Lately, I have been thinking how apt a metaphor photography is for the Christian life.

Weird topic? Yes, it's mostly inspired by the fact that I feel like I need to update a blog and I have pictures I want to post. But, despite this unusual origin, there really is a connection between good photography and the Christian life.

 Photography

Photography teaches us believers to notice Christ, to search out His light and allow this light to illuminate our day-to-day lives.

The key to good photographs is light. Fundamentally, the right amount of light (exposure) must be let in for the right amount of time (shutter speed). But exposure and shutter speed are just the science of photography. The art goes far beyond measurements of light. The artist is careful not only to choose how much light to use but also to choose the right kind of light. Very few photos taken at high noon, when the light is at its most glaring, come out well (unless the photographer is aiming for a glaring effect), but many, many photos taken in the late afternoon, when the light is a warm glow, come out well.

(By the way, I'm not the only one noticing this. Even Pioneer Woman has posts about photography and light. In fact, her articles are sort of an inspiration for this one.)

Even once the photographer has found the correct kind of light, she must actually use the light well. It does not do to simply point a camera at a well-lit leaf or person facing into the sun. The popular technique of facing people towards the sun, so the camera is pointing away from the sun, is backwards: The full sun on people's faces is a harsh, too-bright effect. Much better to wait until the light has dimmed in the last few hours of daylight. Or to use what is called backlighting, where the light is positioned behind the subject and so creates a sort of halo around the head:

My professional secret as a photographer is yours now. Lucky thing that it's not much of a secret. But unless you're planning on heading to Target and purchasing a DSLR camera, this information is not much use to you. What is most important of all, then, is the connection between photography and the life of the believer.


Application

Just as only good light illuminates a photo well, so only good light illuminates life well. Many, many "lights" of truth exist in our world, ranging from hard science to complicated philosophy. Although the lesser light of philosophy need not be dismissed entirely, it is imperative that we look in life as in photography for the best source of light: in life, the Light of Life Himself, Jesus Christ. He says, "I am the Light of the world," true illumination for us beyond every other lesser light we use. In Him alone will the world make sense.

A man in a dark room may know that there is a light and still refuse to flip the switch. Likewise, we may know that Christ is Light and still refuse to let Him illumine our own lives. Or we may misuse His illumination, twisting what we know about Christ or manipulating his Body the Church for our own ends. We must not do this. We must instead know Christ as He is, the perfect Word of God, the clear sharp Light of Life. Just as the key to a photograph is light used correctly, so the key to life is Christ the Light used correctly. I am not saying that life will work out perfectly if we look to Christ for illumination. I am only saying this: Whatever hardships (spiritual or physical) we encounter, Christ the Light illuminating our lives will make the day-to-day beautiful.

Eliot writes in "Little Gidding" of a flash of sunlight that suddenly illuminated the winter of his life, a "brief" flash that gave way to "midwinter" a moment later but nonetheless left behind it a "pentecostal fire" - the fire of Christ. Eliot was not, as far as I know, a photographer, but this is a true photographer's approach to the spiritual life: the desire for the Light of God to illumine our own life and make it beautiful.

It's a bright, warm day today (try 80 F, a true Indian summer day), and I've taken advantage of the Columbus Day holiday and no classes to camp out at the local coffee shop. On my right is a tall mug of coffee, which should get me through this post - the long-anticipated post about Introverts in the Church.

Probably many of you have never heard of Introverts in the Church. Neither had I, until I found it on a friend's bookshelf in Spain.

Introverts in the Church, written by Adam McHugh, challenges extroverted American Christianity, recommending that introverts cultivate their unique gifts and use these gifts to contribute effectively to their church. McHugh speaks out against the overemphasis on action (as opposed to contemplation) in the church, pointing out that "[t]he implicit thought is that the mark of true, progressing discipleship is participation in an increasing number of activities." (91). Not everybody is comfortable with such intense activity, so introverts (defined as people who gain energy from solitude) are excluded from a church that stresses activity so greatly.

The first correction McHugh recommends is restoration for the introvert, which comes as introverts recognize their "gravity and contemplativeness" (147) as a gift and cultivate that gift by scheduling times of contemplation into their schedule. The second correction he recommends is for introverts to become involved in their church as introverts, sharing their greater "longing for depth" (69) with fellow believers in Christ. Although McHugh spells out specific contributions introverts can make, it is not my goal to share these specifics with you. What I want to do is share with you what I, as an introvert myself, gained from the reading and so what these ideas look like in the so-called "real world".

Reassurance
The realization that it's okay for introverts "do ministry" differently than extroverts brings a sense of relief and peace. Extroverts tend to "do ministry" through limitless energy, a boundless sense of humour (something picked up unconsciously from Hollywood), and a huge group of acquaintances, but not introverts, who prefer having a few super-close relationships. McHugh acknowledges, "One of the things I've accepted is that I will impact fewer people than extroverted pastors" (155), but he implies that we introverts also have the opportunity to impact these few people more deeply.

Here at school, I have watched as some teachers eat lunch with a new group of students every day, while others (whom I know to be introverted) pair up with students one-on-one over the plastic lunch trays. Sure, this second group of teachers does not get to know as many students as the first group, but surely the private discussions, even over food brimming with cooking grease, produces deep and lasting fruit. Many students speak highly of this second class, pointing out that these teachers, despite an apparently aloof exterior, are genuinely interested in their students. What McHugh's book does is legitimize this kind of ministry: No longer is there any need to force ourselves to get to know a huge group of people; it's okay to develop deep, meaningful relationships with just a few.

Directions
Even for the introvert who is no longer trying to "do ministry" like an extrovert, discovering what her contributions should look like can be a challenge. If we cannot contribute to confrontational evangelism on an airplane at 30,000 feet, for instance, what can we do?

McHugh suggests several possibilities, the most important of which is to impart our own tendency for internal processing and contemplation to a world that tends to avoid contemplation. "We [Americans] have become alarmingly dependent on . . . advertising, mass appeal [and] technology . . . as the basis for our choices and actions," he writes. "People in our culture need models of self-reflection, leaders who will teach them how to look inward and evaluate their motivations and choices" (151). I am still in the middle of figuring out how "teach[ing people] to look inward" looks in the middle of a class on comma usage, but I find the idea itself inspiring.

My freshmen year of college, my RA was (I believe) an introvert; her room devotions were not so much prepared speeches rattled off without pause but shared reflections, spoken contemplations with frequent pauses as she searched for just the right word. Her thoughtful study taught me to think deeply and interpret God's Word accurately, a model that I hope to pass on to my own students now.

Challenge
If McHugh recommends healthy patterns of life and ministry for introverts, he also refuses to allow them to "play 'the introvert card'" (136).

As someone who prefers to turn on Stargate instead of taking the effort to spend time with people, this final point was particularly important for me. Although (as McHugh points out), the effort in people-time is truly effort for introverts, this does not make such time any less important. McHugh writes that "[w]e who follow a crucified Messiah know that love will sometimes compel us to willingly choose things that make us uncomfortable, to surrender our rights for the blessing of others" (63). The point of embracing introverted tendencies is not solely to bless ourselves, to take care of ourselves (though taking of ourselves is important too); the point is to use these introverted gifts to bless others, to encourage them towards deeper, more contemplative thought and ultimately a closer walk with Christ.

That's all I'm gonna say. Read the book. If you're an extrovert, McHugh will help you understand people who are different than you in your family or in your church. If you (like me) are an introvert, the book helps you (in a way that the contemporary extroverted church does not) to navigate ministry and life in general, to stay healthy yourself and to contribute to the spiritual lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

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'