Today marks one week of absolutely perfect weather. The Spring here is liable to break my heart. Exuberant if awkward beauty and the winds off the gulf have the ability to hurt.

Yesterday I walked through Sarphatipark : point A is the park, point B is where we currently live...
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It was about 16:30 on a Thursday and the park was full of people: sitting on blankets, playing football, walking dogs etc. I was amazed: they must have barely just gotten home from work/school. I could feel the peaceful energy/joy that radiates off people able to sit on a blanket in a park for the first time in many months.

I think I could've put my faith utterly in humanity at that point, believed almost anything possible with man. I've already thrown my lot in fully: when learning the way of love, it helps to have moments where the veil is torn away and I see as S/He does.

Of course life goes back to its frantic, if illusory, chaos. I found myself rushing off to a discussion on Henri Nouwen later that evening. I am thinking of performing a type of pilgrimage here in Nouwen's home country; I'll report in more detail to all you L'Arche folks.

But back to chaos: a few weeks ago Peter and I had a friend overnight as we had stayed up way too late for the tram to take the guy home. Pete and I slept through the alarm (or rather turned it off and then fell back asleep) and were thus terribly late getting off to church. As we raced around the house trying to feed our guest and prep for departure we offered profuse apologies, accounting that by Canadian time we're really rather early (weak, I know!). Our friend did not buy that excuse, but generously chalked the morning up to a "cultural experience". Oh dear.

late and rushing to church as cultural experience