Riding along the Rhine


15 push-ups. You wouldn't think it's such a big deal, but when I started several weeks ago, I couldn't even do one right. Now it's elbows out. Down and up, slow and easy. Walking and biking has been much the same experience. The more you do, the easier it becomes. For six weeks, I've been walking my 2+ miles each way from the apartment to the office and, by now, it's just part of the routine. Biking most days, too. Usually up around the canals that border the city of Strasbourg proper. Or down the canal toward Illkirch-Graffenstaden or out in the country toward Molsheim.
The 15 push-ups may be coming easier now, but I found out you can still overdo it. On Sunday, I biked across the Rhine to Germany and then headed south, farmland on one side, the Rhine on the other. Got down to the lock and watched the sailboats and then headed back north and west across the bridge back to Strasbourg. Beautiful country, but by the time I got back, I was glad to get off the bike and limp into my apartment!
Supper time was probably my last meal with Larry and Eleanor Miller, my Mennonite World Conference hosts for my volunteer work and my house hosts as well. The work has been good but their company has been even better. The older I get, the more I realize how precious friendship is and Larry and Eleanor have been the best. I've had space here, space I needed to begin to sort out some things for the future, but they've been close by and have welcomed me into their household for these weeks. I'll be heading home this week, but we'll be looking forward to hosting Larry and Eleanor in our house for a meal in early July.
Somewhere over the Rhine(bow) may not have been exactly what Judy Garland sung, but these weeks have sure been a good adventure for me. But now, it's time to get back to Kansas-, I mean, Indiana.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

They welcomed us

Image
One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see. (John 9:25) She was addicted to drugs for 20 years. She was in prison and her family broke apart. Her child was in an orphanage and her husband died. Because of her substance abuse, she eventually lost her one arm below her elbow. She saw no way out. She had hit the very bottom. When she came to know God, Natalia says everything changed. She found she had a deep desire to help people like herself and she discovered that her life experiences helped her understand others. “I remember what God did in my life and I have hope that God can touch other peoples’ lives and give them new life, too,” Natalia tells me. In Nikopol, Ukraine, she and Olga and Valodya, both of whom have similar stories to tell of their own, began New Life Charitable Fund a half dozen years ago to help people in prison, or who have drug or alcohol addictions, are HIV positive, homeless or for some other reason need a helping hand. Ukraine has ...
Read more

God multiplies our efforts

Image
Sister Zita at the La Posada shelter with baby Emmanuel and members of our border learning tour. Photo courtesy of Janae Rempel The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail. – I Kings 17:14 Ana Hinojosa remembers growing up on the Texas-Mexico border near Brownsville in the late 80s. Her family’s house was a mile from the border wall and she remembers the extended family gatherings in her back yard. Ana, an MCC immigration staff person, says border patrol agents would rest in the shade of the trees near the front of her house and, in the same day, it would be possible for a family from Mexico to knock on her front door to ask for food or directions. Her family turned no one away. Life on the border can look quite different today. When we enter the Catholic Charities respite center in McAllen, Texas, it is startling to see the contrast from the serenity of the neighborhood outside to the chaos inside. Cesar Matta tells us that, today, the cente...
Read more

A river of love

Image
For it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. – Matthew 25:40 “We are happy you are here to see this with your own eyes,” the leader of the Islamic Charities organization in Deir Attieh, Syria tells us, a group of MCC people visiting partner organizations in Syria. “We can’t express enough our heartfelt thanks to you.” Islamic Charities works with 3,000 at risk families affected by the war in the region and relies heavily on the work of volunteers. MCC provides food boxes to Islamic Charities as part of our humanitarian assistance in Syria. When I visit five families who received these food boxes, I recall the heartfelt thanks but feel mostly heart broken.    We visit two families living in a partially constructed apartment complex that stalled when the war began. The first family lives in a small two-room apartment, the mother and her five children and the woman’s father. Her husband is serving in the army. The second family inclu...
Read more