August Blessings
“Lord, make me a blessing” I prayed as I began my third journey to Sherborne to visit a friend of many years. A pastor I know often says that “blessed people bless people.” I was certainly blessed by her hospitality, encouragement, fellowship, and simple adventures. After a very busy time of administering exams, organizing English camps, navigating my place in the schools where I worked and the church where I served, and endlessly questioning my intercultural and linguistic skills, my stay in Sherborne was relaxing and rejuvenating. To be sure we did use our language differently. I adjusted to calling dessert “pudding”, though there was no pudding. I learned to call the sidewalk “pavement” and paved roads “tarmac.” We hung the laundry in the garden, which I would have called the yard. The yard, short for courtyard, is where we sat on sunny days to eat lunch or entertain guests who came for tea; I would have called it the patio. I already knew that my British friends called...
