sometimes God catches me off guard with the things he brings back to my memory. this morning i was making a semi-successful attempt to "practice the presence" in the silence of my car, and suddenly i found myself remembering my friend matt. i'm not sure why, but i feel like it's important to write about him today. i met matt at awakenings, the coffeeshop where i used to work. before i worked there, both of us spent a lot of lunch hours hanging out in the shop with our mutual friend, phil. we were always starting good dialogue about God, finding oneself, music, etc. but somehow the conversations never finished before one of us had to leave. matt was raised catholic, and his mother wanted him to be a priest or interior designer, because that's what gay catholic boys do. instead, he was waiting tables and tending bar when i met him. eventually, he started pursuing the goal of becoming a graphic designer. he was going to school, he was strengthening his family relationships, he felt like he was finally growing up. about that time, he stopped me in the coffeeshop one day and said, "we need to go out and have coffee somewhere else some night, because we need to finish these conversations." he asked me if i was one of "those jesus people," and was surprised when i told him that i was because "you're not judgmental and freaked out by me." (loose paraphrase) i told him that my idea of what it means to follow jesus might be a little different than that of most "jesus people" he had contact with. anyway, i felt like this was a new friendship that God had pretty directly given me. he was hungry for jesus, and he was hungry for love. so then we left the coffeshop, played phone tag for a few weeks and i left for india. the conversations were never finished. about three months after i got to bombay, phil sent me an e-mail saying that matt had overdosed on ghb, and had died before he got to the hospital. it was one of those confusing, sad times when you don't really know how much you're allowed to grieve. so i'm not sure why matt is so strongly in my heart today, but i just know that i needed to take a few minutes to write about him. i think it might have something to do with learning to really see the people around us, and not being afraid to love, and understanding that you don't always have to say the name of jesus for jesus to love through you. maybe it has something to do with learning to really grab the chance to love people when they're right in front of you. maybe it has something to do with learning to finish conversations.