The Friendly Tube

Last day in Londontown!

I leave full of mixed emotions. It feels like we’ve been gone at least two weeks but it’s only been one! I’m ready to get out of the big city—I think everyone is. We stay so busy here, we’re always on to the next thing, even when we have free time there’s so much to see we don’t want to miss out on anything! I’ve loved exploring this city with these people, and I’ve loved having a taste of what it would be to live in London!

On the tube no one acknowledges each other, something it is infamous for. Tonight a load of people came on and among them was a man and his daughter. About 8 years old and a little pudgy, she was pink from her tank top to her crocks. As the man on the loudspeaker intoned, “Mind the doors, please, mind the doors” the little girl grabbed hold of one of the poles the same time a businessman did. The girl had reached up the bar as high as she could, meaning her little hand was at the same spot on the pole the business man would naturally use. He got hold of the bar a little lower underneath her lifted arm, a little awkward but it would work. As soon as he did so she, looking through the corners of her eyes, slid her hand down where his hand rested. I watched as he, eyes averted, let go and held on to the spot where the girl’s small hand had left, only to have the her’s follow and hold on at the same spot. With the smallest side-glance he looked at her and returned to his first position but down came the other hand to rest on the top of his. The businessman can no longer feign indifference, now he knows she’s doing this on purpose and definitely not following convention. As I’m watching this I catch the guy’s eye and I smile and he gives a little exasperated smile back. He moves his hand again, her hand follows, he catches my eye and we smile again—now we have a joke. The first normal stranger interaction I had all week in London! It was fun.

Then the train makes a stop and the car clears, opening a spot for the little girl to sit right next to me. As the train accelerates she sways into me from the momentum and says “Oh, sorry!” in a loud voice. I smile, “That’s ok! Do you have pink crocs?”… “Yeah”…“I used to, too”, I say and smile again. She smiles back shyly. Then her dad says something about a picture, and she pokes me and says eagerly, “Do you want to see our picture?” “Yeah!” “Look, this is me and Daddy on the Eye! Don’t we look like spazzos! I think that lady wanted a nice picture, she’s smiling, but we ruined the it!” And laughs with her dad about being “spazzos” in the tourist picture taken of them by the ride. I laugh with them and they tell me about their day when her British dad says, “I’ve gotta take my little American girl to all the tourist places! She’s from Seattle.” Of course she’s American J

Needless to say, it was a friendly last tube ride, I enjoyed the solidarity I found with these people who aren’t as unfriendly and apathetic as the appear.

Today we had our last class in our little St. Olave’s and then the leaders took my fellow chaplains and me out to Pizza Express (YUM) for lunch. It was really fun to get to know our leaders (Kim & Ken, Gabriel, our teacher and guide, and Nif, our organizer/chaperone/in-charge-of-details extraordinaire) more and talk about what our plans are for leading the group to keep our eyes on Jesus during this trip. I'm praying that God will really work in people during this trip and that we will be open for him to do whatever he has in mind. I'm excited to see what he has in store for us.

A group of us also went to the London Library’s Treasure room where I saw:

--Shakespeare plays from when they were first published,

--The ORIGINAL Canterbury Tales

--The Lindisfarne Gospels

--The Gutenburg Bible

--The (exactly) 400 year old King James Bible

--Bits of the Bible from the 3^rd Century (what??! How did they survive??)

--The Magna Carta

AND  my favorites:

--Jane Austen’s writing desk (where she kept her ink, pens, and with a surface to write on)

--An early story Jane Austen wrote to amuse her family when she was about 17, (handwritten! It was so cool)

--Charlotte Bronte’s handwritten Jane Eyre, turned to chapter 38, the conclusion. I read her writing: “Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had:  he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present.  When we got back from church, I went into the kitchen of the manor-house, where Mary was cooking the dinner and John cleaning the knives, and I said -

"Mary, I have been married to Mr. Rochester this morning."  The housekeeper and her husband were both of that decent phlegmatic order of people, to whom one may at any time safely communicate a remarkable piece of news without incurring the danger of having one’s ears pierced by some shrill ejaculation, and subsequently stunned by a torrent of wordy wonderment.”

I loved it. It was fantastic. You should go.

Tomorrow we’re off to Oxford! …and Bletchley Park to study de-coding during WWII. Dun dun dun.

I love you!

Me, Nif, and Hannah in Notting Hill before getting a great dinner of Indian food :)