At Home

I have a week to spend in the serenity and serendipity of nowhere - at least nowhere that you've heard of. I grew up in Emo, Ontario; population 1200 people, thousands of cows. Tradition has it that Emo was named . . . I think the story has something about a cow in it. I'll have to ask the town librarian to boost my memory sometime this week.

The word 'serendipity' was coined in 1754 by Horace Walpole. Thank-you, Mr. Walpole. I'm feeling very serendipitous at present.

I have a whole week to spend relaxing in Emo. Today I spent hours typing away on my laptop and reading online - granted, dial-up Internet is a cross to bear. But, we endure our persecutions and they make us stronger??? I visited for three and a half hours with a friend who lives two miles away, in Emo itself, while attempting to reproduce my former success with pita bread. A miserable failure, the dough ended up as rather tasty, crusty dinner rolls instead. I'll have to try for pita bread again later this week. Later in the evening I listened to an entertaining philosophy lecture, and mused over some Pascal, then telephoned a friend and chatted for another 2 hours.

There are times when a sentence I read seems to resonate strangely within me, as if responding to an innate awareness of truth, and evokes a passionate concurrence. I think Pascal has explained this phenomenon aptly in the following:


"When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there before, although one did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love him who makes us feel it, for he has not shown us his own riches, but ours. And thus this benefit renders him pleasing to us, besides that such community of intellect as we have with him necessarily inclines the heart to love."


To sum up: if Day 1 was any sort of prophetic precursor – I’m more then ready for this coming week.