Outward Bound

From the plane, the land around my city is green and lush. Every river, stream, dam and hollow is full of water. This is such a contrast tot he usual yellow grass when the watercourses are dry.

An hour later we are flying over Sydney. Its colours aare green and red: leafy green trees line both sides of most residential areas, the red is clay roof tiles. In contrast to twenty-five years ago, a silvery-grey rectangle adjoins the red. Surely these are house extensions into the back yard. Having lived in one of these houses, I wonder if it is the desire for a family room/indoor play space where in earlier generations children played outdoors. That is certainly what my M-i-L told her grands.

A friend was on the plane with an empty seat beside him so we took the chance to catch up. He's a minister and on the board of a local private school that recently hired an executive principal. The church we attend is looking for a minister so we chatted about approaches to interviewing in schools that could be useful to church hiring which is termed 'calling'. In the interview, they gave 10 minutes to prepare a response to a scenario. This gave insight into the candidate's thinking and approach to challenges. When applicants identified areas they would have to grow into, they asked about mentors, books and the like that would be used to support this time of learning. At hiring, a memorandum of understanding was drawn up to guide both the principal's wife and the school with respect to her volunter role at the school. These were new to me until we created one with our missionary earlier this year.

Waiting in Sydney I remembered a lesson I learned on a journey 8 years ago, to pray for the organization of my seating. I did so, even while thinking, 'the seats have already been assigned.' (ie what's the point?). Boarding, I noticed empty seats and saw the seats either side of mine occupied. I headed straight for a steward to ask for another seat. After a couple of suggestions that were vacant of their occupant, I ended up separated by one seat from a Canadian mother with her 4 month old baby heading home to see her family. It was a rather fun match for a Canadian midwife who also had her children in Australia and took them home for introductions. And I only sat in my assigned seat once for half a rather short leg!
(Written October 25th)