Feelin' Good

Dragonfly out in the sun
you know what I mean,
don't you know
Butterflies all havin' fun
you know what I mean
Sleep in peace
when the day is done,
that's what I mean
And this old world is a new world
And a bold world
For me





Stars when you shine
You know how I feel
Scent of the pine
You know how I feel
Yeah freedom is mine
And I know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me

So, maybe not a new life, but definitely a new year. I had such a wonderful birthday already!

The box my family sent me was guarded by postal angels - it arrived yesterday and today the Royal Postal service went on strike :) I've had presents and cards from my family back home, and so many hugs and congratulations from my friends here . . . including my beautiful bouquet of flowers and cake from Lee Abbey (and so fun to share my birthday with Voon!) . . . that I'm not sure that I've had a birthday where I felt so special and loved and blessed!

I had a Brasilian and Indian dinner with Angel Food Cake for dessert - and lots of wonderful fellowship with both old and new friends. There is nothing like spending 4 hours in the residents' kitchen talking, laughing, and simply enjoying each others' presence :)

I promise another post is in the making about some of my thoughts over the past week, but yesterday was just for celebrating!

Quick Catch Up

Okay, this is going to be like the ticker-tape on CNN - headline news for June!

Last formal dinner of the year - hello to the new warden and his wife (Trevor and Samia), and goodbye to many of the students who have been at Lee Abbey since September.


I took a trip with some of my Lee Abbey friends to Oxford and walked around - very cool town, lots of great atmosphere, old buildings, history . . . see picture album.


I traveled to Serbia with Tatjana, my former roommate; I visited her friends and family in her hometown of Šid (pronounced Sheed) and then we journeyed by bus to Belgrade to meet up with my close friends Laura and Simone. I spent the rest of the week hanging out with them in near 40ºC weather (around 100ºF).


Now I'm back in the beautiful drenching 20ºC rain in England . . . and I think I'm appreciating a bit more than my coworkers who didn't blister in the Eastern European heat. I do miss the amazing gelato we found in the Belgrade cafés . . .

A Madrinha

I'd like to take this opportunity to inform you that I'm finally a godmother!!!

I must admit, I thought it would be a while before my friends started having kids and I'd get to enjoy such a special honor.

However, on the eve of her birthday, Alice asked me to be the Madrinha to her daughter. Luke was named the Padrinho, and we both witnessed the baptism of Olivia Rose Joos (Tatjana officiating).

The reason for such a shotgun baptism: the parents (Alice and David) could not stop arguing about whether their daughter's name was Olivia or Rose and decided on a compromise. Having godparents baptise their daughter was the agreed-upon solution to this persistent debate.

I hope I make a good Madrinha. Here is a picture of Luke and I holding Olivia Rose and Tatjana dedicating her.



Sometimes life just needs to be silly (especially if you've been cooped up in bed for days like Alice was).

P.S. I have a plane ticket home - 31 August!

Entertaining Angels

Yesterday was "Trinity Sunday" in the Anglican liturgical year. I heard a really amazing semon on the Trinity by Graham Tomlin, the guy who head's up HTB's theological center. If you want to listen to it, its on their homepage.

I've been mulling over a lot of things because of that message. For instance, we often hear people say that "God is love." But the reason we can believe its true is because God is three persons in relationship. You can't love unless there is someone to love. If He were simply one, like Allah or Yaweh, then he couldn't be love self-existent. He would have to have created us first before He became love and would be dependent on us to be love.

Our language is so inadequate to describe our communal but whole God. St. Augustine said, "Yet when it is asked what the three are, human speech is embarrassed by the great poverty of language. However we say 'three persons,' not because that expresses what we want to say, but because we must say something."

As we are created in God's image, we are also meant to express ourselves in love to the other members of our body - the church. The Trinity gives us an example for how we can have both diversity and unity without having chaos or tyranny. And it tries to help us grasp the method by which we can actually relate to God: we access God the Father through Christ the Son in the Holy Spirit.

The speaker used this icon from the 1400s in his message. It was painted in the 1400s by Andrej Rublëv, titled "The Hospitality of Abraham." The three people are the three angels who visited Abraham, but they also represent the idea of God in three persons, the Trinity God. The icon includes a lot of symbolism, but the thing I like most is the empty place at the table :)