Robots and Openings

Every now and then I find myself in an unfortunate doodling phase. Usborne inspired, it's all robots this week. And poor Neighbor B is a recipient.

Neighbor B is a recipient because we live in weird times. When one starts imposing her child on the Hip Childless--then one is pretty low down. Smart and always eloquent JB wrote me a beautiful email earlier this year quoting the Chinese proverb, "May you live in interesting times." My proverb is more like, "May you endure humility, oddities, and all lack-of-pretense and come out relatively unscathed." We continue to rely on our community to cope with random bouts of strangeness, and we continue to find nothing familiar in what life throws at us in Prague. It's not all bad, but it's all difficult. Asking for help is not one of our spiritual gifts in this house. 

Just to keep me in perspective, I had this little calling card arrive today from Henri Nouwen: "Have a sense of compassion for your own journey, for your own leaving and returning; a sense of, 'yes, yes, I'm loved when I take a risk. I'm loved even when I make a mistake because somehow, it's an expression of my desire to claim myself. I did it in a wrong way, but I didn't have any other way to do it at that moment'." This family is learning to give and receive love in new ways. We have shaky legs about it, and if we're going to do right by Henri, ourselves, and the good Lord--then we need to temper our folly with compassion. So hard.

We also need to find less awkward transitions in our blog, but since I can't today (and I'm all about compassion for my inadequacies....)--here's a dismal segue to something delightful. We're searching for silver linings, and mine came in the form of Easter Advent calendars this week. I'm in favor of things with doors for every season. How exciting are these? As melancholy as we've been about things, we really are big big fans of a country that celebrates their seasons so well. Easter farmers' markets fire up this weekend, and yes--even Easter brews hit the pubs soon. Unfamiliar--but welcome.