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On Sunday Paula and I played the role of groupies to a musical ensemble called Missio. Their soloist is our friend from Strecno, and she invited us to stay with her family for the weekend. We travelled with the group to Dolny Kubin on Sunday, where they performed in a church that afternoon. Their music is rich, spiritual, haunting – and gorgeous. And I wish I could get it on iTunes.

When I go to a concert of any kind, I watch the musicians closely to see whether they look like they are having fun. Of course, you can’t always tell just from looking; but for some reason I enjoy the music more when the performers are themselves delighting in their own creativity and beauty. I mean by this the delight of humility and simplicity, if that makes sense. And I can tell you that the members of Missio simply enjoyed themselves. (more…)

Because of my interest in the Hungarian chemist-economist-philosopher Michael Polanyi, which I picked up through my reading in Leslie Newbigin, I bought myself Polanyi’s heady little book called Meaning. While struggling through the first few chapters I came across this little paragraph, which set my brain juices to bubbling:

… we cannot learn to keep our balance on a bicycle by trying to follow the explicit rule that, to compensate for an imbalance, we must force our bicycle into a curve – away from the direction of the imbalance – whose radius is proportional to the square of the bicycle’s velocity over the angle of the imblance. Such knowledge is totally ineffectual unless it is known tacitly, that is, unless it is known subsidiarily – unless it is simply dwelt in. (more…)

… of counselling. (My tongue is in my cheek.)

Last year Tabletalk magazine asked me to write a little something on the ninth-century missionaries to the Slavs, Cyril and Methodius. That essay was published this month, and if you are curious you can read it online here. You can read it even if you aren’t curious.

You should note that it may appear that I am posing as a pastor, since they published the essay in their monthly column called the “Pastor’s Perspective,” which they describe thus: “Pastor’s Perspective is an opportunity each month for a different seasoned pastor to apply the themes discussed in Tabletalk more directly to the life of the layperson and equip the saints for service in the local congregation.” I’m no pastor, but I am different and even seasoned (after a fashion), and I didn’t know my words would be applied to this column till after it was published.

Despair, Inc., creates wonderful goodies that parody motivational merchandise. You should at least stroll through their poster gallery.

I’d be interested to know what you think of this article (or the book, if you have read it).

Last week when we were in Krakow we had a clear, windy, and downright frigid day of walking around town. The boys and Paula didn’t have good insulated footwear, so they went back to the room, while Petra and I finished our exploration of the Jewish Quarter. When we returned to our flat, I confess that it warmed my heart to find Kristian in bed reading Pride and Prejudice, and Ethan in his bed across the room reading a story of Jeeves and Wooster. And there was a television in the apartment.

No, we didn’t take our computers on vacation with us….

Pleasures here in this world are so short-lived. Each victory brings its thrill, each feast its mouth-watering pleasure, each kiss its delight – yet each, before the morning comes, has moved on. We reach for it, but it is not there. We moan for something permanent, some staying joy. Yet here, now, it is unattainable.

A. E. Housman said it well in “To An Athlete Dying Young”:

THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.