Glasgow Weekend -April 30 - part 2

Continued from Glasgow Weekend - April 30 - part 1

Thank you so so much for joining me in holding Katie and her whole beautiful family in hands of light, and for praying for them in your own way. I hope we can help gently open the way for a miracle of healing for each and all of them. 

I just finished eating a delicious coffee flavored crisp wafer cookie from Slovenia (where Natalie grew up) sent to her as part of a care package of Slovenian treats from her Mum. It tastes so so sweet, and I am glad to be breaking my sugar fast and receiving these gifts of love. 

Natalie grew up on a small village in Slovenia and came to Edinburgh for university. Katie’s grew up in Glasgow, in neighborhoods where the gang culture was very much alive all around her. She was 5 when her Mum went to work in the pub where she still works and where Katie had worked. The owners of the pub were aunt and uncle to her and she came to know all the people who come to the pub as a kind of extended family. Natalie’s mum loves to garden. Natalie shared a video tour of the garden showing all the lovely ripe tomatoes and cucumbers that her mother made for the children. Lots of larger circles of love orbiting around this little home full of love. 

I mentioned that we went to Edinburgh and ate lunch there. Before lunch I took this photo of a footbridge. I really love the variety and forms of bridges as well as the way thru symbolize connecting disparate and even conflicting places and people and truths. 

Then we walked to the old town area where the beautiful old buildings are. My favorite photo of the day is looking across the gardens at old town. 

I was moved y how much they both love the beauty of this city and in the midst of their stressful lives the joy they got from sharing this beauty with me. Here are the three of us in front of Edinburgh castle. 

Here’s a picture of me on a hill Natalie and I climbed (while Katie rested in the car) that provided a panoramic view of the city. Natalie had wonderful memories of coming up in her student days to relax and sip wine and watch the purple of the sunset color the sky. 

It was, and is, a wonder to me that in the midst of pain these young women can find a way to focus on beauty and love. This seems to me to be the great beauty of human beings and our best hope. 

Here’s a view from the other side of the same hill with an architecturally interesting building that coils up and reaches up. Someone nicknamed it “the poo building” and inevitably the name stuck but I rather like the poo building though I think I liked it more because of the fun of its irreverent nickname. 

I also want to show you the castle from the road. I love the way it seems to grow out of the rock cliff beneath it. 

And Natalie really wanted me to take a photo of the bagpiper and when I didn’t she took one for me - so I include it as a tribute to Natalie’s love for Edinburgh and Scotland. 

We can’t leave Edinburgh without showing you the cafe where the Harry Potter books were written. Natalie says there is a cemetery behind it where —-  used to wander and where she found the names for her characters. 

Thank you so much for your continuing prayers and holding Katie and the whole family in hands of light - and for coming along to tour Edinburgh with us. 

In part 3 we will visit Katie’s mother’s pub and then Glasgow University (which I quite fell in love with. Indeed I have decided I will go there when I’m ready to pursue my next degree.) Actually I fell in love with the pub too. 

To be continued in

Glasgow Weekend - April 39 - part 3