leave

"

< Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons. I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently. Only the good stories have the characters different at the end than they were at the beginning. And the closest thing I can liken life to is a book, the way it stretches out on paper, page after page, as if to trick the mind into thinking it isn't all happening at once. 

I want to repeat one word for you: Leave. Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.">

 -Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts

i had a huge breakthrough this month. 

i love what i live here. 

and from the first day up and through today it has involved LEAVING.

yesterday Alina and I spent the afternoon with Ingar in her garden. Ingar is a 76 year-old woman whom we met by chance outside of mass at a church we don't normally go to. (the next blog post will be about her :) We had a little snack, watched her favorite soap opera, cooked, raked leaves, soaked up some sun, and talked. Then we hurried home to shower and change and go to Tomoko's concert in Peterskirche. She put on a  benefit concert for the Missionaries of Charity in Vienna. It was stunning. Ingar met us at the concert, but when she got there she was, in her words, KAPUT and was practically falling asleep throughout the concert, so when she let early to go home, I left with her and accompanied her home to make sure she made it ok (she has previously had accidents falling asleep behind the wheel). So after taking her home, I had the half-hour ride/walk back to thank God for asking me to leave. grow. experience. change. and for being with me in all the beauty and love along the way. 

sorry its a little hard to see, but this is Tomoko in Peterskirche

Ingar and Alina watching "Sturm von Liebe' (storm of love)