Bilangue

It's fascinating when a two year old automatically knows to say "ByeBye" to anglophones and "Au Revoir" to francophones.

But it's heart-melting when he decides to randomly switch it up and say, still respectively, "See yaaa" and "Ciaooo."

You know what's not heart-melting? When your little punk 5-year-old proudly announces that he now knows more French than you do.

half life

The joke is often that we were engaged in kindergarden, or something along those lines. It was never that serious, but in celebrating our anniversary this year I realized that we've now been together for half of my lifetime.

There are not many others our age who could say that (although we did think of at least 4 other couple-friends that could...) and it's a sort of mind-blowing thought for which I am thankful beyond what words can express. Because despite all the other craziness that life has thrown our way, this is good, this is amazing.

Beauty

And of course beauty: the beauty that was for him the link between the ships and the woods and the poems. He remembered as though it were but a few days ago that winter night, himself too young even to know the meaning of beauty, when he had looked up at a delicate tracery of bare black branches against the icy glittering stars: suddenly something that was, all at once, pain and longing and adoring had welled up in him, almost choking him. He had wanted to tell someone, but he had no words, inarticulate in the pain and glory. That nameless something that had stopped his heart was Beauty. Even now, for him, 'bare branches against the stars' was a synonym for beauty.
-Vanauken, A Severe Mercy

-"Mlle A", Miroir, Fabienne Rivory

First sign a girl is joining the family:

The lint in the dryer's lint filter is bright pink. Strange.

Pentecost 5: Hangin On

E heard an unusual amount of bells ringing at the church this morning. I wondered if it was their way of marking life in the Spirit after Pentecost Sunday and Monday.

It's not always as victorious as those bells make it sound. Sometimes it resembles the title the liturgical year gives it: "ordinary time."

Because sometimes the Holy Spirit gives that extraordinary courage, audacity, assurance, confidence, boldness to achieve wonderful things. Other times he's the one thing that just keeps us hanging on. Looks and feels ordinary I guess, but somewhere in there I wonder if it isn't just as extraordinary, just as worthy of ringing the bells.

Another strange dream...

The other strange dream I didn't know I have involving Icelandic musicians coming true...Sigur Ros on the Simpsons...?!?

Dream Team

The music of Julianna Barwick has been good enough for me to be an intrigued at-a-distance fan, but obscure enough for me to never purchase any of her music. But recording a new album in Iceland produced by Sigur Ros with the help of Mum and Amiina? This sounds like it could be a dream I didn't know I had come true.

Imaginative Empathy

I taught 5th graders about empathy once. I don't know if they would have understood this video, but I probably would have shown it to them anyway.

Portraits of My Father

taken by his daughter-in-law:

taken by his grandson:

The Question of Acts 3 and 4

Which is more astonishingly miraculous:

A man who's been paralysed for more than forty years suddenly running and leaping through the streets

or

Simple, ordinary, uneducated men asking for more chances to boldly speak the Word of God, despite threats and intimidation tactics from the most powerful men in society

?