Wednesday, March 4, 2009

When life isnt limited by punctuation and grammer

Being succinct has never been my strong suit, so I have been avoiding writing about my experiences, as how do I sum up, yet relate all I am learning, seeing, doing; I have therefore been procrastinating writing anything thus compounding the problem ( kinda like this sentence).


Ahem-the list of the events of last two weeks:


A group of 20somethings came to CRC for a weekend of connection. Connecting with God and each other. I was able to pray and be a part of their services, spending time getting to know them. It was neat to be able to see what was similar in their lives and interactions to the US ( the boys constantly jump on, jostle and joke with each other, and make a drum out of anything - makes me miss my brothers-, same worship songs, worries and questions) and what was different ( how they pray, their slang, everyone lives at home until they marry)


I climbed one of their Mourne mountains- Slieve Martin. It was all that you hope for from a rugged Irish countryside. I could see the ocean on two sides, I forget i'm on a island, even though there are many palm trees ( no really!).


Spent the week reading, praying,walking, being alone and with the lovely 65/70 somethings getting beaten badly at scrabble, cleaning and praying.


28 men recovering from drug addiction came for the weekend for seminar of sorts. I mostly served tea, smiled, washed dishes, set tables and smiled some more. Of course I was dieing to know their lives stories, but I only heard second hand. There were several intense moments I witnessed, such as a leader of the IRA, realizing the speaker used to be a high ranking orange man, and both wanting forgiveness from each other, crying, embracing; both huge tattooed, worn hard men. Everyone was in tears. The other was listening to them all sing praise songs. a melody of male voices who embody what it means to be saved, and in such celebration of it... I really haven't wrapped my mind around watching that... it seemed too intimate to just be in the same room.

My last couple of days I spent walking and cleaning. I walked to the memorial for the man that burned the white house down, it looks exactly like the Washington memorial in DC. The guy was born in Rostrover. I thought it was quite funny; its very well maintained.

So those are my list of run on sentences of the happenings; although it doesn't capture my own experience in the slightest.

Then there was Belfast...

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous5/3/09

    I am still in ah of the difference in culture. I expect us all english speaking people to be basicly the same. Just shows even though I am relitivley well traveled I am insolated from the world. What a great time for you and us to travel through you.
    Being your mom I must say Please do not bring home any of those hard tatooed men! A nice Irish young man maybe! Love you

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  2. Anonymous6/3/09

    What a wonderful story...I can not imagine, IRA and Orange united in Christ...would love to hear the details of this...

    Let your sentence run on! Language is a wonderful artifice for transmitting thought...but it can be confining...you are in the land of James Joyce the denier of sentence structure paragraphs...let it flow!
    We love you and look froward to your return (Sans any Tattoed Men)

    Dad

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  3. Anonymous7/3/09

    thanks for writing!

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  4. Hey, what's wrong with tattoos? Several people in my family have one, or two! :)

    Love your stories.

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