German Lessons

“Tock, Tock!  Willst du mit mir tanzen?” I’m sitting on the floor of the Bistro at Tauernhof, watching five-year-olds ask each other to dance.  This “dancing” actually means a challenge to a hopping-on-one-foot duel.  One boy asks another, they hop for a while, but the challenger cannot overcome the reigning champion.  He continues around the…

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On Community

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;and that you,…

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Stretching

“OK, so you’re ready, right?”  I crane my head around to hear my belayer’s voice from where she stands a few feet away. “Yep.  You’re good to go!” she replies cheerfully, tugging on the rope that connects us. I’m used to North American climbing terms.  Used to calling On belay? and Belay ON obsessively until…

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Yours Also Is the Night

Yours is the day, Yours also is the night. Psalm 74:16 The day has already been long.  This morning, we walked up the 2000 meter mountain just behind our school, stopping only for a swim on the 30°+ C day before ascending to “the next summit.”  It was a narrow strip of grass underneath a…

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Austria and Analogies

Question: “Is there an analogy for that?” Answer: YES. (Always.) Greetings from Schladming! I’m writing from a picnic table outside of Tauernhof Bible School, in a valley among the Austrian Alps.  Though this is a ski town, I know it better at times like these.  Schladming in summer is sweetly dusty hayfields, cheery international greetings…

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TeachBeyond Orientation: Quantitative and Qualitative

Quantitative Date: 2010/6/24 Local Time, 24-Hour Style: 18:57 Celsius Temperature: 27° New Missions Staff to Orient: 39 Continents Where We’ll Be Working: Three (Asia, Africa and Europe) Denominational Backgrounds: Many God to Serve: One Qualitative Greetings from Minnesota!  I’m writing from my second (and last) night of TeachBeyond New Staff Orientation, which I’ve “stopped by”…

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Daydreaming

Bike route from my new town, Wollbach, to BFA We’ve become so used to looking down at the earth from above.  At the spiny knuckles of mountains or shrew blue oceans, we look from plane windows at places we’ll never land.  The view from European flights is patchy, agricultural collages far more intricate than those…

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Bright Things (Come to Confusion)

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream; Brief as the lightning in the collied night… And ere a man hath power to say ‘Behold!’ The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (I, i) I am ending the Ingraham ninth grade year with…

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Leaving Home, Taking Home

For me, the lesson of young adulthood has been how to appreciate the beauty of investing in the community around me. Not used to long-term residence or relationships, I’ve been learning to trust God in the indefinite termlessness of young adulthood. What does it mean, I used to ask, to stay somewhere and to love it?

My Teachers

On a warm May Saturday evening, we sit down around the table in my parents’ dining room.  Five couples, the parents of my friends and peers, they form a small group at Bethany Community Church.  On Saturday night, they welcomed me as a guest speaker, giving me the floor for a few minutes to share…

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