Monday, August 15, 2005

Ending Summer

This is the first week home from various vacations. It is starting to feel like fall; we missed most of the 105+ weather here in Palmdale, and when we got home from housesitting in Redondo Beach it was in the 80's. I was relieved. Yesterday evening we had a huge thunderstorm, and then it rained more during the night. It didn't feel like the desert, and I loved it.

This summer we have spent 4 out of 10 weeks away from home. This is the first "teacher schedule" we've experienced, and it has been fun. I like life on a school schedule. There are lots of times during the year that things start over. I enjoy the changes.

While I was in Redondo Beach I discovered Madeline L'Engle's non-fiction work. I read "Wrinkle in Time" when I was young, and a couple other fiction works by her, but I was especially touched by "Walking on Water-Reflections on Faith and Art" and also "Two-part Invention" which was about her marriage and the death of her husband. I appreciate the way ML embraces the tensions in life, and allows there to be things we don't understand about God. She also is working through the existance of pain and suffering as an underlying theme in her work.

This is significant because I am realizing that the problem of pain was bigger for me than I knew, and I too have been working through some of the questions that ML explores. Anyway, her work has been a blessing for me.

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