A French Weekend

I am leaving early tomorrow morning to go camping in the south of France. I am so excited about it! I am going to get to see some of my friends that I have not seen since I left France almost ten months ago. These are friends that I had great times with while I lived in France. They are also all French. I am going to have a French weekend in more than on sense of the word. I will probably spend most of the weekend speaking in French with French people while being in France. That is definitely a "French" weekend.

Today was another of our Ecumenical Learning Sessions. It was interesting. The guest speaker was the director of Faith and Order. When is not directing Faith and Order he is a professor in Canada of Church History. Today's lesson was on, surprisingly enough, Church History. We learned about Church Unity and Church Disunity. For me, one of the most important things I took away from this lesson was that not everyone sees the history of the Church in the same way. The way we view the "history" flavors how we interact with people from other denominations today. Being raised in the Episcopal Church I speak the "Episcopal" (or Anglican) language. I see things in the way of an Episcopalian. I can't help it. It's not good or bad; it's just the way it is. I hadn't thought about the way my personal Church history affects the way I interact with my fellow interns here and the people that I meet that go to different Churches, or don't go to Church at all. Learning that I see them through a certain lens is helpful. It's also helpful to learn that they see me through their lens. That some things I may not have anything to do with and I may not even know about, but I am being perceived in relationship to certain events in history.

I apologize in advance for the long absence. I will not post anything until I return to work on Monday, May 4th.