10 Blog Post 10 September 12, 2024

(I can’t go through all our adventures in the blog. One idea usually rises out of the day that causes me to reflect, but I will include additional pictures and captions about the places we visit if you click on the pics, like the fat, lazy seals lolling on their private beach today.)

I am sitting in the kitchen of Dan and Grainne’s home, smelling some incredible meal that they are making for us, smoky and rich with peppers and spices, baking in the oven while I have the luxury of sitting here and looking over my day. I can’t stop thinking of the idea of nourishment because this visit is reconnecting memories and friendships from my past to a friendships that are being renewed.

Grainne and Dan and I are not the same people as we were when we met at the University of Delaware some 40 years ago, and yet that foundation of friendship has led Alistair and I to this table now, rich with food, wine and conversation. I can feel my 24 year old self in my nearly 64 year old self, and I am so glad to meet her again. Sitting in this kitchen, far from home, I am beginning to see the way that home is grown in us over the years, the way home comes with us wherever we go. That feels comforting and strengthening to me.

Why are kitchens such important places for us to gather and why does it feel so good to sit here while someone else prepares dinner? Actually, if I am honest, it makes me uncomfortable because I want to do something, to help chop things or wash things. But they won’t allow it. Dan has a singular way of preparing food that requires space and concentration, and I would be of no help. He and Grainne do a ‘dance’ of cooking, cleaning up and quietly talking as Spanish jazz plays in the background. What an incredible privilege for me, so used to being the chef du jour (probably better to say that in Spanish but I don’t know how!!). Could God possibly want me to sit this out and to allow others to provide for me when I have been called to serve and provide as my vocation? What is it that God wants me to see here?

This morning I looked out the window of the historic house where Dan and Grainne live and condensation had clouded the window. I could sort of see, but not really. Then I wiped off the moisture and my vision was much clearer. You can see that in the pictures below. Immediately I recalled the verses from Corinthians that I have long loved, but now I see new depth in it as I travel: For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. I Cor 13:12

Even as Alistair and I have planned this trip and know this trip, we actually know so little about each place until we get there, spend time, hear the stories, walk the journey. And now these memories are piling up on top of each other. We are seeing differently.

I spoke to Grainne about my cataract surgery today as we walked the along Newburgh Seal Beach and told her that it is as if I have been given different eyes after my surgery, eyes that literally see differently. I have not connected these things together either—the way we see the world with our spirits, and the way we see the world with our eyes. Perhaps that integration is what God wants for me—for you!—to integrate who we are and what we are with what we are called to do and to be. What is God’s call in your life? What gift do you bring to this complicated, beautiful, vast and varied world?

I am learning at this stage of my life to see what God has prepared for me to see now. I carry with me the years of experience, education, work, relationships. The Spirit is kneading them together into a new dough, a new shape, and they will rise into something unexpected, like the crusty warm bread we have for dinner tonight with the sheen of fresh butter melted on each piece, with a vegetable-rich meal full of love and grace, becoming a new expression of communion that spans years and continents.