The Events of Sunday, April 17, 2011

                I love to walk. Today I got to take four walks. What a great day!

                The first walk was at dawn, while the rest of the family – in fact, the rest of the village – was still asleep. Our hostess had told me about some of her favorite walks, and I chose one that headed up to a view of the sea. As I passed the first house, the yard erupted in barks and whoops. Two dogs and a peacock live there. I followed a steep road up the hill, then turned parallel to the ridge and enjoyed the lush greenery of ferns and eucalyptus. That road connected to a larger gravel road that took me gradually back down to the house of the dogs and peacock.

                The rest of the family was in the process of showering when I returned. We had breakfast in the dining hall downstairs, then regrouped in our bedroom for our family devotions time. Being Palm Sunday, Pam and I hoped to stream a Palm Sunday sermon from a familiar preacher. We found several, including one that made us laugh in embarrassment. The black preacher spoke gruffly and followed every phrase with a small cough-like growl. He had an “inspiration” that there was a woman in his congregation harboring anger toward her estranged husband, and she needed to forgive this man to experience spiritual freedom. His clownish antics and false mysticism irked me, so I stopped the video. We ended up watching a series of videos from, we think, a pastor’s conference. It began with John Piper, one of our favorites since we heard him at college. But it was not his whole sermon but a ten-minute montage of excerpts, accompanied by upbeat rock music. Next there followed three of four other videos that might or might not have been thematically related. So we stopped the videos, discussed them and prayed through some of the issues they raised.

                The rest of our day we spent relaxing in various ways. We read books and took turns on the computer. The kids spent time playing games or listening to music on their iPods. At around one o’clock, we paused to enjoy lunch out on the sunny patio. During our clean up, we talked more with our hostess, Lourdes. She taught us her organizational system for refuse, and in doing so, taught us a bit about the Basque culture. Under the sink are three containers: one for plastic, one for paper, and one for “organics”. She puts the organic matter in a compost pile (yeah for compost!), and the town refuse facility sorts and recycles most everything. Lourdes says the Basque area is the most environmentally friendly in all of Spain. Perhaps that is why this house has double-paned windows and solar collectors!

                About 3:30, Abby joined me for a walk. This time we headed the other way, toward “town”. It was getting warm, so we stopped occasionally to rest in the shade. Abby had just finished reading Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. I could not remember whether I had read this book, so she summarized it for me, relating especially how the violence and death saddened her. None of it sounded familiar, so it will be my next book to read.

                At 5:30, Pam wanted some quiet alone time to blog and to correspond on the laptop. So she sent the kids out to walk with me. As my third walk of the day, we went up the gravel logging road that I had descended in the morning. We went slowly, savoring the beautiful sights and smells of new grass, tiny blue and purple flowers, and clear streams of spring water in the red dirt. When we returned, Caitlin and I began the long process of cooking dinner. It was long for two reasons: (1) we were using a wimpy microwave oven to heat up water to rehydrate dry noodles; and (2) we did not follow the (Spanish) directions on the package to add boiling water. So at about 8:30, we sat down to a dinner of soupy noodles in sauce, with broccoli, bread, and green beans.

                After clean-up, Pam and I steered the kids toward bed, and then we drove into the nearby town of Mungia. We hoped to find a café or dessert shop for a long-overdue date. Strangely, our GPS directed us to eateries that do not exist. As we drove, we saw only one place open, and the favorite activities there were drinking and smoking. So we drove back to our guesthouse. Seeing the huge golden moon rising, we decided it was time for my final walk of the day. I led Pam back up the moonlit gravel road and brought us back home again. With this, we brought our restful day to a lovely end.