"How is it to be back?" I am asked by thoughtful folks.  Three months is certainly long enough to change one's basic day to day rhythms and unlearn old ones.  As well, it is long enough to see things from an angle you might not have before.

As I look back through pictures taken during our sabbatical trip, I can easily tell which pictures I took and which ones I did not.  It is not about the quality.  It is often thinking of how I remember certain sights differently than the picture is showing, or thinking I would have shot that scene differently- from the angle and perspective I thought best told the story.

It reminds me that no matter how well I try to see things openly, the position from which I see them shades what I see and how I perceive it.

Being in another culture, being in a small group at Taize with folks from around the world, working at languages that are only 'foreign' because I don't speak them, all have ways of helping me to understand this.  Being away from my 'regular' routine and places also gives a distance, a different angle from which to see.

While I would love to win the lottery and consequently travel any time I wished, that is not my lot and so how do I find ways to shift my position in 'ordinary' time.  How do I step out when I am not away?  What things, what people, what rituals remind me, help me to see, there is more to the picture than I am framing?

I am deeply grateful to be part of a community that values seeing and that values our ability as a staff to step away for periods such as retreats and sabbaticals to do that seeing.  I am also grateful to be part of a community that strives to see differently amid the day to day.  May we always work to be conscious of the position from which we are seeing things and open to the other angles and frames from which and through which our lives are seen.

And in answer to the first question above, it is good to be back.

Peace,

Todd Donatelli