Whatever you're facing...
Heaven Can Begin Now

Thou has made us for thyself, 0 Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in thee. Augustine of Hippo

I stood at the railing of the boat deck, staring through the drizzle as the coast of England drew near. It was 1947. I was nineteen, a college junior headed for the University of Geneva in Switzerland, recently reopened to foreign students after the war. The Queen Elizabeth would dock at Southampton before crossing to France.

All along the railing homecoming passengers were pointing out landmarks through the mist. I took off my glasses and rubbed them again with a rain-soaked handkerchief. Land was on both sides of us now as we glided up the Narrows, the Elizabeth's deep-throated horn blasting a continual warning to other ships. From fishing boats and cargo ships came answering toots and whistles as the world's largest ship steamed into homeport. The man next to me at the railing, a morose-looking Englishman with the limp right sleeve of his raincoat tucked into his pocket, broke out with the first words he'd uttered: "Couldn't raise this hullabaloo during the war. She had to creep in after dark. No lights. No horn."

At Southampton the dock swarmed with stevedores and blackhelmeted bobbies. As tugs eased the great ship into her berth, I gazed past the waterfront at the clustered rooftops of the town, war damage still evident in rubble-strewn lots.

And suddenly; unaccountably; I burst into tears.

The one-armed war veteran, as I took him to be, turned a startled face to me. "It's all right, Miss. Civilians were moved inland." And then, as I continued to sob: "Why; this is nothing, Miss! Wait till you see some of the spots Jerry really got to. Wait till you see London."

But it wasn't the bombed-out blocks. For years I'd seen newsreels of