Londres

In such a large city, no one cares what you look like, where you're going, what you're up to.  It is a city chock full of different languages and peoples, all rubbing elbows at the crosswalks and in the red double-decker buses.  They share underground and train rides all round this massive city, some blocking out the auditory melange of public transportation by reading, others by listening to their music, or even getting lost in reverie. 
Yesterday I walked down to the Thames, just to enjoy the feel of the city.  I saw a man braving the traffic on his bike, dressed in a fuzzy green crocodile costume with a little tail sticking out behind him!  Two Ukrainian Jehova's Witnesses approached me, apparently thinking I was Russian and a tourist.  The camera must have given me away, because only a few minutes before, some lost Americans asked me for directions, thinking I was a local.
Friends from different walks of life have figured in my brief stay already.  It is a joy to find oneself in the warm circumference of friends, connecting again after years or months of separate lives.  I find myself living the moment, keenly aware that I may look like a tourist when I whip out a camera, but I feel no compulsion to go see tourist sights at the moment.  I am currently with lovely Helen sitting in Kaffein, enjoying the loud milieu of a cafe with orange walls, plenty of clinking plates and pop classics that I can occasionally hear over the din.  I haven't figured out what language is being spoken at the table next to mine....ah wait.  I asked the waitress.  Albanian.
Yes, I am breathing other air, having other thoughts, seeing other faces than I usually see.  And once in a while, it does a body good! :)

Personal Update

A rainy Sunday greets me. The season around here is changing, slowly but surely.  You know, at the end of the summer, I wasn't sure I had the motivation or the strength to keep teaching English.  But now, as the days roll by and I've reconnected with my students, I find great fun and satisfaction in our class times.  I've been with some of them for over a year, and that brings a stronger sense of connection.  I don't have enough classes at the moment, but finding more work is in the agenda.  I'm just thankful that for each day, God gives the strength and joy to live well.

Things that bring me joy:
skyping with my sis who's in Jerusalem
leading small group on Thursdays
hangin' out with Latinos at church
plans with friends to visit friends
a trip to England next week
good conversations about theology & life
when brothers come home from uni
the privilege of living joys and trials
alongside others
hope in the face of difficulties

your promise

like a universe inside the palms of my hands
glowing in an orb of swirling light, it warms
my eyes, my fingertips, my very soul. i know
to let go would leave me bereft on a fierce
stormy sea driven by winds of emptiness.

so i'll keep it, ever so gently, in open palms
so small and yet too big for even my colorful
imagination to grasp, it mesmerizes me and
becomes part of everything i see.  there is no
longer a reality without it, without you. and
then it's not enough anymore to merely gaze,

eat, you say, to satisfy your desire. an obedient
hand to my mouth and i swallow--there can
be no going back; cuz there's no red, no green,
no hue without it, just dull gray misguided
wanderlust that peels off the weathered and
broken surfaces of forgotten civilizations. and

now i am full, of sweet honey light and your
goodness, brimming with the deep mystery:
i in you, and you in me.