If you were here, we'd go to a nice cafe to sip tea and chat. I've grown quite fond of tea, since Japan.

There's so much going on! Life seems to have begun expanding at a faster rate. Talking today for the first time in a year or so with my dear old BYU friend Kyle, I focused almost exclusively on sharing my happiness. There's always unhappiness, in low moments or stressful or physically painful times. That said, what used to be an ocean of sorrow choking and drowning me has drained down to a shin-high sea. Most of my life is dripping with sunshine and glowing feelings. The wet cold sorrows make me pause and consider before sloshing forward, but there's no doubt about sloshing forward, not even a hesitation.

The past year has seen me more and more involved with and at peace with the LDS church, first attending very little, and then regularly, and then accepting a calling and facilitating both official Mormon events and unofficial but pro-Mormon events. I'm now an "active" member of my congregation by just about any definition. I think about why that is, after the dark black drowning that was adolescence through BYU.

Part of it is simple forgiveness. I want to be clear: I do not trust the leaders of the church at large. They are responsible for an amount of anguish that makes me tremble. Five years ago, that was all I saw, and forgiving it was literally impossible. But with time, age, and study, the pain--great as it was and is--has stopped dominating my life and taken its place in a much larger context. Forgiveness is possible now, and I work at it.

Part of it is a desire to represent 'the gays.'

Part of it is a hunger to be useful, bringing my professional skills to bear on passion projects like FHE activities or the weekly yoga classes I help organize.

And part of it is the people here. I've begun reading Les Miserables again, and something like the first 20 or 50 chapters are about the priest M. Bienvenue, long before Jean Valjean even comes close to entering the picture--such simple, elegant depictions of Christlike humanity! My bishop is like M. Bienvenue, and I bless him for it. My roommates are intelligent, funny, acerbic and sweet. My ward is full of people who want to be better than they are.

The result has been that I've started taking Mormonism back a little bit at a time--judiciously--and testing it in my life to see if it was good. And it's been good. (The judiciousness is critical. If I tried to swallow everything about Mormonism, I would choke.)

I still wouldn't be able to get a temple recommend. For me, for now, that's not a problem. I have a direction. It seems to be leading me deeper into the LDS church, but that's not the main thing; the main thing is that it's leading me to more happiness, and more growth.

And roads wind: the path toward the church might curve away, or it might not. I'll continue moving in the direction of happiness.