Nothing like the holidays to bring out family differences!  Everywhere we go this holiday season we hear stories about the other families they have celebrated with or will shortly.  Everyone has stories to tell about their other family's dysfunction.  We all sit and laugh about those crazy relatives.  But then I leave and have to wonder what stories about us are being told to the next round of visitors.

We all have our own strangeness.  We all have our own ways of dealing with rowdy kids, late meals, the family member who is never on time, and the one with very different political views.  Then we find ourselves all at the same table sharing a meal and then sitting around a tree trading gifts.

Some of us just suck it up and endure.  Some of us yell back at the yellers and argue with the disagreeable ones.  Some of us just zone out and ignore everyone.&nbs ...

This is one of the quietest times of the year for me- the two hours between the 7:00 Christmas Eve Jazz Service and the 10:30 prelude for the 11:00 CandleLight service.  The church is pretty empty except for the hardworking custodians.  The jazz band is gone and the chancel choir has not yet arrived.

If I go home during this time I get tired and it is hard to come back.  So I stay in my office.  Some kind soul left a cup of Starbucks on my desk.  Yum.

So this quiet time each Christmas Eve is something I look forward to.  It is a time to reflect on the year that is about finished and the one about to begin.  It is a time to think about the places I have witnessed Christ's birth and the ways I have ignored his coming.

This has actually been a rather strange Christmas.  For one thing the warm weather is odd.  We had to tu ...

Last night Jack and I stopped by the Wube familiy's apartment to drop off some food.  The boys were dancing around the room showing us all the packages under the tree and playing CD's of American Christmas music (Santa Baby, won't ya come'on down my chimney tonight).

I sat in the chair holding the new baby, Merhowe.  He is one month old and he weighs 10 lbs.  He is beautiful.  The older boys were jabbering away in English.  Abrehet was putting together English words to join in the conversation and Mekonen was relaxing after a long day of work.

Exactly a year ago we were welcoming this refugee family from their homeland of Eritrea.  They'd spent years in a refugee camp and they arrived in the snow and ice with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the sandals on their feet.  We were teaching them to use running water and a stove, refridgerator and microwave.& ...

The movie "Babel" with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett reminded me a great deal of "Crash" the Acadmemy Award winner of a couple years back.  The story is a series of interrelated stories- but the relationships are not clear at the beginning.  The other similarity is the depressing mood of the movie.

I loved "Crash" and thought it was much better than "Babel."  But "Babel" was good.

You remember from your Bible that the tower of Babel was built in an attempt to reach God.  God, so angered by the attempt destroyed the tower and made it so people could no longer understand one another (different languages).  While this is never mentioned in the movie, it is clearly the theme- how we can live together in the same world, the same country, the same house and not even begin to understand each other.

The movie did ...

On most of our world travels I have enjoyed breakfast buffets.  While I am not much of a breakfast eater at home, when someone else prepares it I love the fruit and cheese and yogurt and eggs!

In Italy the breakfasts were pretty sparse.  Sometimes yogurt, yucky cereal, salami and never an egg.  They eat eggs for dinner, not breakfast.

So our first morning back I wanted eggs.  With no groceries in the house we headed over to the local pancake house and I could hardly wait for the huge spinach and feta omlette.  As I was shoveling the food into my mouth (like I didn't eat enough in Italy?) Jack was (surprise) telling the waitress about our trip.  He told her we had been in Italy for several weeks and I think he was explaining why I wanted eggs.

She immediately said, "Oh, I want to go to Italy.  Did you have lots of wonderful Greek food?"

I almost choke ...

I said goodbye to Women Touched by Grace.  We got news at our closing dinner that our grant for continuing the program has been approved.  So we will meet once a year for three more years, but not in Rome!

I think a difference between pigrimage and vacatyion for me is time for reflection.  Usually when I travel I want to see it all.  I rush and go full speed and then promptly forget a great deal of it after I get home.  This trip had built in time for silence, for reflection, for writing and I think I have absorbed more than usual.  I would like to travel this way all the time, but it still feels somewhat wasteful to do othing when I coulod be seeing another masterpiuece or work of art.

Jack and I met at the train yesterday and traveled safely to Florence where we hooked up with our dear friends Jill and Jay Hudson.  Moew museums and churches and amazing art.  Tomorrow is a wine tour of Tus ...