Today I met a very lovely gentleman named Hadden. He drove us very safely on the wrong side of the road (to me) from the airport to our garden manor on Finaghy Road South.
While we drove, he told me of his life, how he’s seen poverty beyond compare. But a proud poverty. A poverty in which the people are excellent and generous stewards of the little they are given. He told me of the workshops he teaches on sexuality. Of the pastor in Ukraine who asked the question of what it looks like to love your wife just as you did in your youth.
Then he told me of the first time he saw his wife. How he saw her at church, wrote to her to meet him, was afraid she wouldn't show, and how ravishing she was in her fitted royal blue coat when she did show. Though she has aged, that is the woman he still sees.
Then we departed and our group went to a park. And I was struck with the overwhelming recognition of the beauty and creativity and coolness of the God we serve. There were trees three times the length of my arms that moved like slides, like elephant trunks along the ground and up. A rabbit-sized opening led to a cavern made of trees, with the ground sprinkled with pink petals. To quote one of my favorite books, it was "lovely beyond any singing of it". There are reasons that Europeans love Europe so much. The earth is enriched with culture and history. You feel the ages under your feet. In those large, respectable trees I can’t help but imagine all the years of couples picnicking underneath, carving their names, children climbing, growing older. There are stories upon stories of love, of loss, of life.
This is a land of impossibilities and adventure.
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