-Feb 17-18^th. Intermittent rain with moderate wind last night though mild. At noon I`m off to þorlakshafn to take the ferry to Westmann Island, a 3 ½ hr ride, my third trip by boat, once having flown. This time I will drive to þorlakshafn and leave the car, not taking the bus. Since I`m about 10 minutes closer from the bus station, this trip should take about 40 minutes. The only problem is that the road goes over a mountain pass…nothing much but sufficiently high to cause problems if the weather is foul. I`ll stay overnight with a good friend and his family to discuss future projects, etc. The novelty of taking the boat has worn off, so this time I bring my laptop to work onboard. It might be a bit on the rough side, but we`ll see.

-Actually things are going well…writing this on Herjolfur (name of the first inhabitant of Westmann), the ferry, which can carry several dozen of cars and trucks along with 400 passengers. However, not many on this trip which departed on schedule at noon. Got the normal ocean swells, nothing more. Quite a lot of fishing boats doing their thing…not small ones but rather big trawlers. Exceptionally fine weather as we cruise along the coast with snow-capped mountains and volcanoes to our left. On one trip I read but felt minor sea-sickness coming on which, I found out later, can result by reason of your eyes trying to focus on the text. Will see if the same applies to a computer. What always strikes me about the Icelandic landscape is how it stretches or sweeps along gradually seeming to touch the heavens. I think the low-lying clouds have something to do with this, always created a transcendent effect.
-Today is the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, the last `ordinary` Sunday in quite a while because Ash Wednesday is the 21st. In today`s Gospel (Lk 6.27-38) Jesus gives a list of difficult tasks, actually impossible by human standards. Often we have some success in carrying out one but are stuck with regret for not having done it well, let alone the other injunctions. This remorse sets the stage for what can be a vicious circle of failure and guilt. The clincher is vs. 38, `For the measure you give will be the measure you get back.` However, there is a way out of that vicious circle (vs. 35): `for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish,` two classes with which most of us can identify. As in many instances, the Gospel is rather vague as how to do these impossible things; we`re left to figure them out for ourselves which, in a sense, is a defect. By that I mean the door lies open for some to take the high moral ground and dictate to us, even with good intentions. One can easily see how gnosticism got off the ground almost before the evangelists` ink had dried, for it gave methods and theories as how to interpret a lot of Gospel injunctions which are presented in a straight-forward manner. Maybe that`s where lectio divina comes in, a practice which I`m quite gnostics shunned. The reason for this lies in the fact that lectio takes us right to the core of Jesus` teaching and softens the edges of difficult injunctions while at the same time revealing deeper meanings difficult to transmit verbally. Take, for example, vs. 35 just quoted where God is `kind to the ungrateful and the selfish.` The Greek preposition epi (on, upon) is used which intimates a certain detachment from those who cause us grief. The invitation here is to `be epi` or `be upon` difficult people and circumstances while being in their midst. To do this is more in tune with the text and allows us to better incorporate Jesus` injunctions. The difficulty is disposing ourselves for it, an ascetical discipline, but different from the ones we`ve grown accustomed to think of. Reason is that no `denial` nor `mortification` is involved but an inner gesture which is more appealing which others can quickly dismiss as not genuine enough. For that point of view, it seems the harder the better.

-Today, Sunday, Kari and I walked a little over a kilometer from his house to the harbor to catch the 8am ferry. Soaking rain…so much that I boarded Herjolfur I was thoroughly soaked. Should arrive at þorlakshafn around noon. The usual Grafavogurkirkja prayer meeting at 8 this evening.