The Sea In Between

In my recovery of holiday brain. I meant to post this before my London Journal Day 1 post. Please excuse my slowly receding holiday brain...

My silence here as of late is a result of an abundance of travel across the vast ocean, and then another sea. My journey has taken me to one of the largest, most enjoyable cities in the world, London, to a country that still maintains a pure nature so dramatic and beautiful I felt like I was in another world (namely, Middle-earth), Norway. There is much to share about such places, and all the sea in between. 

I feel it to be an immense privilege to visit and explore other countries. I've said it many times. I seek to travel to these places to appreciate and experience the culture and nature as it is intended there. Not to bring my own way over, but to engage and learn from these other places. In my personality, the way I was made, is that I love and value learning above all, so it is in my nature to seek that out wherever I go. If I go visit a historical site, I want to know what happened there, why it is important, what is the story. If I am admiring landscapes, I want to know more about how they were shaped and how they are loved and cared for. I want to know the stories.

Back home now, I am unpacked and doing loads of laundry. My heart yearns to spend about a week in reflection of all my travels and everything I got to see and experience, but alas, I cannot devote such time. However, every spare moment I have had has been filling my journal with tidbits, thoughts, and reflections. I will work on sharing some of that here, over time.

So, what does one take away from such a trip? When it comes down to it, I treasure the moments of awe - simply being present in God's creative landscapes somehow carved by glaciers to give us the views we shall never see anywhere else. I mostly stared at the scope of it all around me, incredulously, because I felt it was all a dream. It couldn't be real that I was in the middle of a fjord, floating along on a ship as the towering mountains surrounded me. That kind of dramatic landscape could only be found in books, right? It was The Lord of the Rings landscapes, in every angle. I really did imagine the door into the mountain where the dwarves dwell, and picked the location of the secret passage into Rivendell, amidst the crags of the rocky cliffs, carved by wind and water. 

It was where my imagination flourished that I treasured the most. Where I didn't need to do anything but simply be still and be present, and let it soak in. A place where the biggest human-created things (like a ship carrying 3,000 guests) are actually tiny in comparison to nature's grand showcase. Where the paradox of height and depth is so vast beneath the surface, it baffles the mind.

I am still letting it soak, and there are many more pages in my journal to fill.