Well, the silence has been somewhat deafening, hasn’t it?
In late October, I jumped on a plane in Sydney and then spent 5 weeks gallivanting around the US. I had all sorts of grand plans to keep writing while I was away. But, well. We all know what they say about grand plans.
But now, I’m back, settling into real life again and eager to take the half a dozen posts I started writing in my head over the last month and get them onto paper. Or rather, onto screen. So, look for a return to our normal programming (whatever that is!) over the next little while.
In the meantime, I thought I might share with you a few photo highlights of my time away. My 5 week trip was a mishmash of holidays (or, for my American friends, vacation), ministry, remote work (you may not know that I work part-time as the Sydney Anglican Diocese Research Officer and so I was working on a particular project for that while away) and lots of time spent with friends. Old friends. New friends. Some of the best of friends.
I’m so thankful to have had the opportunity to travel again. God also used the time to provide some spiritual clarification about what exactly I’m doing with my life. Or rather, what he might be doing with my life during the next couple of years. But that’s a discussion for another time. For the moment, here is a truncated visual tour through my travelling mishmash :)
My Route
Washington D.C.
First stop and I was in full tourist mode! I visited a lot of the usual monuments and important buildings, as well as a small selection of museums. I was particularly thankful to have visited the Holocaust Museum (see the photo of the ‘Tower of Faces’) and the Museum of the Bible (I’ll probably make this its own post someday soon, but let me just say now that you should visit if given the opportunity). I worshipped at Capitol Hill Baptist church that Sunday and was delighted when they happened to pray for Aussie Christians during the service!
Radford & Charlottesville, Virginia
I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to Radford and spend a few ministry days with Jesse, Holly & Michael from the Bonhoeffer Haus (the photo of the four of us was taken outside a BBQ restaurant where on the dot of 12 pm all diners stopped, stood up and sung the national anthem). I spent time with some students thinking about vocation, spoke on singleness at a church event and on the campus of Virginia Tech, laughed all the way through recording a podcast (if you aren’t already listening to The Hammer & The Quill, what are you doing with your life?) and just basked in the joy of making new friends. I only spent 3 days with these guys, but I legit miss them :( Beyond that, I spent a week feeling like I had stepped into an autumnal Hallmark movie (minus the charming single man bumping into me in the town rotunda).
I also spent 36 hours in Charlottesville, where I visited Thomas Jefferson’s plantation, Monticello. So much beauty and ingenuity, built on the back of so much pain and inhumanity. The photo of the brick wall reveals the handprint of a small enslaved child who spent their days turning bricks in the sun. The unmarked burial ground of an unknown number of unnamed enslaved people stood in stark and sobering contrast to the fenced in, ornate, heavily marked Jefferson family cemetery on higher ground.
Boston, MA
About 18 months ago I was invited to be a Q&A panellist for an online US conference. Another one of those panellists was this person named Rachel Gilson (author of Born Again This Way). We made contact with each other after the conference… and then we just never stopped making contact. Over the last 18 months, Rachel has become one of my dearest friends. I was SO thrilled to actually be able to spend a week with her, her husband and their daughter in Boston.
Their hospitality to this random Aussie woman was just incredible. We carved pumpkins (my first ever jack-o-lantern… as you can probably tell!); I experienced my first real Halloween ; I tried (and failed) to get them to appreciate the Australian delicacy which is Vegemite; I tried (and succeeded) to introduce them to the Australian rite of passage which is the Tim Tam Slam. Oh, and I had the privilege of speaking about singleness in the Christian life to members of their church family. But really, the highlights of that week for me were just the quiet time Rachel and I spent sitting across from each other, working (semi) quietly away on our own projects (one of those days in the company of the wonderful Rebecca McLaughlin); cheering like a crazy woman on the sidelines of their daughter’s soccer game; and sprawling on the couch with them in the evening in front of the TV. By the time I left, I felt like I was saying goodbye to family. I love these guys. (Oh, and the one touristy thing I did while I was there was to visit Harvard. Rachel, who is a Yale grad, almost disowned me for that.)
Savannah (& Atlanta), Georgia
I spent some holiday/vacation time by myself in Savannah, with an unexpected pit-stop in Atlanta for a few days in Atlanta (there’s a story there - the short version being, save yourself the stress and don’t book with Airbnb). Savannah was gorgeous. Humid, sticky, dripping with moss, full of friendly people and just so different to anything here at home. Atlanta was… well, to be honest most of my time was spent inside the lobby of my hotel (and the three or four others that connected to it) catching up on some work. But I did manage to visit World of Coca Cola (the Fanta flavour pictured was basically the worst thing my taste buds have been subjected to - smelt like BBQ sauce, tasted like carbonated marinade). I also took myself off to a college football game, hotdog in hand, and pretended I had some idea about what the heck was happening on the field.
Denver & Boulder, Colorado
The main impetus for my trip had been to attend and read a paper at the 2022 Evangelical Theological Society Annual Meeting. It was being held in Denver and so off to Denver I went! It was a great week filled with catching up with some old friends; making a bunch of new ones; being challenged in my thinking as I listened to others reading their papers (and gathering the courage to put up my hand and ask questions); presenting my own (essentially, an academic version of this post here); meeting my editor and the marketing team from IVP academic (who are publishing my book next year); and braving the weather to run across the street to Starbucks so I could keep myself dosed up on chai tea. That it was snowing most of the week was a constant source of excitement, delight, novelty and “crap, I don’t have the shoes to deal with this kind of weather!”.
After that, I spent a few days touring in and around the Rocky Mountains. It was spectacular (as evidenced by the fact that I could simply point my camera in any direction, click a button and produce basically the most amazing photos I’ve ever taken). And cold. It was very cold. It was about -15 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) at the Continental Divide.
Los Angeles, CA
And then there was LA. The plan was to arrive in LA in the afternoon, spend the evening in a hotel by the airport and fly home the next day. Qantas decided to change that plan by cancelling my flight, rebooking me on a new one the next day, cancelling that flight, and rebooking me on another one. This resulted in my getting to experience an American thanksgiving… in an airport hotel ;) But I also had dinner with a new ministry friend, John, who took me out to chat theology of singleness over Korean BBQ LA style. I also made a quick trip to Santa Monica. It was nice. But let’s face it, when you grow up along the eastern coast of Sydney, you are kinda spoilt for all other beaches ;) Also, you need to pack a picnic lunch for the journey from the parking lot to the actual water at Santa Monica!
Finally, with a final US Starbucks chai tea in hand, I actually managed to board a Qantas flight that didn’t get cancelled. Bonus, I had a spare seat next to me which I managed to contort my body into for 15 hours of fairly fruitless attempts at sleep. I had an amazing trip, but I have to say it was nice to arrive home, walk out of the airport and not nearly get run over by an approaching car because I had been checking for traffic in the wrong direction ;)
Super glad you back ok Gorg!!! Awesome adventures...but sure it's good to b home! xoxo