So, last time I posted I said I might have a review of Introverts in the Church for you. Not gonna happen. Not today, at least. Maybe next week, I will steal the book back from my cousin, buckle down and write the review.

Recently, though, I haven't buckled down to much else besides school stuff, so guess what? Another post about school today! How exciting!! (And here I've been teaching my students not to use excessive exclamation points).

Confession: I envy the teachers who have limitless resources at their beck and call. I envy them because I have been stuck in a bright orange walk-in closet as my classroom (this was at my State U); this horror boasted an ancient projector and five pieces of broken chalk. In a classroom like that, is an interesting class even possible, or is everybody breathing too much chalk dust to make it even tolerable?

Not much I can do about the painful colour scheme, of course (short of lugging paint cans and rollers into the classroom in the dead of night). Nor can I simply make money for resources appear in the budget. But there are a few free resources, many of which I've used (or seen used) in the last couple of weeks here:

Jokes . . . and more Jokes

I learned something from my students today: Apparently, I rely on jokes a lot. All my Composition students had presentations due today, debating whether entertainment and TV had any role in education. The last group stood up and announced that in true Ms. VB style, they were going to begin with a joke - some poorly-punctuated excuses that parents wrote for their kids. In fact, these excuses:

Sally won't be in school a week from friday. We have to attend her funeral.
Please exkuce lisa for being absent she was sick and i had her shot.
My son is under a doctor's care and should not take PE today. Please execute him.

I learned about jokes a few years back, when I was first learning to teach. A teaching book I read reminded me that unfortunately, most students are not geeky like me and therefore not automatically passionate about thesis statements and conclusions. Everybody likes a joke. Tell one at the beginning of class, it gets people's attention; at the end of a discussion, it lightens the mood (and sometimes the tension).

It's just icing on the cake when a student turns around and tells me a joke.

Pop Culture

I discovered that most of my guy students - yes, the guys - are actually Mulan fans. My Intro to English class is in the middle of writing a Personal Narrative story, and to help them understand the idea of conflict and climax, I played a song from Mulan for them. They cheered - then groaned as I turned it off every thirty seconds to analyze the story in it.

Never have I had a pop culture reference work quite so well, though I have played MASH clips for students before (they didn't get the point of that one) and played a selection from the film Amazing Grace for my students (again, too esoteric). I think here of the famous formula for teaching languages: i +1. Little by little and not all at once should the students' knowledge be built up; if I have to use a prop of Mulan for just a little bit, then so be it. Next semester this class will all be reading Bonhoeffer.

Celebrating Weird Holidays

A week or so back, I celebrated 'Talk Like a Pirate' day with my class. I walked into class wearing full pirate gear (or at least as close as I could approximate using the contents of my closet, and a shirt that I stole from my cousin). There is no intellectual point to Talking Like a Pirate, or celebrating any other random holiday. It's just fun. I've learned that October 6 is 'Mad Hatter Day', so perhaps if I can dredge up a weird but cheap hat, I will celebrate that holiday as well.

Be Your Own Guest Speaker

This one is a recent favourite. Unfortunately, English does not lend itself to field trips or guest speakers the way that history or science does. We cannot visit the Museum of the Comma, nor invite a veteran from Fragments to come speak with class. What we can do, however, is take on some of these roles ourselves.

Last week I asked my students to read "Appointment with Love", by S.I. Kishor. Like the Mulan song, this story was intended to help them understand the parts of a story better. Instead of having students inspect the story (this takes forever and can result in sketchy answers), I invited Kishor herself in to tell us about the story. I left the classroom for thirty seconds and came back with my hand clapped to my back, my voice as gravely as I could make it, and the endearing term "young man" or "woman" for all my students. My "guest speaker" turned out to be a wonderful variation on a lecture: I got to talk to them about what they should learn from the story, but we as a class had far more fun than had I simply droned on as in the ordinary lecture.

Reflections

By no means am I a great teacher. I worry periodically that I am spending too much time entertaining my students, not enough educating them. Then when I don't make class interesting, I worry that I'm not being entertaining enough. And trust me, I am far too lazy to invent these resources for every class; some classes all we do is work through the examples. But I do believe that some entertainment plays a vital role in the classroom.

None of these resources are intellectual at all. There is nothing particularly challenging about dressing up like a pirate, nor about playing a clip from a Disney cartoon movie that rewrites history and Chinese culture without compunction. But what these resources lack in intellectual benefit, they make up for in emotional benefit: Fun activities in class reassure our students that we teachers are real people too, that we do not live in a closet at the top of the Ivory Tower, and ultimately that we can be trusted to instruct them well and to carefully and respectfully answer their questions. Fun activities, in other words, build trust - an attitude very much needed in a successful classroom.

Next time, I promise (fingers crossed): Introverts in the Church

It has been said that 'All writing is rewriting'. 


I'd like to apply that to teaching: 'All teaching is reteaching' - and sometimes, reteaching and reteaching again. 


My writing students, right now, are confused. I watched them leave the classroom on Tuesday, nodding as if they understood the answers but with a glazed, fixed expression that always indicates uncertainty. Adding to the general air of confusion were their questions: halting, random questions that had little to do with the topic asked, questions that I'd hoped they would know the answers to by the end of class. Clearly, they didn't know the answers. 


All this confusion is my fault. It is my responsibility as a teacher to clearly communicate the skills I want my students to learn, and if they do not clearly grasp these skills, I have made an error. I wager that this error is not limited to me, that I am not the only teacher ever to have confused my students. Which is what brings me to the conclusion that 'All teaching is reteaching.'


We teachers confuse our students. It's part of being a human teacher. (Even Christ's students were confused, but I suspect that was more their spiritual ignorance than the Master Teacher's incompetence, so we'll leave that out of the picture). In our teaching mind we bear an image of the truth or concept or skill we want students to grasp, we create activities and lectures to communicate that skill, and then in the hubbub of words that accompanies those lectures the gist of the skill or the concept is lost, and students are confused. T.S. Eliot complained that as a poet 'It [was] impossible to say just what I mean' and we teachers read him and say Amen, brother. 


If you are a teacher, you know what I'm talking about, you know how often you have to reteach, and you know (like I do) that 'All teaching is reteaching'.  Instead of belaboring the point, let me move on to its logical conclusion: the attitude that accompanies the belief that all teaching is indeed reteaching. 


Reteaching is about humility. 


My very first semester teaching, I confused students continually. Papers turned in were wildly different than what I'd expected, and I did not give out a single 'A' that semester. I complained to friends about a perceived lack of ability in the students and for weeks reassured myself that each lesson had been quite clear about my expectations on the paper. My lesson weren't clear at all, but at that point I hadn't the humility to admit that I was failing as a teacher. 


It takes humility to admit we made an error, that we are not the Best Teacher Ever since Jesus and Socrates. (humility, of course, that I don't have in abundance). But once admitted, we teachers can get back to helping our students improve as writers or mathematicians or geologists or whatever - as long as they are improving, and not falling deeper into a pit of confusion that we ourselves are digging.


Reteaching is about communication. 


I sat at the table this afternoon carefully wording and rewording the assignment guidelines for my students' next papers. Eventually, I ran the guidelines past my cousin, who is still in college. She listened carefully, then said this:  'That sentence would be really clear for you, but your students are not going to understand it at all'. I had to reword it. 


John 1 tells us that 'the Word was God', a name that suggests He was the clear, flawless communication of God to humanity. And this communication of God 'became flesh and dwelt among us', became a 'thing in the real world' - simple enough for flesh-and-blood humans to understand. It is tempting for us teachers, having spent years of training in our field, to soar upwards towards the esoteric and intangible, but this is not biblical communication. What we reteachers must work on (even the first time) is making our subject - however esoteric - a thing in the real world that every student can grasp. 


More can be said, I'm sure, in favour of reteaching. For me, however, these two attitudes are crucial: the attitude of humility and desire to change, the willingness to refine and hone my communication until it is no longer abstract but real to students. 


Now, I'm off to live in the real world myself - and then to do some reteaching next week. Here are a few photos, as always, to finish off with:

Travel is broadening, they say: An American traveler coming home has a brand-new laundry list of things that she misses about the country she visited, things that she could find in Europe that are unheard of Stateside. For me this list includes things like fresh bread and good chocolate, reliable public transportation, and street musicians. But the opposite can also be true: Returning to America, I've discovered a few new delights here, unavailable to me during six months in the Czech Republic. 


Here is my list.


I love having windows with screens on them. My flat in Prague had beautiful old windows, made with panes of bubbled glass and wood painted white. But there were no screens. Come summer, the flat got hot, we opened the windows (there's also no A/C in the Czech Republic), and we let the flies in--huge, monster flies that the locals called 'Meateaters'. I took to hunting them down with a red folder, perched on my bed and lashing out at the flies as they zoomed past me through the air. Every morning, I faced the same dilemma: cool down the apartment and deal with the flies, or fry in a fly-free apartment. Now, I fling open my windows to air out my apartment in a cool breeze and I still have no flies. So terrified.


I love having seedless grapes. Grapes count as one of my favourite fruits. Ever. I learned in the Czech Republic that they were particularly delicious frozen. But the default grape in Prague had seeds in it - big, huge seeds that gave the grape a bitter taste if you accidentally bit into them; it was almost impossible not to bite into the humongous seed on accident. I took to cutting the seeds out of the grape with a little knife and adding them to salads. Here the default grape is seedless. I buy them in huge packages from Hy-Vee, wash them (or sometimes not), and eat them with delight. 


I love being in the same timezone (or at least almost the same timezone) as my family and friends. In Czech, I had to schedule calls. Can we talk this week? No? Well, I can't talk in the middle of the week. Maybe in ten days from now? That doesn't work either?!? Hmph. My family were perhaps the only people I talked to regularly; my friends sort of fell by the wayside until I returned half a year later to catch up with people.  Nor was scheduling the only difficulty; because international calling is so expensive, I relied entirely on the Internet, which led to further difficulties. Personal conversations happened on Facebook in the middle of board games, and Interviews took place on Gmail chat when Skype went down. It is so nice to pick up my phone, dial a preprogrammed number, and talk to someone. It's even nicer to control where and when these conversations happen, without hooking myself up to the computer. 


I love having English-language books and movies readily available. In the Czech Republic, I read Howl's Moving Castle three or four times and the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series once (and some of them twice) simply because they were the only English-language books around. Halfway through my time in Europe, I realized it was possible to pick the foreigners out of a crowd because they were the ones carrying Kindles: I met up with an American missionary on one of my trips, and although I'd never seen her before, I knew it must be here because she was standing among a bunch of Europeans reading off a Kindle. Now, I can be as anti-Kindle as I wish. In the two months since I've returned, I've finished Wives and Daughters and Godric (both excellent fiction books), as well as Introverts in the Church (an excellent non-fiction books) and a few more books I'd read before. It's like my own literary land of milk and honey. 


My next blog will be more thought-provoking, probably a review of Introverts in the Church (or the review will come in the post after next). But having shared with you so many of the things I love about European life, I wanted to pass along a few things that I love about American life. 


I'm also including a few photos from my sister's wedding here. If I practiced on you, thanks so much! The wedding was both super-stressful and super-fun to do, and although the photos aren't professional quality, I'm happy enough considering this is my first shot. 

More than two months have passed since I returned Stateside, two bittersweet months filled on the one hand with family time (including a wedding, but not mine!) and an exciting new job but culture shock on the other as I adjust back into American society.


As I restart my blog from this side of the pond, I want to pretend that I am a foreigner in the States - a stranger in a strange land, if you will, and comment on the cultural idiosyncrasies of our people as if I were not one of them. I intend to explore also the day-to-day faith that transcends geographical boundaries as I talk through my own everyday life.


And so, to begin:


Shortly before I came back Stateside, someone (I cannot remember who) remarked how isolated Americans could be. I thought it was a strange remark at the time: Isolated? Really? Americans are famous - perhaps infamous - for being the most egregious people on the planet. Even on my plane ride home, I met a host of strangers: three separate men helped me with my bags as I navigated the airports with 100 pounds of luggage, I held a short conversation with the Detroit help desk lady, and the people behind me for check-in joked with me. How in the world such friendly people be considered isolated?


And then I started settling in.


It is still strange to me to walk through the neighborhood and see huge swatches of green yard in front of people's houses, to see whole buildings empty except for two or three of four people in a family. It is strange to me to take my personal car everywhere, to see no one on the ride to work but myself. In the Czech Republic, I lived in a flat with twenty other families; I had a permanent roommate or two. More than that, I saw a hundred people on my way to work in a crowded Metro every morning. I saw another hundred on the way back. 


However isolated are homes and commutes are, we Americans still have a reputation for friendliness - one that we've earned. However little we mingle with strangers, we are particularly good at hand-picking the communities we do mingle with. We pick our church, go to work, join a sports team, and then we overlook the people who are not part of these communities, simply because in American society there is no need to see them; they're not up against our shoulder in a packed tram.  


This can have unfortunate consequences.


My first church visit in my new city was overwhelming. I walked into a sea of strangers, all grouped about in threes or fours and chatting with excitement. It was several awkward minutes before someone (someone I'd met previously) noticed me and welcomed me to the service. Immediately after the service, the groups reformed, and I, left outside, made a beeline for the bathroom. Shortly afterwards, I left.


I am not telling this story to make you feel sorry for me. Part of the problem was me: I hate visiting new churches and do not do well meeting new people. But I think my experience does indicate that Americans, however super-social with people they know and have selected to communicate with, do not do so well with those who are strangers or who unexpectedly show up in their day-to-day life. We are out of practice. 


I cannot change American culture, just as I could not change things I disliked about European culture (What did I dislike? Let me think about that for a while.) But I can change me. I know me: Personally, I prefer spending time alone, dislike meeting new people, and limit my social interactions. This is important on the one hand, because that's how I relax after a busy week. But it can be dangerous if indulged too much. 


If I learned nothing else in Prague, I learned this: We cannot change people by being brilliant. We change people by loving them, by spending time with them. C.S. Lewis wrote of such love as part of our imitation of God, an imitation valuable precisely because it is so difficult:

Our imitation of God in this life - that is, our willed imitation as distinct from any of the likenesses which He has impressed upon our natures and states - must be an imitation of God incarnate: our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions. For this, so strangely unlike anything we can attribute to the Divine life in itself, is apparently not only like, but is, the Divine life operating under human conditions (the Four Loves).

This is my goal.

Generally, I steer clear of purely theoretical subjects in my post. Perhaps because I am leaving Europe in the next four days, though, the theoretical has suddenly become practical: How do I make sense of the six months spent here, in terms of God's larger plan for my life? For that matter, how does anyone make sense of God's will for their lives, looking at short-term assignments - assignments such as temporary jobs, trips and studies abroad, or missions?

I want to clarify what the question is, deal with a commonly wrong way to answer this question, and in exchange, suggest a possible answer. Please feel free to chip in with your own answer: More than anything, I am exploring the question in this post, not offering a definitive and exclusive response to it.

The Question

Here's what I mean by 'making sense' of short-term assignments. Although it's common knowledge that people need some kind of meaning for their lives, this need seems both more intense and harder to satisfy for short-term experiences.

Harder to satisfy, because a few brief months does not allow time for visible evidence of meaning to build up. Although career missionaries point to years of service on the field, short-term missionaries have it more difficult. Much as I enjoyed my time, I remember a few students befriended, some 'deeper' spiritual conversations that perhaps involved Dante or some future post-high school plans; twenty weeks of Bible study. That's all. As with any short experience, there is no large buildup of concrete, visible evidence to signify meaning.

More intense, because we who travel or do missions or other short-term assignments are moving on to something else: It's important to know that a few months teaching at a small school was a good choice, that spending a year at an unexciting job achieves more than just keeping the electricity on, that a summer in Spain does more than give us an appreciation for gelato. Lacking clear long-term evidence of meaning, we also lack a sense of purpose in short-term assignments.

A Bad Answer

Ok, so not all bad. But the most common answer is also an incomplete one. Primarily, we American Christians tend to anticipate that the meaning of short-term assignments will be visibly revealed in the weeks and months and years to come after the experience itself ends.

Here are a few possible examples, the way the question is raised and the common but incomplete answer:

Question: Why did I spend six months teaching in Europe?

Answer: Perhaps in the future, I will take students of my own over here and push them to teach in Europe.

Question: Why did you get that humanities major in college, when you're in the military now?

Answer: Probably because you will teach that subject in the future.

Question: Why did you spend a summer studying abroad?

Answer: Maybe you will meet someone from that country, and use the language and culture to share Christ with them.

Whatever the scenario, we believers are continually trying to pinpoint a specific event or situation in which our previous short-term experience bears visible fruit and thus proves itself meaningful.

Perhaps an analogy is a better way to think of this exercise: In many ways, the imagined Christian life is like climbing a mountain. Perhaps we cross a stream. Perhaps we turn left, then in five minutes, right again. All of this turning is quite confusing at the moment. But then we reach the top of the mountain, look down: Lo and behold, the left turn protected us from a rock slide; the right turn advanced us five yards further up the hill. And suddenly it all makes sense.

Like climbing a mountain, we believers expect to 'look down' at the previous weeks and months and years of our lives and have them make sense; we want to articulate how each turning of life actually helps us. Thing is, we never reach the top of the mountain in this life. Ever. And because we are still 'climbing' metaphorically, some of those metaphoric turnings never do make sense to us.

The Answer

Perhaps the best answer to this problem is to throw out the 'mountain' mentality, to stop hunting for scenarios in which short-term experiences take on new meaning, stop trying to clearly articulate the purpose of certain brief moments in life.

Imagine a quiet stroll through the mountains. At times, the peak is visible; other times it disappears again. Maybe you walk up a hill towards the treetops; five minutes later, you're headed down again towards a stream and a patch of orange flowers. No one stop on the way leads into the other or has any visible purpose, so to speak: In other words, the orange flowers do not make a glimpse of the mountain possible. Had we turned back down the path without seeing the mountain, the flowers would still be just as beautiful.

Like this mountain path, the experiences of life are meaningful as we are in them, experiencing them now. Just as the orange flowers can be enjoyed without seeing the mountain top, so we can enjoy short experiences without knowing what they lead to, what comes next, whether they make any subsequent experience possible.

My own six months here have been immensely enjoyable, profitable for me and (I hope and pray) for those around me. My friends have taken on jobs, done graduate study, done summer trips that never clearly led into anything else, but each of these experiences - job or study or trip - was itself meaningful while they were in it.

It is not in some future happenstance or concrete, visible event that God works. He works in the immediate present in us, and it is that immediate present, detached and invisible from both past and future, that He invests life with meaning.

Eventually, every brief experience and also the great entirely of life itself, will take on a clear and articulate meaning. Paul assures us that "we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord" (II Cor. 3.18). Those words 'being transformed' suggest a continual, never-ending work: In other words, every momentary experience, every day, even every breath we draw takes us believers a step nearer the place where we see and

are seen in Christ's own image.

Until that time, though, it is our responsibility to live in the present and to draw meaning from the present workings of God.

Quick now, here, now, always--

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.

~ T.S. Eliot, 'The Four Quartets'

My next post, I think, will center on something deep. Something mysterious. Something philosophical. Probably something like the will of God. Are you ready?

Actually, I'm not quite ready to pry open that can of worms (almost, but not quite). Let's stick to something more basic for today: the faces of the Christian International School of Prague - the faces of people that have taught me so much in my six months year, people that I hope I have taught as well, people that I will miss next year.

Faces of Students

Unfortunately, I don't have photos of every single student. Here are a few of the photos I do have:

My students Amy and Jessica B. Amy rocked her To Kill a Mockingbird project (Amy, are you reading this?), and Jessica B appreciated The Great Gatsby. What more could I ask for as a teacher?

My student Jessica D, headed off for a Stateside university in the fall. What stood out to me most of all about Jessica D (as about some of my other students) was her sweet, caring spirit - always inquiring after her fellow students and even her teachers, encouraging and supporting them in whatever they do.

Hope and Valerie, who remind us to have fun.

Wendy, one of my 11th grade girls (or possibly a friend of hers). This photo reminds me of one of the most important lessons I've learned this semester:

What we as human beings, whether teachers or students or neither, need most of all is not brilliance. It is not spiritual sermons or chapel messages. It is not wise advice. It is love: the love of God, consistently demonstrated in His body.

Faces of Staff

Again, I don't have pictures of every single staff person. Nor do I have room on this blog for the photos I do have. Here is what I will remember from the staff:

Work hard. Minia agonizes over the tests that she creates, checking and rechecking them to make sure they suit what the students have been learning, that they're worded in the least confusing way possible.

(I just know someone is going to ask: No, Minia is not Muslim. It was really windy when I took this picture, so the scarf is to reduce wind.)

Play hard. (Yes, I know that I'm using slang. It just happens that the slang goes along with the pictures.) Sport a face just like Melanie's:

Enjoy just being with people. Probably all of you readers know someone who you can just sit with, someone you don't have to talk to every single moment that you're together. Kate S is like that: She's great at just stepping up and being encouraging without saying a word.

Read God's word together. After a while, friendships bottom out and encouraging, affirmative talk sounds like a Hallmark Card unless it is rooted in the truths of God's word.

Concluding Thoughts

As I get ready to return to the States (only 13 days! sniff, sniff!), I've remembered that all too often, American Christian relationships tend to center on doing stuff: Sunday morning service, Sunday evening service, Wednesday evening service, a few service projects, a Sunday school, a community service activity, and the list goes on.

All these things are well and good, but six months hanging with the students and teachers at CISP has given me a different angle on the American vision: What is most important is not the service project, not the special midweek service, not the choir performance. What is truly most important is that we spend time with God and with each other, not necessarily doing anything; that we affirm each other and speak God's truth into each others' lives.

This is what it means to be the body of Christ.

This week has been one of ending.

The End of Spirit Week

Spirit Week began with the science show and included a formal dress day, a sports day, and a dress-as-a-CISP teacher day. But on Friday, Spirit week went out with a bang (not a whisper): an all-out Seventies day, with dress and music to match.

I glanced in my closet that morning and found neither bellbottom jeans nor a paisley top, so I turned up in a 2010 pink polo with my camera and compensated in other ways. My 11th and 12th graders got to listen to the only 1970s music I'm actually familiar with: John Denver. Later, there was a 1970s party and choir performance: nothing elaborate, just some music on a CD player; a few songs from our choir. I (still wearing my pink polo) appointed myself official photographer and captured a few images of the fun.

It's hard not to rock along to the Seventies music, and so the kids indulged their inner dancers, together:

And separate:

Even the teachers got into the spirit:

Later, they did the Hokey-Pokey. I actually joined in this one (thanks to my student Jessica, who dragged me over to the circle), but there was no one to take a picture of my feet.

Everyone enjoyed the choir performance:

Half the audience snapped along as they sang, 'I'm a Believer'.

And 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough' was also wildly popular with the audience.

Perhaps embarrassingly enough, I am not acquainted with any of these songs through my parents (hence the John Denver in class). I know 'I'm a Believer' because it was continually piped through the True Value Hardware store I worked at after high school, and 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough' because it was on Remember the Titans.

The End of Czech

A fellow teacher asked me, on Friday, an unusual question about my plans for leaving. Rather startled that I was leaving after six months, she asked whether anyone here at the school 'drove me away', whether I had been made to feel unwelcome. I assured her that this was not at all true.

Every day, I feel how much I will miss bits and pieces of my life here, here at school and here in Europe.

In regular life here, I will miss people-watching every morning on the Metro and the deep royal blue of the sky at 9:30 PM when I am walking home from Bible study. I will miss seeing the castle spire on my way to work in the morning and the Charles Bridge on my walks in the evening. I will miss traveling: the rich ancient ruins in every city I visit; the people (all of them wise, it seems) that I meet and with whom I stay city by city. I will miss the European chocolate.

At school, I will miss yakking with my fellow teachers after a long day or grocery shopping together after church. I will miss the regular Bible studies we have, with delicious Mexican food and conversations that go on far longer than anybody intends them to (9:30 PM is early for us). I will miss the sudden gasp from a student that tells me they just got the symbolism in The Great Gatsby, or their attempts to rabbit-trail me if class is a little dull that day. I will miss the little 4-person class I had with the 11th graders, where I sat on the table and we all drank tea.

But Not the End of God's Blessings

A friend of mine in Spain shared a story with me about two European friends of hers, both sisters: one happily married and living in San Francisco, the other finishing up her university degree a little later after a couple years of traveling through Europe. My friend pointed out that both sisters envied each other's lot, just a little; both had to learn that God blesses them independently, that whatever we have - now, in this present moment - is God's gift to us.

In Psalm 16, David reassures himself of God's promise of continual blessing: "Thou wilt shew me the path of life; in thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore."

I'll be honest: there are times when I wonder whether I'll be able to live in the States again and be happy there. Probably there are times when you have similar thoughts. And I've learned to just live, for now with a lot of this uncertainty.

What is resolved, though, is the goodness of God. Although His goodness may not be revealed in physical blessing, He is nevertheless actively engaged in blessing His children. It is God that 'shows' us the true path of life, its true pleasures and true ways; the word 'show' is an active verb, suggesting that God is personally involved in our lives, personally caring for us rather than leaving our circumstances to chance.

Moreover, the the blessings of God are not elusive: they are 'in [his] presence and 'at [his] right hand' - convenient for the believer, already indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Wherever I go, God's Spirit is with me, and so wherever I go, the blessings of God are with me as well.

Finally, the blessing of God is permanent: they are my blessings 'forevermore' - as long as this world shall last, and into the next one. My God is continually blessing me, regardless of geographical location or temporary job.

Ever since my college days, this Psalm has been a favourite of mine. I have a feeling it will continue to be a favourite in the weeks and months to come. I have been blessed in my six months here, physically and spiritually blessed. I will continue to be blessed as I return to Iowa this fall.

The sense of continual, unchanging blessing is captured earlier in the Psalm. There, David points out that '[t]he lines [as in boundary lines] are fallen to me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage'.

In other words, wherever God has chosen to set the boundaries of our life is good. For me, what this means is that whether my boundaries are in the Midwest or in Europe, it is good. Perhaps for you, if your boundaries are in the Middle East or Middle America or the American South, it is still good. If those boundaries are working your 'dream job' or asking people about fries, God is still good. If the boundaries are single or married, that is good too.

Wherever I am (or you are), whatever we are doing, God is being good to us.