I'm back. On 23 June, I noted that I had some other projects and obligations to attend to for several weeks ahead.Chief among these was responding to an invitation to attend the anniversary celebration of an historic church in Edinburgh. Steve and I spent the last week of June in Edinburgh, enjoying the wonderful Scottish hospitality of the church that had invited me to attend its anniversary celebration.
After that, we flew to Germany, where we visited some of Steve's cousins near Karlsruhe for a week that also included a trip to the Black Forest for Steve to pursue some family-history research near Freiburg. We then drove north to spend some days near Hanover, where Steve did yet more genealogical digging in the Catholic diocesan archives at Vechta.
We ended our time in Germany with a visit to a wonderful friend in Braunschweig, with whom we never fail to have fascinating ongoing conversations about religion and politics. We have learned much from this friend about the experience of many Germans during the Nazi period. She was a little girl during the war, and her father was a judge who ran afoul of the Nazi regime and lost his job. The family spent part of the war years hiding out at a structure in the woods, since our friend's father's life was in danger when he was perceived as critical of the Nazis.
We're now back home and trying to recover from jet lag, and I will begin posting as usual on the blog. I hope that these weeks during which we've been on a pilgrimage within our ordinary pilgrimage have been good weeks for readers of Bilgrimage. I'm glad to be back and to resume the conversation.
