You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home…. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days. The Brothers Karamazov Here…
Category: Life
About Tomorrow
And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But…
Holds
The steps of a man are established by the LORD, And He delights in his way. When he falls, he will not be hurled headlong, Because the LORD is the One who holds his hand. Psalm 37:23-24 (NASB) I’ve been climbing a lot this week. More, really, in one week at Tauernhof than the rest of the year in…
A Year On the Map
On my living room wall in Kandern, there are three maps. (We have lots of maps, actually. An old map of Germany, a Metro guide to Paris, maps of Europe and the world that we bought at the grocery store a while ago. We live in a house of maps.) These three, however, take center…
The Bells
Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the Future! How it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells, Of the bells, bells, bells,bells, Bells, bells, bells- To the rhyming and the chiming…
Of Books and Places
“So, do you like English?” I know that the question, directed at the future eleventh grader beside me, is a long shot. All questions related to school seem distant and unreal in this first week of summer. Like half a dozen others, we’re working at the new middle school in Sitzenkirch, prepping it for painting tomorrow….
Rooted and Grounded in Love
“… And that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17b-19 Since my own high…
The Explorers
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” I’m not the leader of this expedition. I’m usually a leader these days, whether in the classroom or on the track or, as…
On Spring, Solitude and Serendipity
“Let him who cannot be alone beware of community… Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.”” –Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together It is almost nine and mostly dark by the time we get back down to village. It’s our second night staying in a house on the cliff 450 steps above Vernazza,…
Proximity
“There’s something weird about playing games in the wake of terrible tragedies, but really, games are always played in proximity to tragedy.” John Green Friday morning, while I read about the new adaptation of Jane Eyre, my iPad clinks to life with a pop-up news alert. These are the alerts that usually wake me up in…
The Way Home 