We are not permitted to linger, even with what is most intimate. From images that are full, the spirit plunges on to others that suddenly must be filled; there are no lakes till eternity. Here, falling is best. To fall from the mastered emotion into the guessed-at, and onward. Rainer Maria Rilke, from “To Hölderlin” We…
Category: Travel
Open Letter to an Allied Soldier
The following is a letter I wrote on the bus from Normandy to Paris during our recent Junior Class Trip to France. It was a weekend of many adventures–from camping under the stars and then the rain, to an eleven-hour whirlwind tour of Paris–but in light of the trip’s overall purpose, I’ve decided to save…
Reading Every Word
“There is much beauty here, because there is much beauty everywhere…” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet There’s a moment in the first installment of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, when Sam pauses at the edge of a field full of sunflowers, a few steps behind his hobbit companion, Frodo. “If I take…
The Shorthand of Shared History
The sun is setting over the evergreen spiked canyon as we drive west of Leavenworth, Washington in the North Cascade Mountains. We’ve been climbing–my brother, sister, sister’s boyfriend, brother’s friend and I–for most of the afternoon, and now three of us are searching for a place to camp. “Couldn’t we just light it with toilet…
The Love We Share: M-Trip Sunday
We’re on the sixth slideshow when my roommate, Emily, leads her team to the front of the auditorium. The mostly-female team are all wearing the shapeless, colorful dresses that they wore for their week in a Central Asian village. This, along with covering their hair and serving the three men who accompanied them, was their…
Romania: Raising Walls, Raising Children
For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot says, “Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. And if the ear says, “Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this…
Now I Know in Part
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.” I Corinthians 13:12 From the back of the gym, I look over a sea of heads to the stage, where our speaker for…
At the Ghost Fair: Wealth and Education
Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having…
There And Back Again
Nobody tells you when you get born here How much you’ll come to love it, And how you’ll never belong here. So I call you my country, And I’ll be lonely for my home And I wish that I could take you there with me. “Land of My Sojourn,” Rich Mullins It’s still dark at…
God of All Seasons
Do not let kindness and truth leave you; Bind them around your neck, Write them on the tablet of your heart. Proverbs 3:3 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate…
The Way Home 