I'M GOING TO AFRICA!!!!

(details to come) grins

A weekend of blessing...

Yes, it is, in fact, the lovely Becca Clark's cheek I am kissing. grins One photo from a weekend full of blessings. I had a wonderful viewing of the Senior's Art Exhibition (opening night was Friday) with Paul and Chi and Sarah (Richards-Desai). Spent Friday night up at the Pearse's and enjoyed a leisurely morning of tea and conversation. Went to Houghton's track meet - quite the event, 11 colleges/universities gathering to compete - to see Naomi and Bethany Christensen run, and promptly ran into Becca. grins Finished the afternoon off in the ceramics studio, and headed over to Becca's (in Cuba) in the evening, spending the night with her talking, cooking, taking pictures (Look for a special pedi-picture on Becca's blog. I shall say no more. You will have to see for yourself.), walking, and watching the Japanese Anime movie, Howl's somethingerother Castle. A movie I happened to see in Japan (a Japanese friend taped a favorite movie of mine and attached this one to the end of it), all in Japanese, and of course had no idea what was going on. So we watched it in Japanese with English subtitles. Amazing what watching (reading) something in your own language can do for comprehension. grins And then Sunday, after Sunday school and church at Houghton, was invited along with the Christensen's (only Naomi could come) over to the Pearse's again for lunch. Delicious of course, ending with strawberries, ice cream, fresh whipped cream, and berry coolie (I had no idea what this was until Ann explained it to me. Basically it's homemade fruit/berry sauce you eat over ice cream. Very very yummy.). After taking Naomi home, Rhian and I headed over to the Luckey's to spend the rest of the afternoon outside playing crocket and frisbee. Beautiful weather, beautiful people, beautiful weekend. I feel so wonderfully blessed and refreshed and ready to start the new week. :) I hope your (whomever happens to read this) weekend was as much of a blessing to you.

God the Rebel

G.K. Chesterton (Fabulous man. Really. If you haven't read anything of his yet, I suggest maybe starting with Orthodoxy. That's where I happened to start. And if anyone has any other suggestions, by all means make them. :) )

That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents for ever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point - and does not break.

In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologize in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest of saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." No; but the Lord thy God may tempt himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane.

In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God.

And now let the revolutionists of this age choose a creed from all creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay, (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but the let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.

Beneath Thy Cross

Christina Rossetti

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy Blood's slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon -
I, only I.

Yet give not o'er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

Saturday, in the tomb. Two prayers.

Jesus, in a prayer to his Father:

"...Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began..." (John 17:3-5)

Child, in a prayer to her Father, her Lord and God, her Savior, her Interceder...

...Help me to complete the work you have given me to do, so that I might bring you glory on earth. For that is my purpose; that is why you created me. That is why you called my name, and keep calling me. That is why, even in my sin, you keep turning your face to me, drawing me back to you. That is why you whisper in my heart...

From June 4 - August 10...

Guesswhat guesswhat! I'm working with Journey's End in Buffalo this summer! :)

I'm excited because...

*I get to work with kids. :)
*And not just any kids, but international kids (most of them are refugees from Africa, I believe).
*I'll be applying and continuing to extend all of the things I've learned through my experiences teaching English in Japan and working as a substitute teacher at Naples Elem School this spring (since Feb).
*Yet another stretching experience - I'm totally out of my comfort zone in the inner city. Akita, Japan is a far cry from Buffalo, NY. BUT I'm really looking forward to learning as I'm teaching and getting to know these kids and their families and familiarizing myself (along with the other teachers) with "life in the city" for the time that we're there.
*Where we'll be living is close enough to Journey's End to bike or walk back and forth. (Hurray for cutting back on the use of fossil fuels!)

And if I think of anything else, I'll add to the list (I'm sure there will be more). :)