made it clear that he was still going to be committed to me, even if I wasn't in the same place yet.  I told him I liked him, too, and wanted to commit to him as well.

We went back to my house, and I told my mom what happened.  That night, Edwin and I had dinner with my parents, and they got to know him a little bit better.  They had been totally for it from the moment I told them he had asked me out to lunch.  On Sunday Edwin took me to San Francisco after church, and on Monday he came over to help me pack.  So we had about 3 days together before I left.

Part II: Wheaton

Edwin called while I was writing this, and I told him that I'm kind of stuck when it comes to telling what happened at Wheaton, and he said, "It’s simple, God told you to come home, and I said, yes please!"

In some ways, it is that simple.  But I believe in taking responsibility for my decisions, so that I am not tempted to blame God if things go wrong ; )

When I got to Wheaton, I started talking to Edwin on the phone every night.  I didn't expect it to be every night, and I didn't expect to talk to him for so long.  It started out being 2 hours, then it got longer, until we were talking to one another for more than 4 hours every night.  So...that was crazy.  We still didn't run out of things to say.  But from all of the talking, I started to see so clearly how it could be no one other than God who has brought us together.  We match one another so perfectly in terms of how we communicate.  He's done speech and debate for 10 years (4 years in high school, and coaching it since then), so he is very logical, and very expressive.  We were able to get to know one another very quickly. 

Part of it was God making us match, but also part of it was Edwin wanting to work so hard to get to know me.  He thought of questions he wanted to ask me about myself, he read everything I wrote on my xanga, and then asked me questions about it afterwards, and (this was really big for me) he asked me to recommend books to him that he can read so that he can get to know what I've learned and how I think.  That's so incredible to me, that he understands he has to know how I think and what I think about in order to get to know me.  It's so rare to find a person who understands that and actually wants to do it.  

Also, I've been able to talk to him about his sociology work.  There was this one night when he was brainstorming with me about a research proposal he had to write, and we had a great conversation trying to narrow down a question that would be specific enough for the assignment.

I talked with him so much about God, and how this relationship changes both of our experiences of God.  He says, and I agree, that the reason we are able to love one another is because God is intertwined with our relationship.  It is impossible to untangle God from all of this, because He started it (a long time ago, actually, when He was forming both of us into who we are), He instigated it, and He helps us through the hard things.

During the first week of school, I realized that I now felt purposeless at Wheaton College.  I thought it was the usual thing that happens to me in the fall, because I've gone to a new place every year, and I always wonder what I am doing there.  Edwin helped talk me through that, and between him and God, I was able to find something to give me purpose while I was there.  However, that whole question made me realize that, actually, my only two reasons for being at Wheaton were: I was already there, and I wanted to finish my degree.  The purpose I found for myself would have held me over until the end of the year (the purpose, incidentally, was the opportunity to practice solitude with God and to learn about Him more through my classes and other reading and writing), but it was such that I really could have pursued it anywhere.  It is not that I don't have people I love at Wheaton, but I have people I love in all the places I've been, and my friends cannot be a reason to be in one place over another.

After realizing this, and as Edwin and I started talking more seriously about our future together, I began to feel as though God were giving me an invitation to come home.  I am not saying that God told me to come home, but I do think He invited me to.  He was inviting me, not just to a relationship with Edwin, but to the kind of lifestyle in which I don't let my immediate plans stop me from responding to His voice.  It would have been easier and more secure to stay at Wheaton, but God was showing me the adventure He had planned for me if I left, and I wanted it.  I started looking into the paperwork to withdraw from Wheaton, and found that I could withdraw with 100% of my tuition refunded if I withdrew before Tuesday. 

Then, on Sunday after the second week of classes (before the Tuesday by which I would have to withdraw), Edwin told me he wants to marry me.  And that was what did it.  Because I couldn't justify coming home unless we had the prospect of getting married sometime in the near future.  Edwin was not asking me to come home.  He thought I had decided to stay at Wheaton, and he was totally prepared to wait for me to finish out the semester, and get married later.  But I told him about the invitation I felt that God was giving me, and told him if he asked me to come home, I would.  So he did.

*Hiatus to explain the rationale behind the ridiculous speed in moving to the decision to get married*

What our pastor, Peter, has been teaching us about relationships (as me and Edwin understood it) is that love is a choice that you make every day with God's help.  If this is true, then, according to Peter, there is no "right person" or "wrong person" to marry, as long as the person loves and is pursuing God.  Instead, you just find someone you are attracted to, get married, and then choose to love them every day.  I have a feeling there needs to be some clarification added to this, because Peter is now encouraging us to slow down…but that is the principle we thought he was teaching us, and we’ve been acting on it. 

Both me and Edwin decided a long time before we met that we value marriage as a relationship in which God teaches us how to love another person.  We both wanted to have someone (we didn't know who yet) that we could choose to love.  We were both expecting it to be hard, and expecting to have to make compromises, but we both decided that it is worthwhile spending the rest of your life learning how to love.  So, with this attitude, when we found each other, we both knew that we would be able to choose to love this person, with God's grace and the support of our parents and our church.  Edwin told me recently that the second day we were dating, when he was driving me back from San Francisco and I fell asleep in the car, he thought he should probably start looking for a ring.  So the decision is fast.  But neither of us are intending to back out of it.

**

Then Edwin called my parents to tell them about what we had decided, and asked to meet with them the next day so they could all talk about it more.  We spent the next couple days talking with my parents and Peter and his wife, and in the end, everyone was supportive of me coming home.  My parents especially were and are very excited for me.  My dad's only condition (which is a general consensus with everyone) is that I finish my undergrad somewhere, so right now the plan is for me to try to transfer into UC Berkeley (where Edwin is in the phd program) for next fall.  So, with no one objecting, I came home on Friday.

That's the story so far.  Edwin met me at the airport with flowers, a teddy bear, and a letter three pages long describing the reasons why he loves me.  And that letter made me even more sure that I want to marry him, because it told me that he sees me for who I am, and treasures that.  It has been my fear for a while now that I would eventually get married to a person who was so wrapped up in himself that he never saw me except as I affect him.  But Edwin sees me for me, regardless of whether or not he is in the picture.  He is incredible.  We've been hanging out a lot since I got back.  We both really want to get married in December, but it might be pushed back until next May. 

Until then, I'm taking a class at the community college, I'm continuing to lead the small group I was working with over the summer, I'm helping out with our college group, and I might do some tutoring.  Next semester I'm going to try to take classes at the seminary my dad goes to, because I eventually want to get a graduate degree from a seminary so I can teach the Bible.  But mainly I'm here so that Edwin and I will no longer be in a long distance relationship, so that we can get to know one another better and move towards getting married!

Where singing dragons fly with orphan boys,

And otters live in castles undersea,

Where spell-books choose their wizards, where the tree

Of silver bark and bough bears children’s toys:

In Fairyland, impossible and free.

If Fairyland would only come to me.

Where golden balls and vials of starlight shine,

Taming the darkness thick within the cave,

Where peasant lads turn king, cowards grow brave,

And guiding thread, invisible, unwinds:

In Fairyland, uncertainty is no more.

I’d be there now if I could find the door.

Through looking glass appears a valiant mouse,

Armed with a rapier graceful as his tail;

To skim the rafters of the North Wind’s house.

Is Fairyland so very far from home?

Look in the daisy.  Look past the heavens’ dome.

During my summers throughout middle school and high school, I would go to the library.  I walked through the high-ceilinged lobby and turned right into the children’s section, which took up the entire downstairs floor.  The fiction shelves were not so tall that I couldn’t reach the highest shelf, with the help of the clover-shaped, black stepping stools conveniently spaced every other aisle or so.  No one ever told me what to read.  In fact, I was stubborn enough at that age to purposely avoid any books that Dad or Daniel tried to rave about.  Instead, I ran my finger along books on shelf after shelf, trying to read the sideways titles without getting a crick in my neck.  The only ones I ever pulled out to examine more closely were books with the blue sticker at the bottom of the spine, with a unicorn’s head outlined in black.  I brought home ten or twelve at once, which I would subsequently devour within the space of a week or two, and then return for more.

And so I was raised on talking cats, magic rings, mind-to-mind communication, wizard fire, elves, people changing into animals at will, dragon treasure, familiars, incantations, and mysterious old women weaving glowing thread on looms.  It is all “fantastic,” that is the word people use for it.  And that was what attracted me.  I had friends at the time who had no interest in the fantastic: they said it didn’t make any sense, it wasn’t real.  I knew it wasn’t “real,” but I never understood how they could say it didn’t make sense.  Because what I loved about these stories is that they were not about miracles.  In this world, a floating donkey might be called a miracle: it would break the laws of nature.  In Patricia C. Wrede’s Calling on Dragons, the flotation was clearly caused by the donkey’s foolish consumption of the wrong kind of plant.  In her world, no rules were broken; to us the event only seems “fantastic” because we’re playing by different ones than she is. 

I loved the new sets of rules.  When I got to my freshman English class in high school, Ms. Tam introduced to us the concept of the willing suspension of disbelief.  I suppose that is what I was doing, but I never thought of it that way.  When I began a book and reached an event that did not make sense, it was not that I suspended my disbelief, it was that I was not even tempted to disbelieve it.  Why should I be?  I didn’t know the rules to this world.  The characters were not surprised, and they were much more familiar with how things worked than I was.  So I took what came, assumed it had a logical explanation, and waited for the author to reveal the inner workings of her world later on.

Yesterday, I realized I probably owe a great debt to the authors I read growing up.  This past summer, I taught a Bible study on the book of Ecclesiastes, focusing on the difference between the kingdom under the sun and the kingdom above the sun—the “real world” that we live in now and the Kingdom of God.  I devoted two messages to explaining how the kingdom above the sun functions by completely different rules than does the kingdom under the sun.  God is using his own set of rules.  In order to “win His game,” we need to know what those rules are.  And the main rule is this: whoever accepts the invitation to God’s banquet wins the game.  That’s all there is to it.  It’s a hard thing to believe.  The world we are in—the kingdom under the sun—has its own rules, rules governed by power, fear, and performance: you must get better grades than your sibling/friend/everyone else; you’re a loser if you don’t hang out with friends on Friday nights; your personal worth is determined by the price of your house.  Those are the rules of the “real” world.  No fantasy there.

And here is where I am so grateful to have been raised on singing dragons: I learned how to let my mind shift into a new world with new rules.  I was willing to accept a different order than the one I lived by every day.  It was a kind of faith that I was practicing, and the practice bore fruit.  Now, when I am no longer dealing with fantastic worlds, but with the supremely real Kingdom of God, it is not such a strange thing for me to start playing by a different set of rules than the ones I am used to.  If God says everything is about loving relationship, ok, let’s see how that plays out.  Because I believe in Jesus, I am magically forgiven instead of being condemned?  That doesn’t usually happen, but, You make the rules. 

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus preached both that the Kingdom of Heaven is here now and that it is coming soon.  The Kingdom of Heaven is Fairyland, the real one.  And it is here.  A parallel universe right under our noses.  The door into it is faith: belief in a new, “fantastic,” set of rules. 

                                                                     -- Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out