de viaje

I'm going to be gone for the next couple of weeks. Off to Bolivia. If you didn't know about, I will tell you about it when I get back. So things might be a bit slow around here till the middle of April. But then I suppose there might be quite a bit to tell after that!

Pray for me, I don't want to bring and bugs back, and I can't afford to lose any weight. Plus that God would do some amazing things there! Hasta pronto!

by George MacDonald

Our old age is the scorching of the bush
By life's indwelling, incorruptible blaze.
O life, burn at this feeble shell of me,
Till I the sore singed garment off shall push,
Flap out my Psyche wings, and to thee rush.

a little bit of sun,
a little bit of cloud,
...

a bit of beauty,
a bit of controversy,
amidst high-rise living.

nearly spring now.

A good Indian.

Ironically Indian food is the most popular food in Britain. Maybe it's the influx of Indians over the last while or perhaps it's an attempt to break away from centuries of bland food. Or perhaps it's both. Centuries of bland food creating an amazing business opportunity for immigrating* Indians. Whatever you do, don't get huffy with me, I'm just stating accepted stereotypes. *I never know if it's immigrate or emmigrate.

So me, my British mate Ben, my dad and four non-english speakers poured into an empty Indian restaurante at about 7 in the evening, feeling rather hungry. Instantly everyone felt at home due to the welcome in broken english. Nothing like common ground over a language no one spoke particularly well. (With the exception of my mate Ben, none of us there were born and bred on the Island.) So in the middle of English England in an Indian Indian restaurante we were: two Americans from the States, two Spaniards, one Colombian, one Dominican, and a whole host of Indians from India. And Ben, the sole representative of the host country.

We were sat around a table in the middle of the room were asked what we wanted. Indian beer and lots of water for the heat was the concensus pick to drink. And a lot of blank faces as to what the heck these Indian names were that described Indian foods. And which were the ones that blow the top of your mouth off? Well many thanks to the one native present, Ben sorted us out with his vast knowledge of Indian culture, food and the occassional word that was supposedly English that I didn't seem to catch.

15 minutes later we has 7 bowls of seriously nice looking bits of meat soaking in sauces of varying colors and an hambre big enough to eat a horse. (That's not me saying it was horse meat btw, just that we were hungry.) Being the wimps that we are and coming from the land of non-spicy food (Spain) we had avoided roof blowing dishes and elected normal to medium. And some none/nom/nam/nan bread beside our steaming dishes of Indian rice.

And one heck of a feast later we had polished it all off. Including an extra round of chocolate mints on the house! We had been invited back, we had invited to Spain, we had agreed to meet up for holidays by the beach, and perhaps take a group pilgrimage with our new friends to their little pueblo in India. Signs of good times.

So Indian food holds a high place in my memory. The Indians even higher and perhaps once day we will all meet up on our side of the channel. To share a similar experience over a good paella and pig.

De todos modos, we could sure use a good Indian here in Badajoz...

Back in Spain now after a brief respite of a few days in England. Will write more on that after I catch up on sleep. Just occurred to me that I used the word respite without being 100 percent sure of its meaning. Funny, it's a normal occurrence for me in Spanish, I say it if it sounds right. In English I tend to be a bit more hesitant to use a word I'm not completely sure about.

So shortly I will tell of my Indian meal and friendly British customs agents. Here's to both and a good night's rest...

It's raining but it doesn't matter.

Sunday started promising, sunny, warming up with only a light breeze. That was walking to church.
Walking back it was barely sunny with definate winds kicking up and more than a few clouds barreling along.
The post-lunch forecast was suddenly threatening. Grey was the word with no hint of sun.
The hour arrive and as I stepped out of the house the sky started lightly spitting.

Now the importance of the weather on Sunday is that Sunday afternoon is my futbol afternoon. There are a couple of hardcourts about 10 minutes away that have constant games a happening. And Sunday is when I join them. Now *football wasn't my first game. (*soccer that is. Call me a traitor but I think America should join the rest of the world in calling it as it is, soccer nothing.) Basketball would probably claim that. Growing up in heartland Indiana it wouldn't be anything else. But man I enjoy a good game of football sala, as it's called. Now difference between futbol and futbol sala is that futbol sala is played with only 5 on each side, one in goal and 4 playing the pitch. And instead of being played on grass it's played on a surface pretty much the same as a tennis court.

So needless to say I like my Sunday afternoon kickarounds. And today it starting raining just at the hour of kickoff. But the game kicked off anyway. We continued playing as it turned into a steady drizzle and then a steady rain. And pretty soon it didn't matter. Of course there was no turning on a dime, but you adjust. Such is the game of sport. And the moral of the story is that. Sport is sport. Futbol is futbol in rain or sun. It might have been raining today but it didn't matter.

miracle

For what we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists, not just that beyond the steely brightness of the stars there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind that keeps the whole show going, but that there is a God right here in the thick of our everyday lives who may not be writing messages about himself in the stars but in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around down here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world.
It is not objective proof of God's existence that we want but the experience of God's presence. That is the miracle we are really after, and that is also, I think, the miracle we are really get.

Frederick Buechner (The Magnificent Defeat)