A toast composed two hours after the reception

Barry and I first met in a book. I was interested in progressive education and China, so my philosophy professor (thank you, Dick Garner!) thrust a book at me about John Dewey's experimental schools in China between the wars. What I found in the pages of that book was a kind of conversation between Dewey and some other social revolutionaries, mediated by Barry Keenan, in the presence of Marx, Wang Yang-ming, and Confucius.

A few years and a couple of teaching jobs later, I found myself joining this church and taking an adult religious education class called Building Your Own Theology (BYOT). What a great course title, and who should I meet the first night of the class but Barry Keenan. I quickly learned that he wasn't just a theorist, but he was working hard to walk the walk. We both ended up joining the same men's group, and we've been meeting every week ever since.

Other serendipitous things happened. One Thursday night in my taiji class at the rec. center, I was using a phrase from Confucius, "root and branch," to describe a turn that starts in the legs and works its way up the spine to the arms, the idea being that if you pay attention to the root of the action, the outward details, the branches, will turn out fine. No sooner were the words out of my mouth than in the door slides Barry, who happened to be across the hall with the folk dancers, to say hello.

This story has a beginning and a middle but no end. Connections are made, like an electrical circuit or a synapse between neurons, and the conversation continues. This past week, our men's group got together for sushi, sake, and song (no strippers, sorry) and shared some poems in honor of this marriage. So I offer 24 syllables, and the spirits of John Dewey, Mao Zedung, Li Bo, and Confucius may or may not be present in this room.

After five seasons
Watching twelve animals circle the sun
New growth for a firmly rooted tree

Here's to Karen and Barry!