Tuesday at L'abri

I long to share our life at L'Abri with you, my family and friends (in person and blog friends!)  It is a hard place to describe, so much of it is based on relationship and community, which you can not understand without experiencing it.  But, sharing our weekly rhythm here seems like a way to let you catch a glimpse of life at L'Abri.


And so, with that in mind, I give you Tuesday...

Our day begins Tuesday much as Monday did.  I'm determined to spend the morning in the garden, so I serve homemade granola for breakfast, it is so much easier to clean up than something cooked.  The little Mr.s are dressed and baby is put down for a nap.  Jim is going to spend the morning studying and working on lectures, so he listens for the baby while I go outside to try to reclaim my garden from the nasty prickly weeds that are determined to take over.  I really love weeding once I am at it.  By this point in the summer I know the different weeds and how to hold each kind to have the best chance of pulling the roots out.  I notice bugs and things about the soil that I would never see if I wasn't bent over, pulling the prickles from my hopeful garden rows.

While I weed, Jonah is wrapped in a blanket reading the Hobbit and Rowan is digging (again - he spends hours every day at his 'construction sight', which is a corner of my garden.)  A student work crew shows up to mow and clear the bank behind the house.  Each day, L'abri students spend half the day on a work crew (cooking, cleaning, yard work or laundry) and the other half the day studying.  I love the wholistic approach this creates and think that it plays such an important roll in the formation that goes on in this place.  One of the men working finds a worm for Rowan and Jonah moves inside to escape the noise of the weed wacker.  As I pull my weeds I'm learning about life in Macedonia and Kazakstan from a student.  

I go inside when the baby wakes up, but I leave the kitchen door open so the work crew can get water - it is a really warm day!  I make a grain salad and feed the boys before baby and I head to Bellevue for an informal lunch with half the students (the other half are at a formal meal).  We chat through the lunch and everyone enjoys watching Isaac gnaw at a cucumber slice.  The conversation moves from thinking about meaningful work and sarcasm to babies.  Lunch ends with a handful of 20 something men asking me about what birth feels like.  It ends up being a really good conversation about natural birth and parenting.  When I get home and tell Jim we joke that 'no question is out of bounds at L'abri.'  

Jim reads me his lecture on the work of Andy Goldsworthy and the doctrine of creation for tomorrow over our afternoon coffee.  We discuss it  and he goes back to work for a bit.  

Tuesday Night we eat at our home as a family. There seems to be a delicate balance to achieve between hospitality to others (which requires lots of flexibility) and keeping a rhythm for our little men.   Yes indeed, and I do believe we'll be continually working on finding this balance in the months and years to come!