So today we went to Tabor home. It's a nursing home, and we went there for our work duties. We introduced our teams and sang 3 hymns. We were really feeding off the energy of the crowd, it was a great audience, and we only came to know this more as we engaged with our fan club later on. After putting Blue in the back, I moved towards a group of ladies as the staff handed out some sort of juice beverage. "Does this have beer??" asked one of the decrepid, elderly women. "No? Then I don't want it." Later she drank two glasses and when an attendant asked if she would like more she replied "NO I DON'T WANT ANY."
Later I met a cute little old lady with pink lipstick, pink nail polish and pink blush, and slightly unevenly drawn eyebrows. Her name is Emily and she almost made me cry from laughing. I don't really remember what we were talking about before Breanne came to join me and really get the conversation going, it was the best social experience I've had in Canada so far. Breanne kept asking about the cat fights and wrestling matches that probably happen at the nursing home, and about what another lady, named Mary, told her earlier. Emily put up her fluffy, sparse eyebrows and rolled her eyes, implying that Mary doesn't always tell the truth. Mary told Breanne (who is my favourite) that she was a famous tap dancer/actress and traveled Europe, and when asked how old she is she wasn't entirely sure, but suspected she was in her late 20s by now. Mary once told Emily as they sat by the window that she saw her sister coming to get her, but Emily said no body was there, and that made Mary angry. When telling this story for the third time, Emily laughed to herself and closed her eyes, saying she should've said there was only a bulldog outside.
When we finally left the home, we all laughed heartily in the afternoon sunshine about the senile (and sometimes creepy) old people we met.
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of the kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinners--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat, the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.
-CS LEWIS (The Weight of Glory)
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