We’re flying 36,000 ft above above the Great Lakes, winging our way toward home after four and a half months of travel and adventure.  Kai’s reading Percy Jackson on his Nook, Naomi and Chris are reading on the other Nook — a Patricia Polacco book on Lincoln.  We’ve all been in good moods today anticipating this journey home and the joy of sleeping in our own beds tonight. 

We made a final trip into Concord this morning where we met our dear friend Julie Ells, with whom we had explored the Mayflower and Plimoth Plantation way back in March, and with a little time on our hands before lunch, we walked to the North Bridge once more.  All was in full flower there, a marked contrast to the snow and ice that had greeted us the first week in March; a fitting ending, as people and places that marked our sabbatical beginnings come full circle once more,

Some circles come to completion with this flight home tonight, but many others will remain open for months or years to come.  The sights, sounds, and tastes of foreign lands; the kinship we experienced with communities of faith we met along the way; the new friends that are part of our circle now; the grand sweep of artistic, religious, literary and other cultural expressions that touched us through the course of our travels; what we’ve learned about our own capacities and the life of faith to which God is calling us–all of this will continue to journey with us going forward.  How all this will weave its way in and out of our lives as individuals and a family remains to be seen; but I am hopeful.