outWORD by Matte Downey

Two years ago, I wrote: "Catching the early train downtown. Going to travel through this brief moment of life with beautiful strangers. Peace and grace to you, my fellow pilgrims. It was a privilege to share the ride with you all this morning." It is one of my greatest joys to be chauffeured around a city by a trusty driver while in the company of strangers and neighbours. It has been almost two months since I took public transit and I miss riding on the bus and the subway. On a cold day, the first minute inside the bus is spent being grateful to be out of the chilly wind. And on a sunny day, I love squinting out the window at the world aglow with light. But no matter what the weather, I always find myself delighted to be on a journey with random companions. On the bus, I don't have to worry about traffic or changing lanes or running out of gas or finding parking; I just step through the door which magically open for me and the adventure begins. While the experienc...

familiar: from the Latin familia , pertaining to one's family or household; intimate, very friendly, on a family footing Dean and I just returned from an epic trip which took us through France, Italy, and Spain. Our senses came alive and our feet nearly died as we walked and walked and walked the streets of Paris, Venice, Rome, and Girona. Everywhere we went was a place we had never been before. Everytime we got off a plane, a train, a bus (in Venice it was a waterbus), a subway, or stepped out of the car, we were in unfamiliar territory. Every day we were surrounded by different languages, different foods, different climates, and different cultures. Most everyone we met was a stranger. This kind of travel is an adventure in unfamiliarity. One is always encountering the unknown and therefore never quite sure what is coming next. Will it be a good experience or a bad experience? Will I find this new food tasty or will I want to spit it out? Where will this road lead me? When li...

Times Square Jan 2016 In early January I came upon an interesting symposium put on by the wonderful folks at City Seminary in New York City. The topic, Women in Leadership and Ministry, wasn't what really grabbed me, but I recognised one of the speakers and read up on a few of the others scheduled to give talks and thought I would really like to meet these people and hear what they have to say. Part of Saturday was to be spent on a prayer walk (what they call Pray and Break Bread) in Harlem. I really wanted to get in on that since we have done something similar in Montreal. So I made my plans (which took nearly a whole day because I had a tight schedule I was working with and a limited budget) and contacted some friends who said, yes, we'd love to see you when you come, so I decided to arrive a day early. Everything was set for an enriching time in New York City from January 21-23. And then winter storm Jonas appeared on the scene. On Thursday I was about 5 hours into a 1...

Me on the climb up Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh.  Basking in the beautiful sunshine. I did not post anything here last week, despite all my good intentions, because it was one of those times in the semester when everything piled up and it was all I could do to get my readings done, my assignments completed, my funding application sent in, a tutorial planned, host several social events in our home (Dean kept inviting people over!!!), put together a talk for our Sunday gathering, and get some sleep.  In the midst of all the craziness, there were several beautiful moments.  Let me share a few of them here. 1. I was on the metro one day and it was standing room only.  I was a bit annoyed not to get a seat because I like to sit and read, especially in the seats at the end of the car.  I was just getting over my wee bitterness when an elderly Chinese man hobbled onto the car.  A young guy immediately got out of his s...

Edinburgh Castle We drove into Edinburgh just before noon on Saturday, parked near the airport and caught a bus downtown.  We had been told that navigating and parking can be troublesome in UK cities, especially in summer, so we opted for finding our way into the city via the top deck of a double-decker bus.  We stepped off near Edinburgh Castle and were immediately surrounded by a large park, bustling shops, throngs of tourists, and Starbucks. High Street in Edinburgh.  Dean is on the sidewalk. After gawking at Edinburgh Castle for awhile, we sauntered around the park, slowed down to listen at a music stage, then headed up the hill to High Street.  It really is high, you know.  The first thing we encountered once we reached High Street was (you guessed it) a bagpiper, this time with a drummer.  A really funky combination!  We spent the afternoon walking from Edinburgh Castle (we didn't have time to go in, but we saw the police...

I just returned from a whirlwind trip to Scotland and am still trying to get back into things here in Montreal.  A few days before we left on our trip, we acquired some house guests (a young family who is immigrating from Venezuela to Montreal and staying with us until they find their own place) and they were kind enough to take care of Jazz and our condo while we were away.  It is always a joy to help people out who are new to Montreal, but is also means that my writing/thinking/studying time is usually cut back.  So this is the first time in a few weeks that I have had some time to write here. So...Scotland.  Where do I start?  There were so many wonderful experiences and quite a few complications, which is normal in any trip that is as involved as ours was.  We drove to Toronto, flew from there into Glasgow, drove through Loch Lomond Park, visited the Isle of Mull, the Isle of Iona, Stirling, Dou...

I have been looking through some of the pictures I took on our road trip to the East Coast this past weekend. The scenery through northern Maine was beautiful, as was the foggy, rugged landscape of New Brunswick. We didn't have a lot of time to trek around outside, so many of the pictures I took were through the windshield of a moving car. Now that I take a closer look at the the photographs, I can see all the bug guts splayed on the windshield, distracting from magnificent sunsets and lush greenery. I also notice all too many blurred images that indicate we were rushing past some amazing scene at high speed, and all I could do was capture an indistinct representation of its uniqueness. Sigh. Such is life. We see indistinctly and we hurry through. I often view the beauty of this world through the bug-spatter of my life's idiosyncratic paradoxes. Incredible scenes play out before my eyes even while small deaths are happening all around me. And if I am not attentive, bri...

I am writing this from my hotel room on the 11 th floor, a block from the Pacific Ocean in Honolulu. It is reading week at my university and Dean and I are spending it doing some reading (it is obligatory, I am told) and relaxing with his parents near Waikiki Beach. The trip here on Monday was a bit of an adventure. I have been learning that how the journey happens is not always an indication of success or God's favourable presence in my life. A week ago, I had two days when I had important appointments to keep. On the first day, I missed my first bus because it was early, then missed another connection, and the whole trip was feeling quite out of control and late. However, I got to my appointment with a few minutes to spare, no problem. The next day, I was nice and early for my first bus, caught my second bus just as it was leaving and every step of the way was a picture of clockwork perfection. I got to my appointment a few minutes early, just like the day before. How was it tha...

I got back from my trip to England yesterday around noon. It was a fabulous 8 days filled with new sights and foods and adventures, and lots of very precious people encountered along the way. The reason for going to London was to attend a friend's wedding, after which we were taking 5 days to see other friends and a bit of the country. It started off not looking so good when I arrived at Heathrow just before noon last Friday after an all-night flight and heard my name paged in the luggage area. A nice man informed me that my bag had missed my first flight to Halifax and had then been sent to Toronto where the weather was not so good. He hoped that it would arrive the next day. Okay. There was nothing I could do about that, so I headed off to my hotel, checked in, and then jumped on the tube to spend the day seeing the sights in downtown London. I came back to the hotel later that evening to have dinner with a friend and my bag was still nowhere in sight. The next morning I checked...

I leave for London, England tonight at 7:50 pm. Dean (whose flight leaves tomorrow night after work) and I are going to attend the wedding of a good friend on Saturday in Egham . I am still amazed at how the plans have come together for this trip. At times all the details and flights and arrangements seemed almost impossible to untangle, starting with our not able to fly together due to one flight being through Aeroplan and the other one the most convenient for Dean's work schedule. It is also a challenge to try to see London and friends in neighbouring cities without a car and within a limited Canadian budget. In the end, everything has worked out better than I imagined. We are going to be moving around a lot, traveling to 5 different locations and meeting up with friends every day, going to places I would never have thought to include in our little trip. Unexpected delightful detours! Through the helpful suggestions of various people, we now have a self-directed walking tour we ...

This morning I booked hotel rooms for our trip to London, England in 2 weeks. If you have ever checked it out, you will know that London is an expensive place to visit, especially when you are used to Canadian prices. I just don't think that breakfast at a hotel is worth 25 pounds, or 45 Canadian dollars, do you? They obviously think that I can eat 45 dollars worth of food, so perhaps I should give the Brits credit for their extreme optimism. Anyway, after weeks of research and asking around, during which time I found a lot of overpriced hotels, a few reasonably priced rooms accompanied by horrible reviews, and one or two deals that disappeared while I thought about them, everything fell into place last night. It's funny how waiting can bring clarity. The foggy impossibility of the task, given the myriad of locations to research and the limited budget we were working with, vanished as the right choices became clear, like someone was highlighting them. It was all so obvious last...

I was on the subway last week and observed a man in a business suit get on one of the trains, look around briefly at the seats which happened to be all full, and give a disgusted little huff like someone had insulted him. I thought his reaction was astonishingly self-centred, like no one on the train deserved a comfortable place to sit as much as he did. Two days later I found myself on that same metro line, riding down to my French class early one morning. I was tired and not quite awake and just wanted to sit alone and read a book and not be jostled or have to stand pressed against other commuters. I happened to catch the train before it filled up and got a seat at the end of the car, away from the rest of the people; my most favourite seat. I love this seat, my special seat , I thought to myself. And then I realised how silly that sounded. That was not my seat. Hundreds of people sat in that seat every day. I planted my bum on it for 15 minutes that day, but that hardly made it mine...