Wow…is it Friday already? Happy St. Patrick’s day. Interestingly enough, it’s a lot less of a big deal here than it is in the States. In Indianapolis, they dye the canal green, drink green beer, wear all kinds of ridiculous green outfits. Here there was a fairly short parade in Downpatrick (there was nothing at all in Newcastle), some live music and a lot of drinking. They don’t even pinch each other. They just chuckle at the crazy knack we Americans have for making everything big and commercialized.
If you’ve been watching the news, you may have heard that the last few weeks have been pretty tense here. Two weeks ago there were three murders by dissident militia groups – two British soldiers and a policeman. It’s really the first of that kind of violence in over ten years, so a lot of people are really scared that it will release another wave of retaliation and violence. What you may not have seen on the American news is that there has been a tremendous show of cross-community togetherness. Immediately after the shootings you saw major Loyalist/Protestant and Republican/Catholic leaders standing together on the news, denouncing the people who did it and calling for cooperation with the police. 10 years ago some of those guys would have been publicly giving their approval. So it’s an historic time in Northern Ireland. It’s also still an unstable time because as much as everyone wants peace, even a small retaliation could undo years of peace process. Pray for Ireland.
Peace,
Mark
Hello, dear friends! I feel excited waking up today knowing it’s a day to celebrate. I love traditions of celebration. Especially when they come with live music, parades (best when you’re with kids), and good bad-for-you food. And today is just that day. Mark and I are going to go to Downpatrick, one of the sites claiming St. Patrick’s grave. There is a huge St. Patrick Center in town, remembering and educating the public on the life and message of St. Patrick. (It’s really interesting and well done, so see it if you get a chance.) We’re excited to get to celebrate a bold missionary who changed a country in the country that was changed!
Remember how I was going to show you a picture tour of our house? Well, I’ve had trouble getting the whole house ready for pictures, so I’m going to do a bit at a time. And in honor of this green day, I’m going to start with a green room.
Bedroom
hamper nook
my favorite thrift store find (the owl)
Our bedroom is a bit more green than it looks in these photos. I still haven’t figured out how to take very good room pictures. There’s time to learn yet, isn’t there?
We wish you all a happy St. Patrick’s Day!
I’m at our favorite coffee shop right now. I’ve started going here one morning a week, just to be out among people and also because I get stir crazy working from home all the time. It’s a cool place – great scones, decent coffee, and a nice view of the Irish sea. There’s another joy I just discovered though.
I just walked in, set down my stuff and was getting out my laptop and the barista walked up with a cup of coffee for me (you don’t order at the bar here), because that’s what I usually get. “Filter coffee, right?” “Yep.” Now that is service.
This is the coffee shop. That big blinding block of light is actually a little rock wall with the irish sea on the other side.
I wanted to give a short update because we’ve been a bit absent in the blog department. One reason is that we’ve been really busy in the evenings lately and haven’t had a lot of time to sit and write about everything we’re doing. The other reason is that the nature of the work we’re doing makes it awkward to write about. If the whole point is to show love to people who have been burned by religion, it would be really damaging for someone to stumble on our blog, read about themselves and feel like they’re a project or the friendship is fake in some way and we don’t actually care about them. I will just say, for those of you who are praying with us, that things are going really well in that department.
If you want to pray with us about those things, you can join us in asking for “John 4 encounters” (the woman at the well) with people. I am hoping to sit down soon and write a lengthier post about that one, but it’s come to be one of the guiding passages for how we want to do things.
I think we’re also hitting another little wave of culture shock (which, I’m told would be more aptly named “creeping cultural disorientation”). We’ve been here six months next week so that is about right.
