"After I became a Christian. . . I came to see quality of life as measured not by the number of fun things you do, but by how much you love -- period. I came to believe that even if you lived your whole life in the same small town, if you took every opportunity to open yourself to love -- even to people you didn't like, even when it felt uncomfortable -- that your life would be not only better but even more exciting than someone who spent her life jet-setting around to exotic destinations all over the world in pursuit of experiences."

I read this this morning in Conversion Diary, a catholic blog I follow, and the words in bold print are what caught my eye.  This is the kind of faith I want to strive for.  I earnestly want to know and experience God's peace in my life here in this little town.

I'm back after a long silence.
In more ways than one.

Just the other day I turned on the stereo and actually selected a CD to listen to.  A fairly normal thing to do while one is doing household tasks, one might say.  But in fact, I realized that this was the first time I actually listened to music (by myself, I mean) in a very long time.  I'm not sure why.  But I wondered if it's the silence of this place that's finally penetrating my soul. 

The single most striking characteristic of this place, ever since we moved here, has been the silence.  Sometimes, when we're at the dinner table and everyone's chattering away (or often singing, as the kids love to perform their favorite hits at meal time) James will make everyone stop : "Shhhh, listen!"  And we all stop and listen to the quiet.  The only sound's the flowing of the stream outside.  "Do you hear it?" he says.  "It's so quiet!"  Between the kids and the noise of traffic and neighbors and the school next door and all the rest, I guess maybe it was just too noisy for me in Strasbourg to feel like I needed to add more noise.  Except when I went running.  I almost always used my Ipod to cover the outside sounds of the city.  I haven't used it once since we got here.  I want to hear the singing of the birds, or the noises of any other animals I might see.

Now we live in such a quiet place, where the friends and activities are much fewer and farther between.  At first, I think I lived it like a piece of vacation.  But you can't stay on vacation forever.  I have noticed the wistful thoughts about Strasbourg coming more often lately and me being me, I have a hard time admitting my own unhappiness.  But the fact is, it is hard to feel like an accessory to someone else's ministry.  It is hard to live in a small town where everyone knows who I am and where that very identity ("pastor's wife") is often a barrier to relationship.  It is hard to live day after day with my only face-to-face contact being with a mentally ill neighbor (with whom conversation often feels like double monologue) and a smattering of kind ladies over 70.  It's hard to watch my son (Sara seems to be doing okay.) struggling with loneliness, so much so that he runs quickly to play with older boys who tend to laugh and ridicule him.  He has developed a nervous twitch/blink.  Is this related ?

So I put on music.  I listen to sermons on line.  I yell at the kids.  I talk animatedly to almost anyone who calls, or whom I meet in the street.  Mostly just to fill the growing silence. 

Monastically, I am sure this silence would be considered a boon.  The perfect place to pray and study!  But there is one who would like me to fill it with anything but that.  So the battle goes on, one day at a time.

Once, soon after we moved here, James said to me that being in Strasbourg was like being in a bubble.  When you're inside it, if feels safe and comfortable and normal.  When you live there, you are convinced that it is what is known as a "happening place."  Important political and cultural events are staged there.  You can catch all the latest films in their original languages.
When we lived in Strasbourg, we would come out to places like the one where we now live for a day or two.  We would take long hikes, go sledding, and then get back in the car and drive back to the city.  "What a beautiful place.  What a winter wonderland, " we would say.  Then, we felt as though our day in the mountains had been spent in a sort of bubble.

But now when we spend a day in the city, as we did yesterday, we have the distinct impression that it is the city that is the bubble.  There are so many images and signs, so much explicit advertising, so many people all in one place.  I am afraid to look people in the eye, afraid to say bonjour, disoriented and uneasy.  In the tram, I stare at my feet, and wonder why it feels so different now that I don't live there, how I could have failed to notice how surreal it all is. 
We must have over a foot of snow up here, but there there wasn't even a hint of it in Strasbourg, although we did catch sight of a flake or two floating in the air in the middle of the afternoon.  The people who are outside are almost all in a hurry, looking upset about the coldness of the air.  Maybe it's the concentration of people, vehicles, buildings and events that make people in Strasbourg feel like they live in an important place.  Seems to me that the normal things, like walking outside or chatting with your neighbor, get lost in the shuffle.

This morning, as I was typing an email, I caught sight of my neighbors the S.s walking slowly by with their snow shovels on their shoulders.  They were just coming back from shoveling in front of some other neighbors' houses further up the road.   Marie-Eve stopped in front of my window and waved for I-don't-know-how-long before I realized she was there and looked up from the computer.  She said hello and we chatted.  She talked about how they had had their morning's excercise shoveling snow...  And she said that I had been so concentrated on the computer that it looked strange to her.  "When I see you like that," she said, "with such a look of concentration on your face, I don't know, it's weird..."  And she gave a little shudder.

And so I wonder, whose bubble is real?