A few more random thoughts swirling around after a fitful night’s sleep:

The English get technology in a way we do not. Perhaps it is how they apply it.

– A washer dryer in one unit the size of a small filing cabinet.
– Every outlet has a switch on it.tics
– Motion sensors to turn lights off when no one is in the room.
-Sheet/blanket combination that is easily laundered, easily made up in the morning and does not tangle you up like a spider web while you wrestle sleep in a strange bed.
-Hand held card reader that let’s you add gratuity to your restaurant bill electronically.
– A two speed toilet. Yes . . . Its got an overdrive for those times you need extra power. Brilliant. Enough said.
-The Brits love their “mow-biles” as much as Americans, if not more. But they TALK on them.
– A transom window operated by electric motor via a wall switch.
– Electric delivery trucks.

The English design sensibility is cool too. They make plastic seem hip. Simplicity, clean lines, no fear of color or form. I’m not enough of a designer to describe it better, but a good enough design consumer to know it’s well done.

Things close down on Sundays and after 11:00 at night. Very civilized.

As I waited at the counter of the corner coffee shop this morning, a buisness man struck up a polite conversation.

When I told him we had arrived in London just a few days ago, he made a face and said, “Auff! London ‘as no soul anymo. You’ll like it ‘ere in the Nowth betta.” (imagine Ringo Starr saying this sentence and you’ll get the sound of it.)

I nodded and simply said that I had noticed it too.

Liverpool has much more of a discernible spirit. It’s weary, but unapologetic. Without question a working city. Dirtier by London standards, clean by American. Friendly, but not tourist-friendly. It has not been packaged (yet).

If I were dating Liverpool, she would have come to the door hopping up and down trying to get a shoe on, hair half done, late from work but smiling and welcoming me in for a drink before we left. London would have been dressed to the nines, answered the door fully put together, lovely no doubt, but would have come straight out, closing the door behind her, purse in hand, pretty, polite smile, ready to go . . . Room temperature.

More about church from Sunday’s experience. The vision of stone upon stone building the church, generation upon generation, tradition upon tradition:

Each successive generation of church builder must simultaneously do three things in order to succeed in our God given mission:

1) Build upon what came before us by matching the bottom of our stone to the  top surface which is presented to us. It is not our job to chip away at what was already laid down, but to seat ourselves to it in such a way as to make an airtight fit. How else will the weight of the building be carried all the way down to the cornerstone?

2) Be willing to endure critisim as we chip away at the TOP of our own stone, correcting the inevitable imperfections contained in all stone, and adjusting the course to the extent it has been missed by those before us. Those below will struggle not to take our adjustments as cruel indictment of their work. It is not (well, it SHOULD not be). We cannot let their fear squelch our efforts toward perfection.

3) Those preparing to set a stone atop ours will cry out in anticipation of the imperfect surface they will be presented with. Let us not judge them too harshly, for we did the same. But instead let our corrections be based on truth and not image keeping. Let us endeavor to pass on to them a little more truth and a little more grace than we received. In doing so, they may learn to do the same, and the day when Heaven comes down to Earth will arrive that much sooner.

If we were to succeed in this , over time one could stand back to see a beautiful tower, unpredictably twisting and turning, each course of stone different than the one before it, yet anchored in place, un-moveable and strong, creating a fortress of truth but possessing a beauty and sense of life beyond compare.

*sigh*

Off to wake up the girls and explore Liverpool today.