Extremes

This week Ten Thousand Questions (the mysterious interview blog with all questions and no answers) has been asking about Extremes…

1. What's one of the riskiest or most reckless things you have done?
   I honestly can’t say. I never really considered myself the reckless risk-taking type… Of course there have been things I’ve looked back on afterwards and asked myself “what was I thinking”… But on the whole I’m probably more prone to being overcautious than reckless. (Which is not problem-free either!) 
   
2. What is something you do where success is measured by tiny details or depends on very delicate, small movements?
   Just now: playing Words with Friends – especially from the cellphone!
   
3. What was your longest period of time traveling away from home?
   I think that must actually be my one-month stay in England at age 16 going on 17! But then I was staying in one place most of the time… As for holidays of the continuously-on-the-move kind, I don’t think I’ve been on any lasting longer than 3 weeks. And most of those were family holidays back in my teens. Most holiday trips in my grown-up life have been shorter… 1-2 weeks.
   
4. What was the biggest food item that you ever helped cook and/or eat?
   Again, nothing extreme comes to mind. In the past when I was involved in church camps etc, the arrangement was often that we took took turns helping out groupwise in the kitchen … I was always more of a Mary than a Martha in that context though* - the kitchen was never really my domain. (I do cook for myself, and occasionally a friend or two or three – but arranging large dinner parties was never my thing; and I feel lost and mostly in the way in other people’s kitchens.)
   
5. What was the largest event you ever attended, or the biggest crowd that you were a part of?
   I suppose the largest event/crowd I was ever part of must have been when Billy Graham visited Sweden – Stockholm - back in 1978. (35 years ago!) Three friends and I attended one evening in a crowd of (ca) 10,000 people. However, what I actually remember best from the occasion is that we forgot where we had parked the car and had to spend ages looking for it in the huge parking lot afterwards!!!

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. (Wikipedia)

*As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!" "Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:38-42)