.the wild truth {is} reeling but erect.

Jeff Jacoby on Malthusianism in Politics

2008-06-18T07:37:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from Jeff Jacoby's op-ed in today's Boston Globe (the first of two columns on the subject):

[Here's some appalling rhetoric from Johann Hari, this year's Orwell Prize winner for political journalism, advocating a Malthusian approach to politics:] "Is our planet overstuffed with human beings?" asks columnist Johann Hari in The Independent. The "overpopulation lobby," he decides, has a point. "How can you be prepared to cut back on your car emissions and your plane emissions but not on your baby emissions? Can you really celebrate the pitter-patter of tiny carbon-footprints?"
...

Like other prejudices, the belief that more humanity means more misery resists compelling evidence to the contrary. In the past two centuries, the number of people living on earth has nearly septupled, climbing from 980 million to 6.5 billion. And yet human beings today are on the whole healthier, wealthier, longer-lived, better-fed, and better-educated than ever before.

The catastrophes foretold by Malthus and his epigones - some of them in bestsellers like "The Population Bomb," which predicted that "hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now" - have never come to pass. That is because people are not our greatest liability. They are our greatest asset - the wellspring of every quality on which human advancement depends: ambition, intuition, perseverance, ingenuity, imagination, leadership, love.

True, fewer human beings would mean fewer mouths to feed. It would also mean fewer entrepreneurs, fewer pioneers, fewer problem-solvers. Which is why it is not an increase but the coming decrease in human population that should engender foreboding. For as Phillip Longman, a scholar of demographics and economics at the New America Foundation, observes: "Never in history have we had economic prosperity accompanied by depopulation."

__________________________

Depopulation is imminent, however. Catholic public intellectual George Weigel touts this as part of the "Europe problem" in an interview with Lou Dobbs from a couple years back. "Here's the statistic, Lou, that I think brings this home for a lot us in the United States who haven't been paying much attention to this. It's bad enough that Spain will lose approximately 25 percent of its population by 2050; or that Germany, by that time, will lose the equivalent in population of the former East Germany.

"What really brings it home is to think that by 2050, 60 percent of Italians will not know, from personal experience, what a brother, a sister, an aunt, an uncle or a cousin is.

"This kind of de-population, this willful refusal to create the human future, in the most elemental sense of creating the human future, seems to me to suggest a great cultural crisis, indeed, a great spiritual crisis."

The spiritual crisis, Weigel says, is one of spiritual negligence: because Europe is increasingly secular, its ideas about human value, the human mind, natural resources, and the greatest good in society have become increasingly out of line with beneficial--and true--ideas about the human condition and its future. It could be seen as simple logic, really. Why doesn't it "work" for a teenager's health when he or she is promiscuous? Why are there pragmatic consequences--like depopulation--to societal notions about the family? Because, perhaps, there are real human goods and real ways of attaining them.

I propose that Jacoby is right in identifying one of those human goods: the mind. I also propose that he's right in predicting the consequences of neglecting this real good. "No society gains when it loses its most precious resource, and no resource is more valuable than the human mind. The coming demographic winter will chill us all."

Tom Friedman on Iraq

2008-06-18T07:26:00.000-07:00

From Thomas Friedman's op-ed in today's NY Times:

"If McCain is the next commander in chief, the U.S. military will tell him on day one that we can’t stay in Iraq at the present troop levels indefinitely because the cost to our armed forces is becoming unbearable; if it is Obama, the Iraqis will tell him on day one that we can’t leave Iraq precipitously because it will explode.

It would be a huge mistake for McCain to give up his goal of salvaging something in Iraq. But it would also be a big mistake to assume that the public would tolerate another president’s open-ended commitment there. Similarly, it would be a huge mistake for Obama to now give up his commitment to a phased withdrawal. That is very important leverage on the Iraqis. But it would also be a big mistake not to give Iraq a fresh look and ask: can something decent still be salvaged there at an acceptable cost — something that can still serve our interests, do right by Iraqis and maybe put in place the seeds of an open society that will pay long-term benefits?"

Senator Jim Inhofe on the Lieberman-Warner Bill

2008-06-03T19:34:00.000-07:00

From Senator James Inhofe's June 3 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:

Carbon caps will have an especially harmful impact on low-income Americans and those with fixed incomes. A recent CBO report found: "Most of the cost of meeting a cap on CO2 emissions would be borne by consumers, who would face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline. Those price increases would be regressive in that poorer households would bear a larger burden relative to their income than wealthier households."

The poor already face energy costs as a much higher percentage of their income than wealthier Americans. While most Americans spend about 4% of their monthly budget on heating their homes or other energy needs, the poorest fifth of Americans spend 19%. A 2006 survey of Colorado homeless families with children found that high energy bills were cited as one of the two main reasons they became homeless.

...

[W]e are certain the bill will not have a detectable impact on the climate. According to the Environmental Protection Agency's own analysis, by 2050 Lieberman-Warner would only lower global CO2 concentrations by less than 1.4% without additional international action. In fact, this bill, often touted as an "insurance policy" against global warming, is instead all economic pain for no climate gain.

Why are many in Washington proposing a bill that will do so much economic harm? The answer is simple. The American people are being asked to pay significantly more for energy merely so some lawmakers in Washington can say they did something about global warming.

Mark Helprin on Darfur

2008-04-04T08:37:00.000-07:00

From Mark Helprin's op-ed in the NY Times on March 25:

"Violating sovereignty is a matter of immense consequence and gravity. Then again, so is genocide."

"The precise targeting of a substantial portion of [the regime in Sudan's] 1,200 armored vehicles and 1,100 artillery pieces; its telecommunications exchanges and microwave towers; its dozen small naval vessels; its aircraft, runways, munitions, military headquarters, logistical stores, security ministries and presidential residences would be only a few days’ work for long-range bombers dispatched from remote bases, and the planes of two carrier task forces hastened to the Red Sea.

Which would the regime in Sudan prefer? To be annihilated, or to discontinue its campaign of mass murder in Darfur? Given Sudan’s record, very few nations would be willing to come to its aid with other than a pro forma whimper, and given the geography and the air and naval balance, no nation could. Though many a repressive dictatorship would protest, and Sudan’s patron, China, might determine to speed up the formation of the blue-water navy it is already building, little else would change except for the better."

So should we do something?

"The threat itself would likely be enough. If not, then to carry it out in the present circumstances would be honorable, right and overdue. For these are human lives that in Darfur are senselessly extinguished. There is no soul anywhere more valuable than any of theirs, no child more worth saving than any of theirs. We are able to do so, as we can stand our carriers and pilots at the ready. And why would we not? A whole people, no matter how wretched or obscure, must certainly be worth three days of ammunition."

Getting Povery Wrong by Steven Malanga

2008-03-31T08:09:00.000-07:00

I keep reading great articles about political and economic issues, but I never document good points from these articles anywhere.

I just read an article from City Journal by Steven Malanga on poverty in the 2008 Democratic race. Its point: we need straight talk on poverty. Policies are insufficient if they do not address the cultural underpinnings of poverty.

"...the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census remind us that the breakdown of the traditional two-parent, married family is a far greater contributor to poverty in America than many of the supposed shortcomings of our economy. It’s hard to imagine that America will make much more headway on reducing persistent poverty until it halts this long-term trend."

"...the number of children now living in two-parent families has dipped just below the 70 percent mark for the first time since the Census began collecting data on family formation nearly 130 years ago. After peaking in the 1950s—when about 87 percent of all children lived with two parents—the traditional family went through a rapid decline beginning in the 1970s and has continued to shrink over the last three decades, though the rate of decline has slowed somewhat. As part of this sweeping change, the percentage of children living with married parents has fallen more rapidly, down more than two full percentage points, to 66.6 percent of all kids, in the last 10 years alone. Consistent with these decreases has been a sharp rise in the number of children living with single parents and with unmarried parents."

"Only one out of ten American kids living in two-married-parent families is in poverty—and about one-third of these families are recent immigrants whose poverty is temporary. By contrast, 37 percent of children living with single mothers are impoverished."

"Marriage seems to be the defining characteristic of economically successful families."

"Studies that adjust for parents’ educational levels still find that a family headed by two unmarried parents is twice as likely to wind up in poverty as one that married parents head. Something about the marriage certificate—a sense of long-term commitment, family stability, perhaps—makes an economic difference. Research shows that married workers exhibit more job stability and make greater wage gains than cohabiting parents, a sort of “marriage wage premium,” as some economists dub it."

"As the latest Census statistics illustrate, family formation differs widely by race. Nearly nine in ten Asian children, for instance, live with two parents, as do 78 percent of white kids. By contrast, 68 percent of Hispanic children and only 38 percent of black children in America reside in two-parent families. A black child living with a single mother is nearly three times more likely to live in poverty than a black child living with two parents, the Census data show, yet 50 percent more black children are living with single mothers than in two-parent married families."

"Given that a significant body of research now shows that children raised in two-parent, married families do better in school, are less likely to wind up in jail, and are less likely to end up on welfare, the startling racial divide in marriage tells us that a new generation of children, especially blacks, are growing up destined to struggle academically, in the job market, and in forming their own families. And policy prescriptions like a higher minimum wage or tax credits are unlikely to help many of these kids. What they mostly need is another parent—usually a father." [James Q. Wilson has highlighted this in his book The Marriage Problem.]

"...fewer than 20 percent of families in poverty are headed by someone working full time—meaning at least 80 percent of families would derive no significant benefit from the policy. And workers in the remaining 20 percent of impoverished families might be worse off, considering that eight in 10 economists believe that raising the minimum wage increases unemployment among the unskilled."

Bryan's Been Bloggin', Boys (But It's Been Abroad).

2007-08-09T18:57:00.000-07:00

I've been writing on two other blogs. Check 'em out if you can.

The House of Winston Churchill

Kataluma.net

The Grand Tour

2007-03-31T21:04:00.000-07:00

When I went to the Getty Museum over Spring Break, I learned that I should be part of the British upper class that existed between the latter half of the 17th Century and the early part of the 19th Century. Why, you ask? Well, because I went on a good bit of the Grand Tour this summer. I guess I'm part-aristocrat now.

The Grand Tour was a type of rite of passage for well educated Englishmen. It usually started in Dover, England, where the traveler crossed the English Channel into Calais, France. A coach would take the traveler to Paris, and he would spend his time in Paris learning how to dance, speak French, fence, ride, and pour good wine onto his pallet. He'd travel to Geneva, Switzerland, cross the Alps into northern Italy, go to Florence and Pisa to study Renaissance art, then to Bologna and Venice to learn even more about Renaissance visual goodness. He'd then head to Rome to study the ancient ruins, possibly swing by Naples to study music and enjoy the archaeological sites of Pompeii and take a riveting climb up to the top of Mount Vesuvius. If the gentleman was especially rich, he'd travel in a yacht down to Sicily or Greece, but if he was tired of all the adventures, he might head back up toward England, stopping by several German cities and universities like the Universities of Munich and Berlin (to study and develop a larger Weltanshauung), and Holland and Flanders (modern day Netherlands and Belgium) to look at some more gallery art.

Once the trip was complete, the young gentleman would be a bona fide smarty-pants.

The interesting thing I learned at The Getty was that a great deal of the art of landscapes and architecture from that period was made to sell to the travelers who embarked on the Grand Tour.

Like this painting of the Grand Canal in Venice by an eighteen year-old Italian Painter, Bernardo Bellotto:

Or this one of a view (that doesn't actually exist) of the Arch of Constantine and the Colosseum in Rome by Canaletto:

When I saw this view, it looked more like this:

Either way, this is a captivating and empowering place to stand.

So there we have it. I've taken part in an aristocratic tradition called the Grand Tour.

It's too bad I still can't dance...

"Requiem" by Werner Tübke

2007-03-21T01:35:00.000-07:00

I saw a TV show a few years ago that disturbed me. I think it was an episode of Ripley's Believe It or Not, and it was documenting a nutcase painter who would swallow various colors of paint and then vomit onto a canvas.

He was serious, friends and neighbors. And people paid good money for his colorful puke.

But can barf be brilliant? Apparently so. You see, a while back, some people realized that the world came into being kind of like an accidental discharge. Reactions, chemicals, purposelessness, and then us. Somewhere down the line, humans developed and started creating things. Intangibles became tangible as we came up with ideas and expressed them through language. So, then, why can't discharges show up on a canvas and be called beautiful?

Art has always been a language in itself, and it is a language expressing the idea of goodness. Creators are always saying something through their creations, and there is always a need to exalt that creation--to label it as something praiseworthy. We look in Genesis and see God creating and calling His creation "good." God created in order to say something, and what He said--simply by the fact that He carefully laid out the time (heck, He created the time) to create--was something good.

That's why I can never look at a piece of art and simply say, "It is what it is." I have to think about whether or not it is good.

So this past week I went to an art museum in Bel-Air called The Getty Center (the picture above is a panorama of the whole museum), and I found a painting that I think I can call good. It speaks to the injustice of the Holocaust, collectivization, and Soviet labor camps better than any post-WWII painting I've ever seen. May I present to you Werner Tübke's 1965 painting, Requiem:

Almost every piece of art I've seen post-WWII has been a lot like a vomit painting. Colors everywhere, colors in no particular shape or form, or maybe even no colors at all. (I saw a painting in the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid this summer, and it was simply a white canvas with a slice down the middle.) Tübke decidedly painted Requiem with more order, according to pre-1500s Renaissance forms, even getting old school by mixing his own paint using egg tempera. It has form and shape, and Tübke is very intentional about where he puts his images, where the light is coming from, and says something profound and appropriate with the dull gray colors. I couldn't find this painting anywhere online, and it's normally on display in Dresden, Germany, so I thought I'd give it a little bit of a debut.

When we reflect on the evil in men and why we act unjustly, there is a sense in which there is chaos and a lack of order. But the reason why I call this painting good is because it actually acknowledges the opposite. Men are evil, and every evil act we do--every atrocity that sheds blood, robs others of food, and cuts off life--is a proper outworking of our nature. Men did not deal unjustly in those dark periods of our history because of anything arbitrary, so an arbitrary smearing of paint onto a canvas will not do to express the truth about injustice. Men dealt unjustly because men are unjust.

When William Wilberforce was caught up in the discussion in Great Britain about justice--particularly concerning slavery in England--he wrote a book called Practical Christianity in which he tried to set up a true understanding of how Christians should understand and be involved in the world. Though his life was one long cry for justice, his book had to start out with a reflection on human nature and "how we got here." He said:

The bulk of professed Christians are used to speak of man as of a being, who naturally pure, and inclined to all virtue, is sometimes, almost involuntarily, drawn out of the right course, or is overpowered by the violence of temptation. Vice with them is rather an accidental and temporary, than a constitutional and habitual distemper; a noxious plant, which, though found to live and even to thrive in the human mind, is not the natural growth and production of the soil.

Far different is the humiliating language of Christianity. From it we learn that man is an apostate creature, fallen from his high original, degraded in his nature, and depraved in his faculties; indisposed to good, and disposed to evil; prone to vice, it is natural and easy to him; disinclined to virtue, it is difficult and laborious; that he is tainted with sin, not slightly and superficially, but radically and to the very core.

Requiem shows us that with each carefully mixed color and with each precisely drawn image, a story about men cannot be told without a conflict of evil, and that very evil springs from who we are, radically and to the very core.

Beware of this Book...It'll Drive You Mad.

2007-03-15T13:14:00.000-07:00

In the first week of December, 2005, I took my first trip to New York City. I left at about 3 a.m. with a few friends who had hopped in a red minivan, and it was finals weekend. It was the best idea ever, no lie.

At about 11 a.m., my Liberty buddies and I rolled through the Holland Tunnel, and I heard my first yellow taxi honk. (Ahh, the foreshadowing!) I didn't know a thing about Manhattan at the time, except that it was the home of Times Square and Central Park. And the Empire State Building, too. I definitely knew about that.

Later on in the day, we went to Central Park and strolled through Strawberry Fields, where a mosaic dedicated to the memory of John Lennon adorns the sidewalk. I didn't realize that it was December 8th, and it was the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death. Two long-haired guys--I'm guessing NYU students--were playing "So This is Christmas" and "Across the Universe," and it smelled like roses all over the place because the mosaic was covered in them.

I also didn't realize that Mark David Chapman, the guy who killed John Lennon over 25 years ago, was reading the same book I just read when he was arrested. Apparently, John Hinckley, Jr., the bloke who tried to kill Ronald Reagan the next year, was also a huge fan of The Catcher in the Rye.

New York City (and/or books about New York) + Reading Books = Very Dangerous Stuff.

An American composer named Oscar Levant said, sometime in the earlier half of the 20th Century, "There's a fine line between genius and insanity." There is something about thought and learning that can lead to the insane asylum. I think the reason for that is because all madmen (and I'm ripping off G.K. Chesterton like crazy here), are reasonable. They are thinkers. They still have their reason; it is simply filled with wrong or misinterpreted data. So the harder we think, the more we solidify our place either on the road to reality or the road to insanity.

Holden Caulfied, the narrator in J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, is insane. He's precise, but he's cynical. He tells stories, but he doesn't like to finish them. And yet, his understanding of the world, like a circle (I'm a fraud . . . this is all Chesterton), goes round and round, making a good bit of sense along the way. The Catcher in the Rye is a story about what led Holden Caulfield to something like an insane asylum. He says on page 1, "I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy." Out here is probably a mental institution of some kind. It's where Mark David Chapman and John Hinckley, Jr., more or less, ended up.

Throughout the story, Holden Caulfield alienates himself from others and always writes people off with universal statements about hyper-specific events. He tries to act his age, and people don't seem to notice. "People never notice anything," he says. His old history teacher is giving him a lecture about life, and he says, "You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it." He wants his roommate, Stradlater, to give his regards to a girl Stradlater's about to take out on a date. ". . . I knew he probably wouldn't. You take a guy like Stradlater, they never give your regards to people." He asks a bartender in New York to pass on a message to the singer in the bar. "He said he would, but he probably didn't even give her my message. People never give your message to anybody." Caulfield is psychologically armoring himself against any kind of real understanding of the world with his categorical cynicism, and though Caulfield wants us to believe that all of these universal statements are really true, we see that he is only driving himself further away from a real understanding of the world and from healthy relationships with people.

The book is called The Catcher in the Rye because of a song Caulfield hears a boy humming on the streets of New York. The song goes, "If a body catch a body coming through the rye," and this song, we learn in chapter 22, turns on Caulfield's mental light bulb to what he wants to do with his life. He tells his sister, ". . . I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all." You see, Caulfield wants to protect innocence. He thinks that the sequence of life starts with innocence (like kids playing games in the rye), and then the next step is that people come out of their innocent state and free fall off the cliff of life. If only someone can stifle the superficiality of adulthood and preserve childhood innocence, then the world will be a more bearable place for Caulfield. And if no one else will be the catcher in the rye, then he will.

But this isn't the way justice works, and Caulfield, through a lot of thinking and reflecting on his life, is driven mad. Why? Because his worldview was too simple. He saw events happening, sat those events on the laps of the horses in his little merry-go-round, and they spun so fast and aimlessly that he was left dizzy, scared, and empty by the end of his story. Mark David Chapman tried to do the same thing. He thinks that a few human beings mess life up for the rest of us (those who are still trying to live innocently in the rye), and he shoots John Lennon because Lennon is such a loud-mouth. That was his understanding of justice, and because it rested on the wrong understanding of human nature, he was driven to prison for it. The same with John Hinckley, Jr. His obsession with a story (which, more than The Catcher in the Rye, was Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver) led him to find his worth in an assassination attempt, because he found no other value anywhere else.

So December 8th, 2005, means more to me now than I ever thought it would. John Lennon's death, and his mosaic in Central Park, was the consequence of a story poorly understood. Every day, people die with poorly understood stories, and--little do we know--this affects everything.

Where is the Empire State Building?

2007-03-12T12:18:00.000-07:00

Before I went to King's this year, I competed for a scholarship called the Founders' Award. The winners got a $10,000 grant each year they attended King's, so the scholarship ended up being worth about $25,000 for me. Talk about pressure! I had to write an essay basically answering that icebreaker question, "Who would you want to meet if you could meet anyone from history?" and I think I scratched my chin and contemplated, letting out a long "hmmmmm," until my soul patch was bare, and my right lung had collapsed.

This year, prospective King's students had to answer a much harder question, in my opinion. "Where is the Empire State Building?" This post is going to be my attempt to briefly tackle that question.

In 1957, Ayn Rand wrote a novel about the ultimate ends in human life called Atlas Shrugged. The novel opens with an immortal refrain: "Who is John Galt?" Throughout the story, we find that John Galt represents the subterrain of the novel's plot and of the world at large. John Galt is the human mind's greatness. Galt is the being who, like Nietzsche's ubermensch, has a developed mind and refuses to be marginalized by socialists, labor unions, Christians, mystics (those who take things on faith), relativists, and skeptics who want to stunt his intellectual growth and productivity with government policies or with "weak" notions of sacrifice, faith, and subjective statements like, "Whatever's right for you."

Who is John Galt, then? He is the mind that built New York City. He is the human being who realizes--through reason, his greatest tool--that he is all there is, that the greatest thing he can do to achieve his own happiness is to please himself, and that the greatest way to please himself is to use his reason to be a builder, a prime mover, and a producer. John Galt is the man who cares for no one but himself because he is the measure of all things, and for this selfishness, he feels no remorse.

John Galt is the man who represented a very real moral ideal for Ayn Rand, who escaped the USSR in 1925 in order to come to New York City and pursue the freedom for which Lady Liberty stood. Rand loved New York City, and its skyline was the boost for her stories. In an article about Ayn Rand and New York, Eric Miller writes, "For the aspiring writer leaving a country to which she never would return, the skyline of New York represented the philosophy that made the motor of the world move" (http://www.newcolonist.com/aynrand.html), and the philosophy that made the motor of the world move also moved the motor of her stories. As she was developing the plot for Atlas Shrugged, Rand wrote in her journal, "Without an understanding and statement of the right philosophical principle, I cannot create the right story." Her philosophical principle was the map that led her to what she thought was the ultimate setting for her stories: New York.

The questions "Who is John Galt?" and "Where is the Empire State Building?" are closely related. Ayn Rand, in answering that John Galt is the ultimate being and the climax for a life well lived, would say that the Empire State Building is the pinnacle of John Galt's world--the climax of human achievement. In completely disagreeing with Ayn Rand on John Galt, I'd have to answer that the Empire State Building is a building. It sits 86 floors above a Lower Level and a Concourse Level. I go to those two floors almost every day to discover how contrived Ayn Rand's story is because of the way her philosophical principle falls short. The Empire State Building can only stand as a monument to the greatness of mankind in a small, artificial narrative. Only from the philosophical principles at the heart of the Christian narrative, however, can we build, and build well.

For now, those are some thoughts. I met a guy the other day who calls himself somewhat of a follower of Ayn Rand, and I have some thoughts about that, too.

Tschuss.

Blanket

2007-03-03T23:00:00.000-08:00

when a man is born
he is used to darkness.
to small.
to portions.

and he is on a chord.
he does not know music
when he hears sounds.

when his cord is torn
he is then redressed
to Full.
and Beautiful.

When you were born
you were given a blanket.
not for sleep
but for warmth.

John Locke, the Law, and Freedom

2007-02-27T09:48:00.000-08:00

I'm finding that it's much more enjoyable to write my thoughts down in my leather journal the old fashioned way. But I'm the library at school, and I'm reading John Locke's Second Treatise on Government, and I thought I'd grace my old online journal with a thought and a quote.

I'm thinking a great deal about the Christian narrative and how it speaks deeply to issues of justice and man's responsibility to his fellow man. I don't think that any other philosophical or narrative construct of the world can hit at the need for men to be engaged with other men with the right values in hand the way that Christianity can. Care about other people? Why? Because it works? Because you can get something out of a person? How do you care for a person? Actively or passively? Do you lead them somewhere good? If so, what in the world is the good? Questions like these have to come up if you're going to think through your own philosophical narrative of the world, and I really do think that, unless you look through the eyes and think with the mind of a Christian, you only see in part and your thoughts are hazy.

So a narrative view of the world that sees "good" as objective and transcendent seems reasonable if any kind of story is going to be told properly, and if any kind of benevolence is going to win out in the end and permeate the story along the way. Any other framework is like jello--it tastes light and sugary, it looks good but doesn't nourish, it's fleeting and transient, and it just begs for something truly solid.

Christ defines freedom in terms of slavery. We are freed to be slaves of the most benevolent master in the universe. Galatians 5:13 says that a Christian is called to be free to serve others in love. That is a benevolent and full vocation--a slave to love! G.K. Chesterton, in Orthodoxy, said in his chapter "The Paradoxes of Christianity," "...The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild."

John Locke sees this in government. Laws are purposive. Without them, there is no right, or free, society.

"There is one way more whereby such a government may be dissolved, and that is, when he who has the supreme executive power, neglects and abandons that charge, so that the laws already made can no longer be put in execution. This is demonstratively to reduce all to anarchy, and so effectually to dissolve the government: for laws not being made for themselves, but to be, by their execution, the bonds of the society, to keep every part of the body politic in its due place and function; when that totally ceases, the government visibly ceases, and the people become a confused multitude, without order or connextion. Where there is no longer the administration of justice, for the securing of men's rights, nor any remaining power within the community to direct the force, or provide for the necessities of the public; there certainly is no government left. Where the laws cannot be executed, it is all one as if there were no laws; and a government without laws is, I suppose, a mystery in politics, inconceivable to human capacity, and inconsistent with human society."
--From Chapter 19

When laws cease, the bonds of society cease. I see insight--heck, even Christian insight--in that.

building

2006-09-14T10:14:00.000-07:00

Five years and three days ago, I got out of bed and found the world, as I knew it, to be in disorder. The first words I heard that day were something like, "Bryan, we've been bombed!" I immediately thought, "We've got to run! There may be one in the house! What if we die?!" (I had just awakened from sleep, so I was still a little out of it.)

Life went on. A couple of days later, I was in an RV on my way to Ohio to play my guitar. I really didn't understand the impact of what happened--what kind of foundations were shattered in our country, in the world at large, in families, in the academic world, and on each sidewalk where a person has an opinion. And now I'm right in the middle of it.

I went down to Ground Zero on Monday evening and was struck, in a different way, by what our country has created in memoriam to 9/11. On the sidewalk in front of the World Trade Center Path Station, small groups of hurt/angry/opinionated citizens formed nuclei around which visitors stood and watched the heated debates. Curse words, conspiracy theories, and the occasional, "Hey, let me say something...my dad died that day..." filled the air. I was surprised by the candor, literal drunkenness, and figurative nakedness of the whole atmosphere. Everyone wants to talk, but no one has anything to say.

I'm still not very sure how to take it all in.

When a person creates something, he takes ownership of it. He loves it like it is his own child. He wants to preserve it and watch it prosper. He'll defend it with his life. But if that creation is destroyed, what does he do? I'm sure there is a time where he angrily and regretfully looks at the pile of destruction and wishes, with all that he is, that it was never destroyed. But he rebuilds, nonetheless. There is nothing else he can do. He probably makes the core elements stronger this next time around, and he probably decorates its outer face with even more splendor. He knows this new creation, perhaps, even better than the first.

I don't think this is the case with the U.S. We've got 300 million builders with 300 million opinions, and I'm not sure that we're getting anywhere in our rebuilding process. What are our values? Why are they our values? Were they Christ's values? What is more important, peace or justice? How can we labor for peace?

You can give a man a fish and feed him for a day, or you can teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime. But if the man has no lake, what good is his newly-learned skill?

Here are some shots...

back to the wireless-laden real world

2006-09-01T20:12:00.000-07:00

I do wish you could see the view of 6th Avenue from our terrace in New York. As soon as my misplaced camera arrives in the mail from Lynchburg, I'll take some photos of New York and get the real interactive party going. (Note on that: I didn't leave behind a single thing for Europe to greedily consume. Not a book or a sock. There wasn't a jot or tittle of aloof "stuff handling." But then I get to the U.S. and...I think it's something in the air. I still lose things. Some things never change.)

Since my last post, I took the train from Lisbon to Madrid, flew from Madrid to Milan, took the train from Milan to Rome, flew from Rome to Milan and Milan to Paris, flew from Paris to London, flew from London to Toronto and Toronto to Atlanta, enjoyed the sights, sounds, and smells of Michael Christmas, drove home to NC, got my teeth cleaned (no cavities), saw the family and some great friends from Liberty, and drove to New York to get settled in and start the whole new college thing.

All of it was excellent.

I think one of the best moments of my trip happened underneath a concrete public urinal in Paris. It really had nothing to do with relieving myself. It had a lot more to do with re-living moments of my trip--sacred moments--where God has shown up in my life through people and events.

I had decided, at about 8 pm on my last evening in Paris, to walk to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and as soon as the decision was final, it started to rain. I didn't have a poncho or anything, so I looked for the nearest shelter--this little public "pissoir":

You can see steps on the other side there, and that's where I stood to wait out the rainstorm and spend some time with God. I thought about my trip and about new and old relationships, and I couldn't help but talk about these relationships with Him. For a few days I had felt very alone, roaming through Europe by myself, spending the majority of the time with people who did not speak the language of Life. So it was comforting to think about all of the people who share some of my aspirations and have enhanced and shaped my vision...people who have really impacted my life. I don't know why, but I teared up thinking about every single person. Relationships with people are not trivial, and my heart was absolutely full and heavy for each relationship I have.

After about two hours, I walked back to the Eiffel Tower but found it blocked off for some reason. So I walked around a few more places in Paris and called it a night. The next morning I was at the airport on my way to go back to London, which would be my last stop in Europe before heading home. At the airport, I met a South Korean girl named Yoonseon ("Yoon-soon") who ended up sitting next to me on the plane. We talked for quite a while about our cultures, studies, and some opinions we had about certain things, and we ended up going into the center of London together. I showed her around a few places that I had seen when I was in London for the first time, and as we walked around the city, we began to talk about faith and Jesus Christ. Yoonseon had said that one of the reasons she wanted to travel with me in the plane and into London was because she could tell I was, in her words, "very straight...and happy." (We'll hope that means something good.) She wanted to hear my take on faith, and I shared with her everything I could think of about why Jesus Christ makes all the difference in the world to me. As soon as I "finished" explaining this, we got to a monument I recognized well...Westminster Abbey.

I could have thought of no more appropriate worship than the one I had just experienced, and there I was where the gargoyles had "one-up-ed" me two months prior. I was extremely excited that the tables had turned this time around.

I hope there will be an update from Yoonseon soon. She has my email address, so I'm waiting on a follow-up about her trip to Europe and our time together. I have some pictures from the whole experience, but, again, they're on their way from Lynchburg.

Until I get my life in order, here are some pictures from the last few days of the trip:

Milan:

Rome:

Paris:

I cannot forget...

2006-08-13T16:03:00.000-07:00

Today I went to a beach in Cascais, Portugal to meet up with a couple missionary ladies and spend some time getting to know them. They brought an excellent mix of life perspectives to the conversation--one lady is Portuguese but has spent a good bit of time in South Africa. The other is from Texas and spent two years with her family in Zimbabwe before going back to the States and then feeling a call to go to Portugal.

Their time spent in Africa really interested me, and we spent a few brief moments talking about Zimbabwe and Uganda and some of the injustice there. They asked me what I was doing in Europe, what I'm studying at college, and what I hope to do with my education, and I just can't help but think that after I'm done, I will end up doing something far from luxurious in a location that is far away. I can't help but go back to Uganda, its Invisible Children, and being ready to spend my life thinking through ways and using all my strength to stop evil social structures.

Then today I read an article from the BBC about Ochola John and what the Lord's Resistance Army did to him. I hate it. I just hate it.

Girls being raped. Over and over again. Heads being smashed. Blood, blood, blood. I have nothing to say. I just hate it.

What I can say is that I just cannot forget about Uganda. Hearing about the intensity of the evil in Uganda has been, for me, like a stream of understanding into many other places in the world where not everything is neat and tidy. Huge gaps between the rich and the poor in South America. Genocides in Europe and Africa that have been left out of the history books. Repercussions that are being suffered right now in entire generations that have been robbed of a heritage and shielded from values. What God is doing in the world and what people aren't doing in it are starting to make a little bit more sense.

Mandates and inklings from God have kept popping up in my life--new goals, more intense prayers, more intentional conversations, and a lot more awareness. I think about Hebrews 10:26-31 and the way I treat the blood of Jesus--his great sacrifice of love. I should be damned if his sacrifice says little to nothing about my own life.

I can't imagine that. Being damned to hell.

Then why in the world can I imagine an easy life where the cross holds so little sway?

I've been wrong from the beginning.
If you've been losing while I've been winning,
Then I've been wrong from the beginning.

I sit by the river. Got my feet in the water.
I feel about a dollar like I feel about a daughter.
If I've been laughing while you've been crying,
Then I've been wrong from the beginning.

I got a house on the border. I got shoes made of leather.
I got a robe made of velvet. I got a bed made of feather.
If you've been freezing while I've been sleeping,
Then I've been wrong. And for that, I'm weeping.

Have you been freezing while I've been sleeping?
Then I've been wrong. And for that, I'm changing.

-The Elms

Chesterton and the rocks. And their cries.

2006-08-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

These are photos from the front of Westminster Abbey in London. I stood on the lawn in front of the Abbey feeling like a little kid. I had a huge backpack on my back, so I was slouching, and I was taking photos like a total wide-eyed tourist. I'll be honest with you--my first thought when I saw Westminster Abbey was, "Cool building. I've heard about this place. I will now take pictures of it." Pretty deep stuff, I'd say... But then I noticed these heaving statues above the front door to the church and I thought to myself, "That looks significant. I will now zoom in with my camera and take a close up of those funny-looking statues." Once again--I am as deep as the Marianas Trench. Like an iceberg, really.

But I'll tell you--I took these pictures for a reason, and I did often think about these statues after I left London. Then, sure enough, an insight involving heaving statues came. But it didn't come from me (no surprise)--it came from G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy in the first paragraph of "The Eternal Revolution." I thought I'd quickly let you share in the insightful experience.

The following propositions have been urged: First, that some faith in our life is required even to improve it; second, that some dissatisfaction with things as they are is necessary even in order to be satisfied; third, that to have this necessary content and necessary discontent it is not sufficient to have the obvious equilibrium of the Stoic. For mere resignation has neither the gigantic levity of pleasure nor the superb intolerance of pain. There is a vital objection to the advice merely to grin and bear it. The objection is that if you merely grin and bear it, you do not grin. Greek heroes do not grin: but gargoyles do--because they are Christian. And when a Christian is pleased, he is (in the most exact sense) frightfully pleased; his pleasure is frightful. Christ prophesied the whole of Gothic architecture in that hour when nervous and respectable people (such people as now object to barrel organs) objected to the shouting of the gutter-snipes of Jerusalem. He said, "If these were silent, the very stones would cry out." Under the impulse of His spirit arose like a clamorous chorus the facades of the medieval cathedrals, thronged with shouting faces and open mouths. The prophecy has fulfilled itself: the very stones cry out.

Yes they do. I have seen a million "dead" churches with "living" images of worship and fearful pleasure since I've been in Europe. More wide-eyed tourists filter through these places with a heavy backpack and a camera than do heavy-laden worshippers seeking to exalt the God of the universe. But, thankfully, I have also had a million conversations here that have left me frightfully pleased. Though the only ones worshipping at Westminster Abbey were the stones, there was great worship last night in Lisbon, Portugal at an old coffee shop with two Venezuelans, a German, and two North Americans!

I cannot take pictures of (or paint, or sculpt) that kind of worship--where the Holy Spirit gives strength and directs the mind and truly pleases the soul. I regretfully appreciate the Gothic statues for filling my spot at Westminster Abbey, but it will not happen again. Too much of my life has been filled up by the Holy Spirit since then.

More men must praise You!

Psalm 8.

Quick update...the story of my life, yes?

2006-07-31T01:56:00.000-07:00

The story of my life here is "no time for the computer!" I don't mind that at all, you know, but the ones who read this and are praying for me probably do mind a bit :).

I'm leaving in about 10 minutes to go the train office in Mulhouse, France so I can go to the French Riviera by tomorrow morning. I'll go from there to Barcelona, Madrid, and then Lisbon for a two-week stay. I may be able to meet up with some fellow believers in the French Riviera, but I'm not sure. My communication resources (as you can tell) are scarce.

My two weeks in Romania were life-changing. I was in villages with outhouses and no showers, but we were bathed in Christ's love and compassion continually. The people of Biled and Satchinez, Romania warmed my heart, and I think I'll experience a warmer heart-climate for the rest of my life because of my time there. I have a new home in Romania now.

On top of this, I milked a cow and drank the lapte (milk). I hopped on a horse. I actually was part of a quality English course--the pastor of the Biserica Baptista in Satchinez was one of my students, and he learned several Bible verses in English and was able to increase his knowledge of the language. Being able to do this (teach English) with excellence was a spiritual blessing for me--it was an opportunity to be obedient to Eccl. 9:10a and I Cor. 10:31.

Ok, more to come. I will seriously be able to get more time in Lisbon. Thanks for your prayers!

Villages.

2006-07-27T01:34:00.000-07:00

Don't break my arm! I've been in villages in Romania that don't have internet. I took my first shower in two weeks on Tuesday. But this experience is changing my life, and the people here are fantastic. They love Jesus in Romanian, and it makes me love Jesus in English even more.

More to come...

Timisoara

2006-07-13T14:07:00.000-07:00

A twenty-hour drive from the Schwartzwald to Timisoara, and we're finally here. It's a much different atmosphere--Eastern Europe really is a new world. Think Kansas-flat with miles and miles of farmland hanging on by a thread...or not even hanging on anymore. Timisoara itself is a "big town," with about 350,000 calling it their home. It's so interesting to see miles and miles (wait, I'm sorry, I'm in Europe--kilometers and kilometers) of old farms, poor villages, abandoned farms from the collectivization era, and then Timisoara.

Most cities we're used to in the West have already, on the whole, figured out what they want to do with themselves. They have their tall buildings, historical monuments, business complexes, currency, shopping centers, transportation systems...the whole bit. But Timisoara is truly a taste of budding, newly carved history. Not quite 17 years ago, the Romanian revolution against communism began with the eviction of an Orthodox pastor in this city. Within a month and a half, Nicolae Ceauşescu was executed and communism fell, but changes to an entire way of life do not happen overnight. Romania has acceded into the European Union, but the national currency is not yet the Euro. Romania is still trying to westernize, and Timisoara is riding on the wake of the EU. The Timisoara mall was just finished last year:
A swimming pool just opened a couple of days ago on one of the top floors. Tonight, we ate at a KFC in the food court and walked through Adidas, Puma, and Nike retail stores. But look out at the rest of the city from the top of the first escalator and you'll see a city that looks like Bloom, KS (don't worry, you probably won't be able to find it anywhere on a map) trying to become Omaha, NE. It's so fascinating to see such a city in a transition like this. It makes things seem more real and...fragile. Great buildings have not always been here. Money doesn't just appear when everyone shows up for work. Cars aren't always the most efficient or feasible means of transportation. The West--with its free market capitalism and democracy--has not always existed and wasn't made by God Himself. People made the West an ideal and an accepted norm. But there is a world outside of the West and there is a God above the West.

I'll get on with a couple of shots from inside the car on the way to Romania...

Two storks nesting on top of a concrete telephone pole.

Yet another lovely couple.

The rain cloud had just passed over. I wasn't able to get a good shot of it, but there was also a beautiful rainbow just a few minutes earlier.

A quick pass-by shot of an old farm abandoned since the end of collectivization. We saw hundreds of these!

I wonder what he was thinking. He was kind of rude, actually. Plop, and there he was on our window looking at us like, "So what are we doin'? When are we gonna get there, driver? What's that you're reading, Shirley?" I told him to scram, and he did. And I felt good.

Picture summary...

2006-07-11T12:20:00.000-07:00

Well I'm about to say "tschuss" to Deutschland for a couple of weeks. Yesterday we got in from a 10 hour drive back from Berlin, and we're leaving from Schwartzwald tomorrow morning to drive for 20 hours to Timisoara, Romania. I spent the majority of my day learning how to teach English to young folks who live in poor villages outside of Timisoara. I'm very excited about this--they want to learn English, and I want to share with them what makes life full. Most of these kids will not know much English, so the majority of our deep communication will be through journaling, which will be translated for me to read and then respond back. Pray that I will be a lively personality to those kids and that we will be able to connect even though our languages and cultures are so different.

I talked for about two hours with a guy from Berlin nicknamed "Tom Perc." I was able to share with him completely what it means to know who God is, His relationship to man, and why Christ matters to us in that equation. We were cut short...two hours wasn't enough to do this...but I'm going to keep in touch with Tom via email. Pray hard that my conversation will be seasoned with grace as I keep in touch with Tom and the 5 others with whom I was able to share the Good News.

I'm finding that I can share more naturally with people what it means to know Christ. And I'm finding that it's not only rewarding to do this, but it shows me more of what God is doing in my life, what He has done, and how everyone fits in to this. It brings me joy to share Life with people. It disgusts me to think of living any other way than a way that pleases God, and I am feeling so much freedom in that. The taste of a life with Christ has become sweeter these past two weeks, and I will never forget it.

What have I learned so far?
1. God loves people. He doesn't turn His nose at them. He doesn't hum under his breath and look away at the scenery when people are content to play in the mud. He doesn't delight in evil (which legalism so exclusively loves to bring to light), but rejoices with truth. He is, as Tom put it, "the Face of the Good," and He knows we don't know what it means to be content until we are able to gaze at Him and see what is there.
2. Languages and cultures are fascinating ways to engage with people and explore what it means to know God and see His face. I want to share Christ with someone in another langauge before I'm 22.
3. Music is a fascinating way to engage with people. Sam Stoter, our French brother who only speaks enough English to say, "I am Fronce" and "Viva la blue" was a ball of silence next to me...until we started singing "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" together. We had about 6 people on our team from West Virginia, too. I can't tell you how many times I heard Germans bust out into, "Country roads, take me home, to the place, I belong, West Virginia....!" I'm going to love and appreciate how powerful and cross-cultural music is because of this trip.

Quickly, I'll share some photos from the trip so far...

Toronto. One of the sites during my 5 hour layover.

British Parliament building.

Westminster Abbey.

The river running along St. James' park with the Spinning Eye in the background.

British Museum.

St. Paul's Cathedral.

The Tower of London.

Marienplatz in Munich, Germany. About 7 am, just a couple of hours before everyone and their German brother piled in to the Munich Haupbahnhof to watch Germany beat Sweden.

Maximilianeum.

The view from the top of Mullheim in Schwartzwald, Germany.

The view of France (top left, beyond the Rhine) from the ruins of a castle in Badenweiler, Germany.

Lavender.

The view of Switzerland from the mountain above Mullheim.

The team (sans Angela) that bonded like none other in Berlin.

The Victory Column at the Grosserstern on the edge of the Fan Mile.

Victoria.

@ the Fan Mile. Germany scored their first against Argentina.

Where Zidane decided to be an idiot. (The stadium in Berlin. What one-sixth of our world's population was looking at on Sunday.)

I don't know about you, but this was most surely the tallest Jenga tower I've ever made.

Julia, Stephanie, Jamey, Me, and Erika. These two girls on the outside (Julia and Erika) may very well be open to the Good News. Jamey and Stephanie are in Berlin for a few more weeks and are planning on meeting up with them on their "holiday." We may see their lives change because of what God did just last week!

Me guarding the Russian Embassy in Berlin. Why? I don't know. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The first and last time I've seen a picture of a baby peeing in public. Apparently, this is somewhat of a national icon for Belgium, particularly in Brussels. Manneken Pis, they call him. For intriguing history, go HERE and find out the significance of public urination by small children. Needless to say, I engaged in the history of this "city pissoir."

A small section of the wall. Somebody told me there used to be a wall in Berlin. So I took a picture of it.

The Reichstag.

DEM DEUTSCHEN VOLKE – "To the German people"

View of the Brandenburger Tor from the top of the Reichstag. It was difficult to get a good shot of the gate from the ground because there was a 20-meters-tall fussball in front of it during our entire stay in Berlin. Apparently, there was a sporting event going on involving a ball of that similar type, only a bit smaller.

The new cupola on the top of the Reichstag.

Inside of the cupola. There was a nice little place to lie down and look at the sky, so I thought I'd show you what it was like.

What a life.

We worshipped with fellow German believers in a small cafe on Sunday, and this is where we broke bread together.

Inside of the new Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

Christ and I John 5:4. Also inside the new church.

On Tuesday of our trip, we had a fun time feeding several folks a nice breakfast. One guy was so happy, he sang a song and played the harmonica.

The church at night.

Also part of our breakfast together. We were wrapping up, and this fella was still hungry. I never caught his name...he only spoke muffled German.

And finally, the church during the day. The church, by the way, was bombed in 1945, but they left this ruined part as a memorial and built a new church next to it by 1961 (my momma's birthday). You could almost still smell the smoke from the ravaging fire that destroyed it over 60 years ago. Or maybe that was the smoke from the bratwurst stand...

Berlin!

2006-07-06T06:38:00.001-07:00

Well I never realized how difficult it would be to keep up with a blog like this while I´m overseas. Internet cafes are all over the place, but I can´t find enough time to go often, and when I do, there is no way to upload all my pictures. Plus, these Germans decided to switch the y and the z kez, so tzping on a computer in this countrz is crayz!

My time here in Berlin (since a week ago, Thursday) has been fantastic. The team I´m with is composed of folks from all over the place--Anna from China (living in West Virginia), Rick, DiAnn, Mary, Ryan, and Rachel (from West Virginia), Freddie (fluent in French and English--living in Kandern, Germany), Kim (fluent in English, decent in French and German and also living in Kandern), Miriam (from France--speaks French, German, and English), Alycia (from England, but also speaks French fluently), Sam (from France--speaks French and Dutch), Angela (from central California), and Bethany (also from California. She enjoys putting her school-learned French to use with Miriam, Sam, and Alycia). Everyone on our team here has taught me something profound and displays an enormous amount of servanthood and surrender to God. We´ve already seen two people come to know the Lord, and we´re working on a couple more. Pray for Johnny, Yusuke (pronounced yoo-skay), Daniel, Erika, and Julia. I´ve been able to share the Gospel with these people, and I´m keeping in touch with most of them hoping to express more of what a life with Christ looks like.

Our mission here is pretty simple: share the love of Christ to every person of every race filtering through Berlin during the World Cup. We´re working at two different stations--the "Fan Mile" (which stretches between the Victoria Tower and an area next to the Reichstag) and the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (which was partly destroyed in 1945 and left up as a Monument in Berlin). Pastors here in Germany who have a desire to spread the Gospel are asking us to engage in "con-vuh-zay-zhun" with everyone we can as we serve water, play games, and pass out information about football ("soccer") players and their faith in God. Prayers are absolutely needed here--we simply cannot just "present the Gospel" to people. We have to start from the very beginning. Most of these people have been taught not to believe in God since they were in primary school. So we have to think through with them, "How did this world get here? If it was God, what is He like? What is His relationship with man like? How do we fit in? What does faith mean? What did Christ teach? What does the Bible teach? Why does it matter? If God is so good, why do people suffer?" And the list goes on and on and on. To every single area of thought...because these people have never seen the world through any other eyes but atheistic ones. But still, we´ve faced challenges and also seen the most rewarding things come out of the challenges!

So now a word about the games--wow. Germany goes crazy over football. We were able to watch the Germany vs. Argentina game at the Fan Mile (huge LCD screen with the Victoria Tower in the background--very cool!) and after they won, there was immediate beer-inhaling, singing, chanting, full body painting, and horn-honking. "Deutschland, Deutschland, la la la (and German words)!" all night long. And we think that the SuperBowl is a big deal...ha. THIS is a big deal!

I´ll do my best to post pictures soon. Tschüss!

The Black Forest, the Pilgrim's Progress, and the Wallet's Regress

2006-06-27T07:18:00.000-07:00

The Black Forest of Southern Germany is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Photographs cannot do it justice. Yesterday, the Konecnys and I went to the top of the mountain overlooking the Rhine River valley, getting a beautiful glimpse of the river, Switzerland, France, and more of the Black Forest. This is truly an example of the grandeur of God.

London on the 22nd was a blast. Unfortunately, I have to write quickly, so I'll just post a couple of pictures from my day there.

From London, I flew to Hamburg, Germany (after missing my originally-scheduled flight...not a fun experience), and then took the train overnight to Munich. From Munich, I took the train to Freiburg, right at the edge of the Black Forest, to meet with the Konecnys, and I'm here with them in Mullheim, Germany until Thursday at 2 am when I leave for Berlin.

I'm not sure how I'm going to finish this trip without a great deal of debt. To spend two months in Europe is typically very expensive (currency conversions, high prices, travel costs...the whole bit), and even though the trip has turned out quite cheap (around $3,000 for the whole thing), I'm nowhere close to my goal. I plan on sending another email out shortly to update everyone on financial needs.

In the London hostel, I slept in a bunk above a 19-year-0ld Englishman from Lancaster (Laurie) who gave me quite a blunt and disturbing assessment of the philosophy of the UK. "Ignorance truly is bliss," he said. "No one knows what history really means because words change so much with feelings. That's why I think faith in religion is so bogus. I'd just as soon live it up, have some fun, and be open to absolutely anything than get tied down to religion." There are so many "what ifs," though. What if eternity exists and calls out only to those whose happiness is identified with and in Christ? What if true happiness is only found in Him? I can't say how much it hurt to love a guy like Laurie so much and be able to do nothing about his soul.

After my 9-hour train ride from Hamburg to Munich, I got out of the Munich Hauptbahnhof (central train station) to find a quiet city populated only by the morning fog, joggers, cyclists, and Marienplatz fruit stands. Everyone else was still either in bed or on the way to the Germany vs Sweden football game. By that evening, Germany went nuts.

They screamed all day.

They drove around every city in Germany waving flags and chanting.

They won the game but lost their minds!

I'll show photos of Germany as soon as I can, and I'll write in better narrative style as more time allows. I'm thinking about millions of things right now and can't write them all down in 20 minutes.

Day 1.5. London, England.

2006-06-22T04:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I flew from Atlanta to Toronto and then Toronto to London, arriving this morning at about 700 am local time. (200 am my body's time.)

What a fantastic city! Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Parliament...a really beautiful place. I took several photos and will be able to download them onto my computer when I get it up and running. For now, I'm limited to small increments of time on the computer in the hostel lobby.

I've only got a day here in London, so I'm going to go out and see what I can before it's too late. More to come!

June 23--August 23. Illustrated.

2006-06-09T10:47:00.001-07:00

Well as of now, these are the plans. Fly in to Basel, Switzerland (hence, face #1), then to southern Germany (Mullheim) to get over jet-lag. The first trip will be two weeks in Berlin, then back to Mullheim. The second trip will be two weeks in Timisoara, Romania, then back to Mullheim. The third trip should be two weeks in Lisbon, Portugal, then train-hopping to Madrid, Cannes, Rome, and whatever I have time to hit along the route back to Switzerland.

All I need now is for a camera to fall out of the sky so I can film these beautiful places!

testing, testing...

2006-06-08T20:49:00.000-07:00

1...2...3...