Sun-down today begins Rosh haShanah of year AM 5771. A new year begins, and now time again to slow, and take stock of things.
Spring has just started in Sydney, and it is now exactly a year and a week since I submitted my thesis, officially wrapping up student life for now, the damage now permanently rendered. Yet somehow things are not too different - I'm still potting about in the lab, conducting research, staying til odd hours, plodding along.
But what a year this has been - curioser and curioser things become! There is much to be grateful, much to be amazed at God for. He's so faithful, and what an incredible and unexpected journey this has become.
For example, visits, touristic traipsing, three conferences, visitors, great feasts, oysters and vineyards and teas, some unlooked-for, including happy amblings through
- the dusty Outback, Katoomba (thrice), Orange (twice), Broken Hill, Clare Valley, Adelaide (twice), Kangaroo Island, Coonawarra, Warnambool, Melbourne, Canberra, Perisher
- Singapore (thrice), KL (thrice), Cameron Highlands, Kluang, Khon Kaen,
- Lindau, Lake Constanz (Bodensee), Turin, Milan, Vienna, Stockholm, Lund, Delft, London.
So for now, here I brood, I dream, I hope, I plan, I hope and I wait for the new year ahead. Ginger steps to be taken towards a path of surety and permanence. Brittle, fragile hopes, unopened bins of treasure, balloons of insanity. Sure, there is grief mixed with the pleasure - heartaches and headaches about lost friends, half-forgotten dreams, misplaced adventures, the grimly unfolding present and the mysterious future.
But still, how Good and Faithful is He?
O, won't You give me fellow dreamers to dream with, to dance with, to sing with, to name the animals! Awake, my soul and sing for the King!
שנה טובה
