"It's a great big world - it's a great big moon - it's a great big sky - it's a great big love for you." These lyrics from Pierce Pettis keep rolling around in my head as I continue to experience new things this fall. We are just past our halfway point of time away from our home in Grand Rapids, and starting to wonder things like, "what does this experience mean for us?" with more depth and frequency. Ok, maybe I should just speak for myself - *I* am asking these questions and wondering these things. I often tell students to be careful where they travel, and to beware how deeply they invest when they do. The tension with traveling and investing in people and places is always in the leaving - at least for me. If you travel well, you always leave a part of yourself where you've been, and this is certainly proving to be the case for me this fall. So now the lament is that there are new parts of me in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzogovina; in Lupeni, Romania; in Dubrovnik and other parts of the Croatian coast; soon in Krakow, Poland; and of course all over the grand Hungarian capital city of Budapest. A lament not because making friends and loving places is a bad thing, but because of the limits of time and space - I don't know when I will be with new friends, or see or be in these physical spaces again. There is another meaningful set of lyrics that comes to mind as I ponder these things - missing places and friends that are far away, and anticipating the missing of places and friends that are now nearby, by Bruce Cockburn, "Smiles and laughter and pleasant times, there's love in the world, but it's hard to find - I'm so glad I found you - I'd just like to extend an invitation to the festival of friends." That's a party I'm looking forward to - in all of these and many other places. On this eve of the observance of All Saint's Day, and on this Reformation Sunday, I'll look backward with gratitude and forward with anticipation while living today "every, every minute." Salutations, friends.
This is a photo taken in the Old City of Dubrovnik, Croatia last weekend.
It was about 30 steps from the little apartment we rented while we were there.
I took this yesterday from the panoramic overlook on the dome of the St. Stephen's Basilica
here in Budapest. The domes are the towers of the Great Synagogue, one of the
largest in Eastern Europe.
And this is another taken yesterday from the Basilica - the Castle Palace on the banks of the Danube.
You sound nostalgic. A good thing, I think, when contemplating the wonderful experiences you have already had. We often say that the only things that get better with time are wine and memories. And your memories are already getting better!
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