This day in history

One year ago today I stepped off a plane in Philadelphia, full of jet lag, excited, grieving, confused, joyful. Mostly I remember the surreality of it all. The customs officer smiled. The streets were smooth, and unbelievably wide. The sermon that Sunday (in my host family's church in Warrington) was entirely on The Da Vinci Code. I could talk to my family and my fiance on the phone. Restaurants had menus with daunting lists of choices, and all of them reflected what was currently available to order.

I remember the graciousness of the Ungers, and Jim and Fran S., and Naomi N., and Valerie, and Mark and Jen, and Kevin C. (and if I keep thinking about this list it will get longer and longer!), and all the folks at World Team who treated me like family. Granted, at the time I really wanted to go back and see my fiance and my family and my friends in CA, but those five days of debrief were precious anyway. God bless all who work in Member Care (officially and unofficially!).

A momentous occasion

I bought pepper on my last grocery shopping trip.

This is not the "nonperishable foods drive" sort of buying pepper.

This is not the "I promised to contribute a small pepper shaker for each table at the church dinner" sort of buying pepper.

This is not even the "I needed an exotic kind of pepper to try a new recipe" sort of buying pepper.

No, this is, plain and simple, the fact that we ran out of ground black pepper. Which, considering that I come of good solid Biggs stock, is of considerable note. Even more notable is the fact that the replacement I bought contains not one, not five, but eight ounces of pepper.

Lisa, I attribute this entirely to your influence.

Signs (the non-horror film variety)

In huge block letters on the back of an eighteen-wheeler: "ATTEND THE CHURCH OF YOUR CHOICE." (Thank you, I already do. Did you want to tell me to floss my teeth, too?)

Seen on a van, driving around Redlands: "AAA Battery Replacement Service." I didn't know such existed. Finally, someone you can call when your Singing Teddy Bear stops working or your kitchen timer gives that last dying beeeeep.

And my favourite, on a road sign in the mountains: "High Flash Flood Risk Due To Fire."

Always room for one more

They say you can tell a lot about a family by what is on their refrigerator door. Maybe it's true.

Our refrigerator door is, perhaps, motley. Two overworked magnets work together to hold up eight pictures of our family and friends. A third magnet, light on the magnetism part, holds up a drawing of Jim on one knee in front of Sharon, a word bubble enclosing the carefully outlined words

Will
You M-
arry
M
E
?

A beautiful wedding invitation which recently arrived in the mail adds elegance to the collage.

Then there is the grocery list, the list of meals currently in the freezer, and the magnetic clippie holding all the coupons we thought worth saving to see if we could ever use them.

Directly in the middle are two magnetic finger puppets in the likenesses of Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche. They are, I believe, holding hands.

In memory

I see the stained glass, and the afternoon light, and I slow down. This place is not one where I can hurry. I walk past the window that says, in a little scroll at the bottom, "Preaching." Past the one that says "Shepherd." Past the one that says "Healing." Past the one that says "Praying."

The afternoon light shines full through the colours. Jesus Welcoming the Children. This one always reminds me of her. I don't know why, though I think she would have loved it too. No particular reason, no special day, just a reminder.

Light. The sunlight, image of the Light she is seeing, plays upon an image of the Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.

May light perpetual shine upon her.

And homeschooling mothers do this ALL day

My first student was learning letters, colours, and numbers. We counted together, and talked about sounds, and put together a picture puzzle, and played a guessing game. She wanted to make a joke and pretend that strawberries were blue. I played along and was shocked.

My last student (three hours later) was learning calculus. We discussed water flowing into a tank at a constant rate but leaking out at an exponentially increasing rate, sprinters covering the same amount of distance when all we had was a graph of each one's velocity changing over time, whether we needed to take a double integral, and how natural logarithms fit into said integral.

Can you say... trying to be flexible? Can you say... exhausted?