by love i sail: a rest day

Normally in Heart's Home (can't believe I just said that...there is no "normally" in Heart's Home haha), the community takes a rest day one day out of the week. Sometimes it is the perfect time for the community to do something together, to grow in friendship with one another, to maybe remove themselves from their usual surroundings and get a little breathing room once a week to refresh their bodies, minds, and souls. Other times, the rest day is used by the individual members as a time for retreat or 'desert' once a month-a day or weekend of silence and fasting and prayer.

Here in Vienna where we don't have a completely set schedule like in most houses going on their 5th or 15th year, we have rest afternoons or mornings or evenings or late nights more often than rest days. We take the opportunities to visit families, to help out friends, to grab coffee with a student, to enjoy dinner at someone's house, to have people over for lunch or coffee and cake as much as possible, and when we see that we are going to have some free time, we more often than not take the time to delve deeper into the city and culture and take our "rest" time to grow together in friendship, appreciation for, love for, and understanding of both one another and our friends, and our city.

Thus...you have seen pictures of little "ausflugs" we have done to see the architecture of Hundertwasser and visit Monika's mom in Steiermark, or other such things

(a typical "rest day" that has nothing to do with an American's understanding of rest...sleeping in, watching football on the couch, or soaking up some rays in the park, pretty much wasting a day away just relaxing around...which I am not complaining about...it has taught me a new understanding of rest time that is much more fulfilling at the end of the day, even if not as rejuvenating energy wise)

and here is another example of a rest day--but spent with friends and immersed in Vienna's culture.

The Montmartre Street Art Festival

in Türkenschanzpark

Klaudia-a new friend whom Alina met in her Deutsch Kurs

We all got free caricatures done!

Picnic time! Caitlin is on the left (from Canada, working as a nanny in Austria), then Alina and I, and Gottfried (the roommate of a friend of ours, Austrian, studying theology at HeiligenKreuz) and Klaudia took the picture.

Anna, a friend of ours from Munich and studying here in Vienna, joined us later as well. I spent a great part of the afternoon walking around with her. And found out...once again...that the world is considerably smaller than I thought. It turns out that Anna went to Kindergarten with a dear friend, and the best friend of my brother, Raphael, who is obviously also from Munich. If she doesn't know them personally or as friends, she knows at least the name of most of the people I know in Munich so we had great fun swapping stories about how we know everyone! What a coincidence!