See the heights to which our relationship has gone: atop a rope bridge in the treetops of the African Rainforest!

And now, how we met...This is good. Back in 2000 (or, as the hip people say, Y2K) Nate Wills, one of Mike's classmates at the novitiate (part of seminary training), became good frieds with Catherine when he served for a bit at Andre House in early 2000. That summer, Catherine and some others from AH came to visit the novitiate. And we "met" in the chapel there when Mike, walking in 3 minutes late for Mass, saw Catherine standing across the chapel. Quite a moment (for Mike at least, Cat only recalls paying attention to the holy liturgy). On that visit we talked some, but this was the novitiate after all, not Chuck Woolery's Love Connection. Still, over the next few years, as Mike continued in the seminary and Catherine served the poor and discerned her path, the friendship continued. But the cool thing is that each of us respected the other's place and we could discern our own paths first. Not until 2004 (Mike had left the sem in 2003 and almost waited too long to make the move; in fact the very night Cat was ready to say, to heck with this, the phone rang. Excellent call, Griff. We began to talk more frequently, and Cat decided to come from Houston for a retreat at ND in April. The retreat was magical. Fr. Charlie McCarthy, an eastern rite priest with 13 children gave the retreat, on practicing the nonviolence of Jesus in a warmaking world. As the weekend progressed, both of us knew. Both of us knew. That Sunday, April 4, we began dating. That summer Catherine moved to South Bend, where we both became staff members of the newly formed Catholic Worker House. Mike also began teaching at Holy Cross College. In 2005 Cat also began an accelerated program to get a second bachelor degree, this time in nursing. Now Catherine is a full-fledged nurse, working at Our Lady of Peace Hospital, affiliated with St. Joe's here in South Bend.