I’m back in the USA after nearly two weeks in Europe. I have so many extraordinary memories, but the ones that fill my eyes with tears are the many, many, many acts of kindness that surrounded me and my 85-years-lived traveling friend.

Our mobility is less agile, and I am particularly aware of the courtesy that was generously offered us in Sweden and Germany.

We had five days in Berlin, two of which were filled from morning to night with the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup. We watched women representing sixteen countries compete with joy and enthusiasm. Conversations across countries filled our time during and between games.

Saturday was our only completely free day, and we made a plan to mainly ride the tram to a couple or more sites recalling the Berlin Wall.

The first stop was for coffee and rolls at a German bakery. I’d carefully navigated tram numbers and stops for our day. We boarded the M10 tram which was less than a block’s walk from our hotel. Before I could sit down, the tram very suddenly began to move, and I catapulted to the ground. It was very dramatic.

Almost immediately a woman from Italy leapt down beside me to check on me and then ran to get the tram driver.

I had hit my head pretty hard (hard enough to shatter my iPhone screen), and I’m pretty sure I was concussed. After checking that I knew my name and where I was and offering to call an ambulance (no way—it was my only day to see the Berlin Wall and there was no time to be sitting in an ER), after my dizziness and nausea began to pass, another woman offered me a sip of water from her flask.

I gingerly got up, and Fausta, the passenger from Italy, insisted on sitting with us for the tram ride and then walking us to the coffee shop. Turns out, she was on her way to that day’s ball game!

Selfies taken, hugs and tears, and plans to meet at the next day’s game between USA and Italy, we went to our bakery destination.

There we received more kindness. I was given a black glove filled with ice and wrapped in napkins for my head, and we sat at a table for a couple of hours while I recovered. I also must add I had the best cinnamon roll I’ve ever eaten when the nausea subsided.

The next day, we returned to the bakery for more coffee and rolls, and the staff personnel recognized us and asked how I was doing. Such kindness!

In the spirit of the way that St. John ends his Gospel, there are many, many more acts of kindness I experienced than I am able to write about in this blog. These few acts I’ve told about, however, were not unique. Time and again, people went beyond what is expected to make life more gentle and open-heated.

In another blog, I plan to write about worshiping at the church Lensand, Sweden a little over a week ago. This past Sunday, I was regretting that I hadn’t been able to figure out how we could stop to join others for worship on Sunday in Berlin.

However, as I was writing this blog, I realized that I had had worship in the most holy of sense in the graciousness of strangers. Those acts were in fact the hands of Christ as I was offered cups of cold water from people who did not speak my language or share my nationality but communicated in the universal language of acts that I experienced as a holy communion.

I hasten to add, on Sunday, our new friend Fausta searched us out and found me and my traveling friend in the Berlin Arena.

It was Church indeed.

Over fifty years or so ago I discovered the art of Carl Larsson. His paintings of his family in their daily life from their home in Sundborn, Sweden, enchanted me. I hung prints of favorite paintings framed in blue, bought a piece of furniture I called my “Carl Larsson table,” and had a pair of red clogs from the Swedish shop in the Rice Village.

I’d always wanted to visit the house and gardens that I’d loved from his paintings, but never expected that I would.

Until I imagined what outrageous thing I’d love to do to celebrate my 75th birthday.

So here I am. In Sweden. And I still can’t believe I’m really here.

I’ve called this, however, the Karin Larsson tour because it turns out that the beauty I had admired was actually the work of Karin, Carl’s wife. Yes, Carl did the canvas, but Karin created the home with beautiful textiles, furniture she designed and built, the colorful gardens, and, of course, their children who were at the center of the paintings.

My dearest traveling friend and I first spent two nights in Stockholm which included nearly a day long visit to Artipelag, a museum nestled in green space in the Stockholm archipelago.

Carefully designed beauty everywhere. Even the bathrooms.

We spent a whole day driving the three hour journey from Stockholm to Lake Siljan. We are slow travelers because we keep taking pauses for surprises along the way.

This included an art walk in Örebro

and what the guides say is the best ice cream in Sweden.

We arrived at our hotel where I had booked the Carl Larsson suite in time for a glorious sunset.

Such beauty and I hadn’t even reached the destination of my pilgrimage.

My dearest friend Ginny turned 85 in July, or as she likes to call it, 8.5 decades.

I turn 75 in September, or as I like to call it, 3/4 of a century.

In July, we began the 160 year celebration tour.

Almost a year ago, we began talking about how we’d like to celebrate our milestone birthdays.

For Ginny, it was to go to the Santa Fe Opera. For me, it was to go to Sweden to visit Carl Larsson’s home.

Plans made and edited and changed, it has begun.

At the very end of July we went to Bentonville, Arkansas. It was a bonus celebration at the Momentary at Crystal Bridges to hear Mary Chapin Carpenter and others in concert.

Now we are in Taos, New Mexico, for the Opera part of the tour.

Next week we fly to Sweden and then to Germany. The Berlin trip is a bonus celebration to go to the Women’s FIBA World Cup where we will see 16 of the best women’s basketball teams in the world—with the culminating activity to cheer on Team USA.

Birthday blessings to both of us.

My family, like so many others, has a great history of getting together on the 4th of July. One of my favorite places to gather is on land where our family first settled in Texas in 1851.

My brothers and I are stewards of the remaining acreage. One brother built a solar powered home on one portion, and the other brother lives in the home my parents built nearly 50 years ago.

Having a place to call home is a deep American value. I feel so privileged to have a place to rest my feet where my ancestors have walked and farmed and harvested and shared meals and prayed and laughed and argued and lived and died for nearly 200 years.

My brothers and sister in law are marching in the local (McKinney) parade. I declined to join them, sadly, because of the heat. However, their church, First Methodist McKinney, has a huge welcome ministry each year for the parade with hot dogs and snow cones and an air conditioned prime viewing area, and I’m in my comfy chair waiting for the parade to begin.

As I watch the pre-parade gather of red, white, and blue, and brown and black and pink and tan, mostly hatted, pulling carts with children, and carrying tarps and flags and blankets and water bottles, for me, this is America.

Everyone who is here has come from somewhere else. Whether their people walked across the Bering Land Bridge 15,000 years ago or came across the southern border five years ago, all of us are from away.

Seeing this parade of color and joy is the best reminder of the America I love. Oh. And the hot dogs and snow cones, too.