Use Tables!

(Nederlandse versie)

Sab – bat – i – cal
noun
any extended period of leave from one’s customary work, esp. for rest, to acquire new skills or training, etc.

Just before 9 am on the morning of Sunday July 1st, I’m taking the Thalys train from Amsterdam to Paris. At 14.38, I will take the TGV to Macon, and from there I will take a bus to Taizé (Wikipedia Article). I will stay there for seven weeks. I hope to be back in Amsterdam at 7pm or so on Sunday August 19th, but I’m not completely sure this will happen. I may ask or be asked to stay for a longer or shorter period of time, which may delay or hasten my return.

I will meet up with some good friends of mine, notably a group from my church (site in Dutch), my parents, some Polish friends of mine who I know will be there – but probably also a whole bunch of others who I’ve met there the other times I’ve gone.

Putting the purpose of my “sabbatical” in writing is hard for me, but I suppose it involves learning more about (my) faith, the Bible, life in general. It also (especially, perhaps) means sharing and living with other young people who struggle with the same or similar issues.

On the practical side, there are several consequences. While there is a small internet kiosk on the community grounds, I have no intention whatsoever of using it. I will not check my email for 7 weeks. I’m not taking a mobile phone. If you very, very, very urgently need to contact me, the community has a landline phone which you could call. If you just want to know how I am doing, send me an old-fashioned postcard (there’s an address on that page) and I’ll try to write back.

If you happen to e-mail me during these 7 weeks, and even a month after I come back you haven’t heard back from me, chances are your e-mail ended in GMail’s spam filter – please bug me about it and we’ll see what happened. The same issue applies to comments to this weblog – AKismet is wonderful, but might just hurt your comments.

I hope everyone has a great holiday, and see you all on the other side.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 01:44 and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.