I have been noticing lately the remarkable synchronicities in life. I suppose they happen all the time to everyone, but I've been much more aware of them lately. Mostly they have been involvingbooks...which make up a great deal of my life at present. The first one I noticed involved Christianity in India. I read a book "The Kolkans", the protagonist of which was descended from a group of Indians tortured into Catholicism by Vasco de Gama and "St Francis" (how can a torturer be a saint? only the Catholic Church can say). The very next book I read was "Cutting for Stone". One of it's protagonist was from a group of Christians in India, converted by Thomas the Apostle and just "down the road" from de Gama's group in Goa!
Next I read "Wordy Shipmates" by Sarah Vowell, which is about the pilgrims. I knew nothing real about them beyond Thanksgiving myths, so it was a real eye-opener for me and fun to read thrown into the bargain. That very weekend, I attended a concert at a United Church of Christ church and picked up the hymnal to look through...very interesting selection of hymns from every variant of the Christian ideology. And even more interesting to me was that the Order of Service read like a Catholic Mass! When I got home I googled United Church of Christ and discovered it is the current permutation of the Congregationalist Church...the church of the Massachusetts pilgrims who were trying to change the Anglican Church from within...thus the near Mass of their liturgy. All new info for me and exciting to learn.
My most recent synchronicity is reading, for the first time, a book loaned by a friend by the author, Carl Hiaasen. I'd never heard of him so was surprised to get a call from a friend asking me to attend a lecture by...you got it...Carl Hiaasen! Too amazing!
My interpretation is that life is going well and as it should. I guess another would be to keep reading!
I will be working in Alaska this summer. I'll be a gift shop clerk at the McKinley Village Lodge just outside the entrance to Denali National Park from mid-May to mid-September. In all, I'll be gone for five months (yea...I'll miss the Denver summer...too hot for me!). I'll leave here the first of May for a week with the kids in Vancouver, then I'm taking a 7-day cruise to Anchorage. I'll get there just in time to report in to the office for a ride to Denali the morning of the 18th. My plan coming home is to stop again in Vancouver and then take the train through the Canadian Rockies, Lake Louise, Banff, etc. to Calgary and then fly or bus home. Hopefully, that will satiate my travel bug until the following summer. Originally, my plan was to work all summer to fund travel in the winter but the cruise and the train trip will pretty much tap me out for travel...maybe. I'll be able to travel to see friends but not go abroad...I think. I'm hoping my next big trip will be to Southern India and that may involve saving for a couple years, not something I'm particularly good at doing.
I've added some photos of the lovely park just behind my apt. building taken during our last snow. We've had very little so it was a real treat to have an opportunity to walk during a snowfall. I LOVE it and miss it now that we have global warming. I must say, though, that Denver has not had any of the extreme weather events that have plagued the rest of the country this winter and that's not all bad. Not having a car or having to go anywhere, though, I wouldn't mind some extreme weather. Maybe I'll get it in Alaska (where I won't have to go anywhere further than from the lodge to my housing).
