This morning I got up at 5:30 to see the sunrise because I heard about an amazing phenomenon that occurs at 5:45. I went down to the beach and sure enough at exactly 5:45 groups of hundreds of birds poured over the sand dunes inches above the beach and towards the water. It appeared as though they were skimming and bouncing off of the water out to the middle of the lake. They seemed to disappear for a while until I looked up into the sky and saw the masses filling the skies above the lake. I’m not sure if they were looking for insects, fish, or a beautiful sunrise, but they all decided to look at the same time.
Living in community is hard. We live with the same group of six people 24 hours a day 7 days a week for 11 months; which is grueling. Mary Beth serves as a counselor for AIM and she came up with this illustration. When we live in community we are able to get to know each other really well and we start to truly see each other. One of the ways we can grow is by allowing the people around us to hold up a mirror so that we can see in ourselves what they are seeing. So, for the past couple of days we have been looking in the mirror to see what we really look like in a group setting. The reflection is not always pretty and it hurts sometimes to look but, it is an amazing way to grow and improve our reflection.
This afternoon we worked off some stress by participating in a sandcastle building contest. My team won with an artistic rendition of Peru. We formed the borders of Peru and added the details of the Andes Mountains, Lake Titicaca, and put special touches on Machu Picchu. I loved every minute we played in the sand and had fun working with my team.
