Johanna and me where wondering which of the two islands in the Indian Ocean, Lamu or Zanzibar we should visit for a vacation and decided on the one i have not been to…

we are on our way there in a couple weeks but I found some nice words about the place in an American newspaper:

Why islands, when there’s a continent to look at? Because my time is limited, and islands are like short stories: compact, quickly taken in, but, if they’re good, complete in themselves. And each of these places — Lamu, part of Kenya, Zanzibar, off Tanzania — is very, very good, my son tells me. Each contains a living, vibrant Swahili city with its own character, a city that has existed in something like its present form for centuries. Both have survived and absorbed layer upon layer of conquest and culture — African, Indian, Asian, Arab (primarily Omani), Portuguese and British — and this range and mix of ethnicities and histories are visible in their people, and palpable, too, in a kind of unsurprised curiosity and ease they seem to have with whatever comes along. Lamu was at the peak of its civilization from the 17th to the 19th century, Zanzibar slightly later, and both faded in wealth and power as the slave trade died. They are especially worth seeing now, Ben says, because they are fragile, their very physical being as well as their way of life threatened by age and growth and the pressures of increasing tourism.

In our chatty world, in which the word has lost its power to communicate, silence helps us to keep our mind and heart anchored in the future world and allows us to speak from there a creative and recreative word to the present world.

- Henri J.M. Nouwen
from The Way of the Heart

We fear so deeply what we think other people see in us, so we talk in order to straighten out their understanding. … One of the fruits of silence is the freedom to let our justification rest entirely with God.
- Richard Foster
from Celebration of Discipline

Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

- Mark 10:28-31