the-lundgaards.com

… and the reservations are made for a little celebration this evening. For today I turn fifty.

Neal Aage Lundgaard Jr
Kris Aage Lundgaard
Nicholas Aage Lundgaard
Henrik Aage Lundgaard

Paula cut an album when she was a little girl in the fourth grade or so. When you listen, her voice is the younger one. Which Road Leads to Heaven?

Can you believe such as cute young girl as this has been married thirty years?

Now that we’re grown-up, I’ll take this opportunity to print a racy poem, borrowed from Robert Herrick – and without his permission I’ll change a single word in it to make it perfect:

Whenas in silks my Paula goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
O how that glittering taketh me!

Today I very uncharacteristically took Paula to Bratislava for a bluegrass festival in the square outside the US embassy. We rode the train, just the two of us. We did it on impulse. Very romantic. Our first date since January. (Maybe that isn’t so romantic….)

Anyway, it was a gorgeous day, about 74 degrees F and sunny. Most of the bands sang in English, and even tried to imitate a Southern drawl. They did pretty well, but a few vowels and some strange locutions gave away their Central European heritage. But it was great fun.

Paula saw an opening on a bench in the shade next to two young women, so she took it. I went and joined them. They did not appear to be Slovak – in fact one of them was dressed in a type of Muslim garb, including a scarf. Paula started a conversation with them in her broken Slovak, and it turned out their Slovak was as bad as ours. They said they were from Turecko (Turkey), and asked where we were from. When we said “USA,” they got very excited and asked, “Can we speak in ENGLISH?!?!?”

It turns out they are exchange students at a university in Bratislava, and we were the first native-English speakers they had spoken to. One invited us to her flat for Turkish food. We sadly had to decline, but we exchanged contact information and will try to get together with her someday soon. She was delightful. In the picture below, she is wearing the scarf:

One other interesting thing: we walked along the square and found another interested listener sticking his head out the window. I guess he liked the music:

The Little Prince dies.

As his certain death approaches, he accepts it and even seeks it, as if he goes to a better place. The narrator, on the other hand, is frightened and desperate, unwilling to let go, unwilling to “bear the thought of never hearing that laugh again.” At one point he holds the weakened Little Prince in his arms, and it seems to him like the Little Prince is “dropping into an abyss,” and he can do “nothing to hold him back.”

There is the absolute futility in the face of death, and the terror at the approaching emptiness of the one left behind. But the Little Prince is confident and reassuring, because he knows that this is not the end. He tells the narrator that when he sees the Little Prince’s body, it will appear to be dead, but that is a lie. He is simply moving on to a place that is too far away, and his body is “too heavy” for the journey. It will be like an “abandoned shell. There’s nothing sad about an abandoned shell.”

I’ve never held a dying friend, but I can imagine, even with my own confidence in the resurrection, how impotent I would feel. And perhaps someday someone will hold me in their arms when I’m passing. I hope then that I have a confidence in Jesus that can give the one I leave behind reassurance and hope.

By now the narrator seems to have caught up with the Little Prince, and in the scene at the well their discussion reveals that they both share the fox’s understanding of what is essential. The narrator has learned to “see with his heart,” and he is no longer as concerned about fixing his airplane as he is about this friend.

Although the narrator is happy, savoring these moments with the Little Prince, he is confused because he also feels sad and he doesn’t know why. He is only beginning to comprehend that the Little Prince is leaving him. Deep inside he must know, though he is not even conscious of it, that he will never see his friend again. And he closes the chapter with a telling reflection:

You risk tears if you let yourself be tamed.

(more…)

The Little Prince meets a salesclerk who offers him a pill that quenches his thirst. All he has to do is swallow one a week and he will never have to drink. The point? “Experts have calculated that you can save fifty-three minutes a week.”

The Little Prince says to himself,  “If I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked … I’d walk very slowly toward a water fountain…” (more…)

I think this is the longest chapter of the book, and I think it is my favorite. There are many, many gems to reflect on, and I will only glance at a few. I hope you will spend more time with this chapter yourself – or perhaps it would be better for you to discuss it with a friend….

The Little Prince meets the fox, who will teach him the most important lessons of his life. The first lesson is about the process of taming. (more…)

The Little Prince climbs a high peak from which he hopes to be able to “get a view of the whole planet and all the people on it… But he saw nothing but rocky peaks as sharp as needles.” He is clearly on a quest for friendship, but he is disappointed yet again. He cries out from the peak, but is only answered by an echo which mocks him. (more…)