While convalescing from illness, I picked up one of my old journals to read through. There’s something magnetic about revisiting words you yourself have written, especially what was written years ago. What’s different? What’s remained the same? This particular journal was given to me by my friend on August 1, 2001. I didn’t start writing in it until July 2002, and it covers the period when I was in seminary up to 2007, a year before I graduated. My friend died in 2006––the kind of death that makes anyone in the wake of tragedy both sad and mad. I wrote about my grief in a different journal. Throughout this journal,…