selfish sadness

Jonah told me about John Stott's retirement from public speaking over the weekend, but he's also just had a very disappointing email from the folks who are hosting his last speaking engagement.

They think he's going to be speaking on a Tuesday evening, which means there's virtually no way I can attend.

The last scheduled sermon he was to preach earlier this year at All Souls was cancelled due to illness, so I'm more thankful than I can express with words for the one and only time I got to hear him preach.

After a well-delivered and beautiful sermon, I managed to get a picture with him, but failed to keep my peepers open for the point-and-shoot.



The vanity in me hates this photo, but the Jesus in me loves the fact that my soul was so close to his for even a brief moment.

an orchestra of coconuts

Monday was St. George's Day.

To celebrate, the cast of Spamalot gathered a crowd in Trafalgar Square to set the Guinness World Record for the largest coconut orchestra.

These guys were pretty organized. Check out the plan for the evening here.

They managed to set the record with over 5,000 people gathering together to bang two halves of a coconut together to the tune of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life".

The bbc was kind enough to snap some photos for me, since I couldn't make it out for the festivities.

It would have been fun to watch (read: quote) The Holy Grail along with 5,000 of my closest friends in London, but I don't really like to stand during films.

feels like spring

My sweet Jonah and I went for a picnic Saturday. The weather is finally beautiful again in England, and as we explored the depths of Wimbledon Common, we happened upon this hidden pond.

I like to call it the "secret pond", but apparently other people knew it was there, or there were a decent number of folks who were just as lucky as we were in their exploration of the area.



It was great fun watching these dogs tag-team paddle this log back to shore, and made me wish I had a pooch of my very own.



From our picnic spot, we noticed the turtles that were hiding in the water earlier had finally come out to play, so we went and had a little chat with one of them.



On closer inspection, it appears that they were looking after a bunch of frog babies.



When we finally managed to tear ourselves away from the pond, we headed off in another direction down this little path...



...and we actually managed to find our way back to civilization without any trouble. Sadly we never saw any Wombles, but there's always next time.

happy birthday mom!

I'm sure it's by sheer coincidence that my mom was born on the same day that Dr. Albert Hofmann discovered the psychedelic effects of LSD.

Equally interesting is that Momma K shares her birthday with one of the Wright brothers. You'd think somebody could get a free flight out of that little tidbit somehow.

Happy Birthday Mom!