Dreaming in Provence

DREAMING IN PROVENCE
The dream of buying a farmhouse in northern Provence takes us on a light-hearted rollercoaster of neighbor conflict, dentist visits, deportation by border police, wine harvests, tennis exploits, a Renoir-style wedding, colliding particles, and Kafka-esque visa controls.

Only glimpsed at the time, it was like my collisions with a unfamiliar culture were gently tutoring me on a different kind of foreign land, that described by Jesus as ’kingdom’. Slowly, I found myself dreaming about heaven on earth:

• talking less, listening, and loitering more
• appreciating ’different’ etiquette
• rolling with the rhythms of rural life
• dealing with ’false friends’ and enjoying new ones
• seeing the virtue of not always winning
• discovering what really matters, and what really doesn’t...

.... I might have learned these lessons anywhere. It could have been in Finchley or Philadelphia, but it turned out to be among the lavender fields of France.