Looking Back

Time held me green and dying, though I sang in my chains like the sea. ~ Dylan Thomas, "Fern Hill" (on his memorial in Westminster Abbey)

As I reflect back on the last 7+ months of my life and wonder how to put my thoughts into words, I feel a bit like I'm getting ready to write a eulogy. But I'm still not quite ready to wax lyrical on my time abroad, so for now you're getting just a few of the bits of advice I would give if I could go back and talk to my pre-22-September-2011-self. 

So, in no particular order:

- People are just people the world over. They have different accents, differing levels of style and poise, different customs, but they all basically want and need the same things in life. (Surprise!)

- Patience isn't just a virtue: it's an absolute necessity when traveling. Pack a lot of it. I've never spent so much of my life waiting as in these last 7-8 months. Waiting for buses, for trains, for plans to crystallize, for inspiration to strike when writing, for someone you can speak more than a polite sentence or two of English to, etc., etc. I sometimes get the feeling that God may be trying to teach me something ;) Lamentations 3:26: "It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord."

- I can't do anything without God. Even faith is all about His work in me. On my own, I'm a pretty big mess.

- The best adventures in life are usually completely unplanned and out of my control. Scary, but cool.

- Occasionally, make yourself do something you're afraid of--it's liberating!

- Being nice is not a virtue.

- Cramped and disorganized bookstores are the best. 1) You feel like you're searching for buried treasure, and 2) the people who work there are such characters!

- Traveling alone / being lonely / unhappy is just walking a mile in the shoes of Everyman.

- Hold on to your core beliefs, but be willing to put the rest up for questioning.

- Don't be friendly to older men who give you even vaguely creepy feelings. Ever. End of story. No they are not secretly nice grandfatherly types.

- Happiness isn't primarily about what you're wearing, or the place you live, or even the success of failure of your writing(!). It's bread and butter pudding at the Inklings' pub in Oxford. It's a glimpse of eternity as the choir sings at an Evensong service. It's that slightly inebriating sense of danger and discovery as you ski out past a resort's boundary line. It's finding the haunts of a well-loved author in Paris. But mainly it's about who you're with when you're doing these things. And learning to rest in God's amazing grace.

And, just because, a few more pictures . . .

Harrods by night.

Changing of the Guard. My favorite part was when the band played the James Bond theme!

 

The inimitable Winston Churchill, ladies and gentlemen. This is from Erin and I's visit to the Cabinet War Rooms the other day--very interesting.