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…

Read More

Marker to Marker

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…

Read More

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…

Read More

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…

Read More

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…

Read More

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…

Read More

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….

Read More

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…

Read More

To My Students

Today was our last day of classes at Black Forest Academy.  Though finals are still ahead and plenty of events loom in the schedule next week, I thought I’d acknowledge this momentous day by posting the letters I read to my classes today.  Thanking God, tonight, for the grace and prayers that have made this…

Read More

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…

Read More