How to Spend the Rest of Vacation

We took naps.
We did Acroustics.
We read.
We took a day trip to a lovely historic town nearby.
We took Scout to a lake, and to a nearby park that neither of us had been to for years.
We got ice cream bars from a good humor man at the park.
We went out to breakfast (I had Swedish pancakes with lingonberries).
We discovered a new cafe and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts.

And every evening, we have made popcorn and watched movies that feature Paris. So far we have seen A Little Romance, Everyone Says I Love You (you have to wait a long time for Paris, though!), Charade, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939 version), and (tonight), Paris, Je T'aime.

The last segment of Je T'aime will stay with me a long time. The vignette seems to be making fun of the American Tourist in Paris, but at the end... well, I won't say more than that.

And in so many ways, our time in Paris was like a disconnected series of small vignettes. It's up to us to make the connection, to see the stories as part of something greater, older, more significant. Like hearing the choir at Notre Dame; seeing the children carrying long rolls of bread under their arms; walking back and forth along the river and across the bridges, listening to the voices of many centuries and many countries.

Whereever we travel or don't travel, it's the same task: in all humility, finding ourselves in the world, in the stories of the world, in God's stories of grace and freedom and heartbreak and forgiveness. We're so small, but the story is grand -- grander than we ever know, wider than the whole world.