just an ordinary monday

today is just an ordinary Monday. well, as ordinary as living here can be :)

the morning started with a shower followed by reading a couple of passages in the Bible (including reading the New Testament passage and psalm in Dutch), then breakfast at 7:30, then dishes and clean-up, then a quick conversation to figure out how to get a room ready for a new guest (which reminds me that i still need to get the bedding for that room later this afternoon or evening), then brushing my teeth and studying some dutch. chapel at 8:45, then coffee and chatting with 'the family' in Dutch and English, then the rest of the morning spent cleaning the kitchen. about half the house has been sick with some kind of stomach flu (thankfully i've not gotten sick thus far and hope it stays that way) - so we wanted to be extra sure to wipe everything down with soda. as my evening cooks are sick, i spent a few minutes with tonight's 'head cook' finding a replacement for her. and because part of the kitchen cleaning crew was sick, the cleaning took until after 12 (instead of 11:30). then i helped set up lunch.

and as i write this, i have a cat on my lap happily purring. i'm cat-sitting my mentor's cat while she and her husband are on vacation. and i can't decide if she's purring becaue she likes me or because she's lonely and i'm willing to pet her. eventually i'll have to go get my laundry to hang up and plug in my computer, so she'll have to move. but for now, it's nice to have a bit of company - and to remind me of the cats i miss from 'home'.

and lunch was at 12:30 - they were only 8 of us today. then dishes again. then a couple of conversations, starting my laundry, and cleaning up my room. and then trying to figure out what homework i need to do this afternoon. or whether the time would be better spent trying to learn German, writing on my blog and/or writing a few emails. by reading this, you can see what i decided :) i think a bit of that would be good although homework would also be good - last week's homework was summarizing a French article on Jeremiah 32 (it was good practice for the book i have to read in the next month or so concerning Jeremiah's confessions that is written in French - and i discovered that my French is not too bad and although it'll be a bit of work (i needed to look up at least a couple of words for each paragraph to understand well enough what was being said, it'll be do-able)). and i went downstairs for a few seconds to check on the cooks filling in - and ended up cutting vegetables for half an hour - i should know better by now not to visit the kitchen while supper is being made :) as this often happens.

and i've been thinking about the community and where i live a bit more lately. last week, the members of the Spe Gedentes community - those who are part of the inner community of Oudezijds 100 that organizes things and is considered a monastery - renewed their promise to live here and continue the work that they are doing. my mentor helped me understand a bit more the community's commitment to sharing the love of God in this place. and as i was learning more about this place, i was thankful for its ecumenicity that is still very much dedicated to the church as a whole and to individual churches. on Sundays we never have chapel - because every community member is expected to attend and participate in his/her own church. and the community members belong to different churches (Anglican, Catholic, Reformed). and no community member will be ever expected to do something that goes against the teaching of his/her church that she belongs to. the purpose of the community is not to be a church but to be one way of expressing how to live out one's faith - how to be church in the world that we live in. and i know things are not perfect here - and that the community continues to ask how they/we might better serve God as the body of Christ. yet even with the imperfections, i like how things have been set up in a way that promotes the ecumenical church but still respects the different ways that God reveals Himself in different churches and the deep love and commitment that different churches have for God.