Ghent and Bruges in Pictures

This past weekend (July 18 and 19) Iwan, Anne, and I made our way south from Amsterdam into Belgium for a brief holiday. I had never been to either city before, and each of them had only been to one or the other, so we were all going exploring. We decided against taking a frantic pace and trying to see everything, and chose, instead, to see what we could, but to prioritize rest and fellowship. I believe that we chose wisely!

Ghent and Bruges are both beautiful cities. As you will see, they are full of very remarkable architecture, grand cathedrals, inspiring art, delicious food and drink, and some mighty fine chocolate! Bruge is known as the “Venice of the North,” although it is not the only city north of Venice to make that claim for itself! One of the greatest parts of both cities is that they are full of great things to see and do, but neither are so big that you can’t easily walk them in a day. Here are a number of photos from the trip, along with a story or two.

Here we are arriving in Ghent, ready to explore the city.

Ghent is home to a very famous piece of art, known as the Ghent Altarpiece, The Adoration of the Lamb by the van Eyck brothers, Hubert and Jan. It was commissioned of Hubert, but most think Jan, the younger and better-known brother, completed it. It is a series of panels presenting several prominent biblical figures on the top (Adam and Eve on the edges, angelic choirs next to them, then Mary and John the Baptizer, with what most scholars think is a composite of God the Father and the Son in the middle), and an exquisite portrayal of the processions streaming toward the Lamb on the Throne, an image from Revelation 4-5. This piece is housed in the Sint Baafs (elsewhere spelled Bavo) Cathedral, and was so intricate and overwhelming I could have looked at it for hours. For instance, if I remember correctly, there are at least 42 distinct and recognizable plants on the bottom central panel alone. It was a joy to see, and worth the €4 entrance fee!

Another part of the history of the piece-considered by many one of Northern Europe’s finest pieces of art-is how close it has come to destruction over time, whether by fire or by thievery. Apparently it was taken by the Germans in WWI, and returned after the war (though one was lost and had to be repainted from a b/w photograph of the original, the panel is the 2nd one in from the lower left). I’m unclear on the exact history, but the altarpiece was stored in a salt mine during WWII, probably as protection from the Nazis who went throughout Europe stealing important works of art, both to fill the halls of the Fuhrer’s Museum, and to simply destroy the cultural heritage of the Jews.

The recent film The Monuments Men tells (a version of?) the story of a group of American architects and art historians who went around during the war and stole back some of the world’s most important pieces of art, which would have been destroyed by the Nazis if not for their heroic efforts (although lots and lots were destroyed). The ragtag group’s efforts begin in Ghent, to recover the altarpiece.

The Adoration of the Lamb altarpiece in Ghent.

A panoramic of Ghent’s famous skyline across the canal. The setup for the 10-day festival starting that night affects the view ever so slightly.

A great story about Ghent is the history behind their annual 10-day festival (which kicked off the night we arrived). Years ago Ghent had a variety of festivals spread throughout the year, and employers began to complain that whenever there was a festival, many of their employees would call in sick on Monday morning (this is Belgium, after all, they’re not drinking Coke all weekend). So, in typical Dutch/Belgian pragmatism, they decided to just moved all the festivals together and made a mega-festival. This way people can just take this time off a work, get their festival on, and then get back to work until next year!

Fabulous food (I had both smoked and pan fried salmon) in the shade on the edge of the main square. We ended up having front row seats for the parade that went by…

There was a small parade that went by, apparently to kick off the festival?? I have to say, it was a pretty pathetic parade – no offense intended! There was a small band, two VW beetles, a confetti canon shaped like a carrot, a strange hotdog stand looking mobile home thing on wheels, and (the last part was awesome, actually) a group of percussionists who used only throw-away or home decor products to create a really cool beat! (though the fact they were wearing white suits and gas masks was a bit freaky)

The parade begins.

The police man who was walking in front of the cars pointed to his eyes, then to the driver of this car, as if to say “I can see that you are drinking and “driving”. It didn’t stop him from drinking!

These guys were awesome, if not a bit scary.

We spent the night in a “budget” hotel in Bruges. It was the smallest hotel room I have ever been in, and it had bunk beds! I slept on the twin bed that was overtop a double bed. That was actually a brilliant design. There was nowhere to sit except the bed; the shower was 3 feet from the bed and exposed to the room, and the bathroom door did not latch. We didn’t spend very much time there, but it served its purpose!

This seemed quintessential Dutch/European to me – woman sweeps a perfectly clean street/sidewalk early in the morning.

Breakfast under a canopy off the main square in Bruges was heavenly – delicious food and a really fun atmosphere. The colors of the buildings in the background are so fun!

Belgians take beer very seriously.

Anne and I on a scenic bridge over the canal with one of many incredible cathedrals in the background.

This was random, but fun!

All in all it was a very fun adventure, the perfect combination of seeing the places and enjoying the company. Both cities are worth visiting again. They are both romantic cities with scenic canals, impressive buildings, cafes with large terraces, and chocolate shops on every block. Perhaps someday Mariah and I will be able to explore them together!

 

 

Making and Missing the Path

I can’t help it. Every time I travel I end up thinking about paths. Maybe it’s because here in Amsterdam I’m closer to the path and it goes by more slowly, because I’m either walking on it or (typically) riding on it on my bike (instead of driving in the States). That’s possible, but the more likely reason is that I more commonly find myself on the wrong path when I travel, which shines a spotlight on my disastrously (or delightfully, depending on the day) incompetent sense of direction. My mom likes to apologize that I got her inner compass instead of my dad’s. But honestly, I make my mom look like Magellan.

There are certain paths that have become well-worn paths, like the “paths of righteousness” in Psalm 23, or the “wagon tracks” of Psalm 65.11 (both phrases involve the same Hebrew word for path). I can get from my apartment to the university, to the church, to a couple of friends’ houses, three grocery stores, and a smattering of other places without the aid of Google maps. However, if I need to go anywhere else, even if it is only a block or two away from another place I know, the chances of me getting lost along the way are very high.

Part of it is an inability to translate the digital map on the screen with the reality before and beneath me as I ride to my destination. I can’t tell you how many times I have looked down at the map on my screen (while continuing to ride, of course), seen the place where I need to turn up ahead, put my phone away, and promptly turned the wrong way on the right street. It’s not until I check my phone again to determine my next turn that I discover I am way off course. My response is always the same: “How could I not have seen that I was supposed to turn left, not right?!” If I didn’t have Google maps at all, I would be a lost cause; I would never get anywhere without an escort.

*     *     *     *     *

A few weeks ago I had a very difficult, but ultimately very constructive conversation with a professor here at the VU (Vrije Universiteit, “Free University”) about the first chapter of my dissertation. He was quite critical of one section of the paper, and told me in so many words that I had to rewrite the chapter. Initially, I was devastated. I had spent 6 months working on that chapter! I thought I was done! I didn’t think it was awesome, but I didn’t think it was terrible! To make matters worse, my supervisor was out of town for another 7-10 days after that meeting and was unreachable – what was I to do??

Thankfully I have wise counselors, wise friends, and a wise wife. I began processing the chapter with several people, and a new way forward began to emerge. In fact, over the next couple of weeks it began to be clear to me that the new way forward would ultimately be better than the original way.

Then came the decisive meeting with my supervisor in which I would explain the criticisms of the other professor and also present to him my significantly revised outline for the chapter (which also affected Chapter 2). He was very encouraging (even wondered if the professor had been more critical than was necessary, which was affirming), and in the end he agreed that the revised version is stronger and more focused than the original.

He then proceeded to describe the writing process in a way that resonated very deeply with my experience of living in Amsterdam in general, and my attempts to make my way around the city in particular. He began by saying my experience is very typical of not only scholars who are at the beginning of their careers, learning how to research and write, but is an almost universal experience. You begin with an idea or a theme or a question and you pursue it. You read and you write and you develop your ideas. But then you step back and look at what you’ve done – where you’ve arrived – and you realize you are in the wrong place. Then you have to trace your steps, go back to your original question/theme – or, perhaps, find the point at which you veered off course – and then proceed again from there (expecting you’ll continue to do it, though hopefully fewer and fewer times).

As he was describing this I couldn’t help but see myself pulling out my iPhone, swiping it unlocked, pulling up Google maps, and realizing I was 8 blocks away from the right path. It seemed to me in that moment that my stuttering attempts to navigate this awfully complex system of streets and canals has subconsciously been preparing me to learn a very valuable lesson that I will continue to learn and process my whole career.

As I have embarked on this PhD I have learned over and over how true it is that when we attempt to accomplish that which is beyond our capacity, we are confronted constantly by our own inadequacies. As a good friend of mine likes to say, “When I wake up in the morning, there I am with myself again.” Writing this dissertation has been excruciating at times, and inspiring at other times; it is a challenging process, but I can feel myself growing as a scholar and a person (which is uncomfortable, but essential).

*     *     *     *     *

I have done a lot of internal work in the last few weeks after meeting with that professor, and I can honestly say today that, as hard as it was, it was worth the price of coming to Amsterdam this summer. My final project will be better for it, and I have discovered that it’s important to move along the path, but sometimes going in the wrong direction first can be the difference between simply arriving at a destination and being transformed by the journey.

A Truly European Experience

Wow. The last 12 hours have been very full, and very fulfilling. The last 5 hours afforded me an experience I have never had before, and am likely to never have again.

This morning I joined the Chaplain (aka pastor) of Christ Church City Centre, James Hill, along with a theology student at Duke Divinity school who is nearing the end of a one-year stint in Amsterdam studying theology at the VU (Vrije Universiteit, where I am a PhD candidate) to participate in a 3-way conversation about the Trinity during the service. Christ Church is trying to incorporate innovative and experiential elements into the four “5th Sundays” each year. The theme for today’s service (it being the 5th sunday in June) was the Trinity. Other groups were engaging in other experiences around the church, but the three of us had a free-flowing conversation about the Trinity that the congregation listened in on, then we opened it up for questions afterwards. Each of us began with a (roughly) 3-minute intro on an aspect of the doctrine of the Trinity. I did the OT roots of the Trinity (of course!). It was a wonderful experience to be able to share some of my own convictions and also to learn from James, Laura, and the congregation on this very important topic.

After church we had a barbecue at the glorious Vondelpark, just a 5-minute bike ride from where I am staying. Since I was asked to bring the grill on behalf of the couple who are hosting me here in Amsterdam (who couldn’t make it), I ended up getting to not just bring the grill, but also man it for the party. James ended up with the same situation, meaning the two of us ended up having a lot more time to chat, joke around, and process the morning. It was a really fun afternoon.

I continue to be impressed in the best possible way with the community at Christ Church. Amsterdam is the most international city in the world, boasting residents from almost every country in the world. This small, historic, English-speaking Anglican church in the heart of the oldest part of the city (a couple stones throws from the OudeKerk, Nieuwmarkt, and De Wallen) is concerned about being sent by God in mission into the world around them, but is equally concerned with having a beating and passionate center to invite strangers and travelers into. It is not a perfect church, and its members are broken, sinful people. But I have experienced something here I have not experienced elsewhere, and it continues to impress me and challenge me to take hospitality seriously when I return home.

Here is James, the Chaplain of CC City Centre trying not to burn the hamburger-like patties on his extremely hot grill while Mark Collinson, Chaplain of CC South looks on hungrily. 🙂

 

As if the rich experiences of community and the gratitude of being able to contribute my gifts to the Church weren’t enough, this evening I had a “purely european experience”. As you (should) know, the World Cup is presently ongoing in Brazil. The rest of the world takes the World Cup (and the appropriately named game of football) very seriously, Europe is no exception. The Dutch team lost to Spain in the final game of the 2010 World Cup, and though their team is not quite as strong this year, they advanced through the group stage and tonight played Mexico for a spot in the quarter finals.

A few blocks from the house I am living in is the Museumplein. Like the Mall in Washington DC, it is a large green space (it even has a small reflection pool!) that spreads out from one of Amsterdam’s most famous cites, and one of the world’s treasured museums, the Rijksmuseum. The building is a marvel, and newly opened (summer of ’13) after an almost 10-year renovation, but that’s for another post. The green space has been filled with jumbotrons for the last few weeks as the World Cup has been continuing, and every time Holland plays, the game is shown live. Thousands descend upon Museumplein to watch the game. Apparently when Holland lost in the final in ’10 there were 180,000 people gathered. Yes, the comma is in the right spot. The atmosphere is electric. It is unlike anything I have ever experienced before. A truly European experience.

I attended the game with dear friends, Iwan and Anne – and 45,000 other fans (44,991 Dutch fans, and 9 Mexican fans). Here is our pre-game selfie, all in orange, or course (my shirt was a consolation prize for signing up for the Tulip Time 10k in Holland, MI, a race I couldn’t run because of an untimely exposure to poison ivy – the shirt has come in handy here in Amsterdam as it’s the only orange shirt I own!).

If you watched the game you know how agonizing it was for a Dutch fan. Mexico scored at the beginning of the second half, and though the Dutch had lots of great chances later in the second half, all were stuffed by Mexico’s fantastic goalkeeper. The tension was becoming palpable as fans began to lose hope. Every corner kick or successful attack witnessed thousands of people simultaneously holding their breath, and then simultaneously letting it out with a sigh and a groan. There is a kind of singularity achieved in those circumstances, even if fleeting (and even if you don’t partake of heavy doses of alcohol).

But, like the light of the sun that breaks forth after a thick storm cloud passes, Sneider’s goal in the 87th minute awakened an explosion of pent up passion. That moment was a singularly unique moment in my life. I have never felt the pulsing energy of 45,000 people erupt in an instant of pure joy and delight (which was not dampened by the shower of beer that inevitably followed as surrounding fans threw their hands in the air). It was transcendent; it was a moment of singular expression.

This morning during our Trinity conversation someone in the congregation asked me how the doctrine of the Trinity was compatible with the OT creed: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Part of my answer was that even when the adjective “one” is quantitative (as opposed to qualitative), it can still refer to plurality in unity. The two become “one flesh.” The whole earth spoke “one” language and used “one” (the same) words. Israel responded with “one” voice. All of Amsterdam cheered with one shout.

5 minutes after this euphoric goal to tie the game, fully 4 minutes into a 6-minute injury time, Robben, the speedy Dutch forward, finally convinced the ref that what happened to him inside the box was worth a penalty (this one was questionable, but two previous no-calls were very clearly penalties, and also inside the box). It seemed to take forever for the ref to blow his whistle to allow the forward who had come in as a sub to replace the Dutch captain, van Persie (a gutsy but absolutely correct decision by the Dutch manager) to shoot. Here’s a video of his shot and the exuberant exhale by the elated crowd as it broke the plane of the goal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDVMUzPokso&feature=youtu.be

Here’s our “victory selfie,” taken after 2 drinks, a hamburger, fries (with mayo, very Dutch), and 30 minutes of nonstop dancing:

Walking through the plaza on our way home from this thrilling experience we saw the remarkable amount of trash 45,000 fans can create in a very short period of time. There were no trash bins put out, so everyone just threw their cups, plates, and napkins to the ground to be picked up later. It felt very awkward and uncomfortable to follow suit, but there were no other options. The only trash bin we found was comically small, and filled to overflowing (a very small portion of the waste left by the fans is in the background, and, sadly, even though probably 90% of it was recyclable, all of it will go to the landfill)

All in all it was exactly what I hoped it would be and more: a truly European experience. An experience I will not soon forget (though I don’t need the persistent smell of beer on my clothes to help me remember).

Nor the Moon By Night

I went for a very long walk tonight through Vondelpark, a very large greenspace just a few blocks from my house. It was full of activity – walkers, runners, skateboarders, rollerbladers, cyclers, picnickers, lovers, you name it. It is a glorious place to walk. While there I ran across this tree that captivated my imagination last year. I can’t figure out how it works, but it appears to be some kind of miracle or wonder.

 

I spent some time on my walk internalizing Psalm 121 for an Advanced Hebrew class I am teaching with Pam Bush this August in which we are going to focus each morning’s devotional time on indwelling Psalm 121. It is a rich psalm with beautiful imagery. The word שׁמר (shomer, “keeper, protector, guardian, watcher”) is used 6x in 8 verses, and each time it is used to describe Israel’s God.

Verse 6 reads: By day the sun will not strike you / nor the moon by night.

It was getting late as I walked home. In fact, since I missed my turn and walked ten minutes in the wrong direction, it got later than I anticipated it getting before I got home. Eventually I found my way to a familiar place – Museumplein. The museumplein is a large greenspace directly in front of the Rijksmuseum, and adjacent to the Van Gogh Museum. It’s kind of like Amsterdam’s mini version of Washington’s Mall in Wash. DC – with a reflection pool and all (see the banner photo at the top for a shot of the Museumplein).

As I walked past the final building before the greenspace began, I was looking down at my phone, trying to get verse 6 in my heart. No sooner had I spoken the words when I looked up and saw this:

It’s not a great picture, taken on my phone at dusk, but it was an abrupt reminder to me tonight that I am not alone. The moon, like the God who made it and in whose stead it governs the night sky, is for me, with me, protecting/watching/keeping/guarding me. It’s easy to forget, but maybe that’s part of why the sun and moon rise faithfully every day.

Remember You Are Dust

There is an ancient Christian liturgical tradition that begins the season of Lent (the 40 day period which culminates in Holy Week when we celebrate Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday) with a service on what is called Ash Wednesday. During this initiation service we reflect on our mortality and our brokenness as a way to prepare our hearts to walk with Jesus to the cross and receive him in his resurrected glory on Easter Sunday. The source text for the service’s name and theme is Genesis 3.19: “you are dust and to dust you shall return.” On Ash Wednesday each participant in the service comes up during a time of silent prayer and reflection to receive the mark of the cross in ash on their forehead (often made out of the previous year’s palm fronds used in the Palm Sunday service)

Why am I telling you all of this, you might ask? My bike ride home gave me a striking reminder of this practice in a way I have never experienced before (and hope to never experience again!), which illustrated to me the formative power of liturgical worship. Let me explain.

I was riding my bike home (see previous post) from getting the flat fixed (having already taken two wrong turns), and was approaching a car repair shop near a corner where I would be turning right. As I approached the shop, lost in my thoughts of deciding whether to head back to the house or continue on to the university as I had originally planned, I saw a hand out of the corner of my eye break the plane of the threshold of the garage door. I thought nothing of it at the time, but it almost seemed to hover there, as if it weren’t connected to any body. Then it snapped, or something like that, and was gone.

I continued riding on for approximately 1 second, lost in thought while this image of the snapping hand gradually faded from my subconscious, until something very hot struck me right in the middle of the forehead and powder puffed out from my face. I let out a soft cry of surprise but kept going – though I tried to stop by applying pressure to my foot brakes on the bike, only to remember I no longer have pedal brakes, since I had just traded bikes (side note, I felt and probably looked like a foot jerking my foot down on the pedal, only to have it spin around backwards, making me wobble on the sidewalk). I finally stopped (with my handle bar brakes) and gathered my thoughts. I could feel a spot on my forehead tingle in slight pain, and wiped it to find my hand dusted with ashes – “remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” says our liturgy.

The hand was no longer visible in the garage, and I decided in the moment not to return and make a scene (if you know the enneagram, I am a 9, and we don’t like to initiate conflict or “make a scene”!). Further, and more to the point, I am in no way certain the man intentionally flicked his cigarette at my face. In fact, I am quite certain it was an accident.

Accident or not, how could I sustain my anger at him when the act brought me back to the liturgy that has so deeply formed me? How could I sustain anger at the bodiless, oil- and grease-stained finger that pointed me back to my own brokenness, my own disorientation, my own weaknesses, and my own sinfulness?

Well, believe it or not, despite all of those compelling reasons, I successfully sustained my anger for the rest of the bike ride home! In fact, I wasn’t just angry with him, I was angry about my bike not being perfect, about getting lost (which happened a couple more times), and about the fact that I was angry at all! Funny how we war within ourselves over these things, isn’t it?

Now that I have some distance between me and that moment, I can reflect more objectively on what happened. What surprised me the most was how quickly I thought of Ash Wednesday. In fact, I believe that my forehead remembered it before my brain did. Medical researchers are beginning to suggest that the body is deeply and intimately tied to memory, and sometimes our bodies remember experiences (particularly traumatic ones, but other memories as well) even when our minds have blocked them out.

The liturgical formation I have received at Ash Wednesday services – when someone actually touches my forehead and wipes oil and ash on it – is a deep and lasting formation. It is so deep, in fact, that it transformed what could have been a supremely awful experience (it would have been much much worse if I was not wearing close-fitting sunglasses) into an invitation to remember my own brokenness and need for the blood of Jesus. Instead of focusing on how I had experienced an injustice (which is debatable anyway), I remembered how remarkable it is that God’s mercy, fueled by God’s love, triumphs over God’s justice, and that the dust to which I will return cannot hold me forever, but on that great and glorious day when the trumpet sounds and Christ descends I will be caught up and God’s spirit will fill me once again (Gen. 2) and my body will be glorified like Christ’s.

And who knows, if this cigarette mark leaves a scar, it will probably still be there – just like Christ’s scars remained after his resurrection – just to remind me forever.

Another Round of First Impressions

Hoi from Amsterdam! For those of you who may be interested to follow along with my adventures this summer in Amsterdam, and want a bit more “meat” than Facebook allows, I welcome you (back) to my blog!

I arrived last Friday at 8am at Schipol airport, where I was greeted and welcomed by my lovely host, Beth Johnson who, along with her husband Jan, have already taught me much about hospitality and how to make a stranger feel at home. I am living in their third floor apartment with a gorgeous room to myself, and I share a living room, kitchen, and bathroom with a college student named Chris. Here’s a shot of the room:

As you can see (hopefully), it is both lovely and spacious!

I knew enough to expect this summer to be very different from last summer, and so I prepared myself to let it be whatever it was going to be. A number of things have already been quite different:

• A number of places look familiar, and I can find my way around (sometimes) without the aid of Google maps (but sometimes still get lost even when using it…)

For example, I walked down to Museumplein the first day I was here and immediately was caught up in watching a pickup game of basketball happening in the park there – I didn’t know there was a hoop there! I didn’t bring my shoes this year. But, no matter, there was a guy playing in flip flops. Flip flops! (in the picture he had already removed them and was playing in bare feet)

• I am living in a much more convenient and exciting location – right in the heart of Amsterdam, instead of a 30 minute bike ride south of the city
• I am already a part of a community, instead of needing to meet people and form a community.

I made some dear friends during my stay here last summer, and I have already been able to spend a good amount of time with a number of them. Iwan and Anne had me over for dinner Saturday, and we all remarked at how peculiar it was that it felt like it had been just last week that I sat in their apartment and we said our goodbyes.

I was welcomed back to Christ Church City Centre Sunday morning, and went to lunch with the chaplain, James, and his wife Anna, and their youngest child Lucy to get falafel at a favorite corner spot. The falafel (or perhaps just simply the company) sparked marvelous conversation about our “illusion of control” that is lost in parenthood, the delights and difficulties of diversity, and what the last year has held at Christ Church.

Sunday evening Beth and Jan brought me, Iwan, Anne, and a number of other folks from Christ Church to a performance of War Horse as part of the month-long performance series called Holland Festival. It was remarkable (even though it was in Dutch and I only understood 6 words: long live the king, father, well done, and a few random numbers). You should watch the trailer at this link to see how they made life-sized horse puppets come to life! Afterwards we all enjoyed a perfect evening along a canal drinking and chatting long into the night.

Monday was a holiday (Pentecost, although very few actually know what it stands for), which I spent catching up on grading for my DL Hebrew class, and finding the local grocery store to stock my fridge and discontinue stealing from my gracious hosts. 🙂 And I rejoined my small group from last summer for a rousing discussion of the story of Jesus’ baptism and subsequent temptation by the devil in the wilderness in Matthew 3-4. So good to be back with them, and to meet the new members!

Today, Tuesday, was a special day. It was like Christmas all over again for this over-sized boy. Today I got my bike back! You see, last summer I purchased a bike the very first day I was in Amsterdam. I decided to keep it instead of selling it and buying a new one this year, since I kind of fell in love with it last summer, warts and all. I let a friend from small group borrow it, but for a variety of reasons he loaned me his until the end of June since he left for the Camino de Santiago before I returned and mine had a flat. His bike was not mine, though, and it was much smaller than mine. To make a long story short, I found my bike at his place and got the flat fixed. The entire ride from my house to his felt like Christmas morning’s sunrise would never come. It was great to see her purple frame over the top of the other bikes on the rack. And, once I got the flat fixed, she was (more or less) good to go (she needs a good tune up, actually).

Cosmetic and functional issues aside, I can’t express how good it was to ride my bike again. So much of my experience from last year is filtered through my relationship with that bike, because every experience I had was made possible by it. My experience in Amsterdam is inextricably linked to that bike. Though it is nothing much to look at, it means the world to me.

Paths

I’ve been thinking about paths a lot lately. The path, derekh, in Hebrew, is a fundamental metaphor for life throughout the Hebrew Bible, especially the Psalms.

“Make known your paths to me, O Lord / Teach me your ways.” (Ps. 25.4)

“He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake” (Ps. 23.3)

“The Lord knows the path of the righteous, but the path of sinners will perish.” (Ps. 1.6)

“Roll your path onto the Lord / trust on him and he will do it.” (Ps. 37.5, literal translation)

“Stand at the crossroads and look / and ask for the ancient paths / where the good way lies / and walk in it, and find rest for your souls” (Jer. 6.16)

There are countless other examples. The word “path” works the same way in English as it does in Hebrew. We speak of “our paths crossing” when our life intersects that of another. “Way” – a synonym of “path” – can also double as a description of life and living (in Hebrew too, the word is ‘orach), as in the phrase “way of life”.

Three separate, independent sources have focused my reflections on the theme of the path over the last few weeks. First, Psalm 25.4-5 has been a central passage for me throughout my time in Amsterdam; it has been my prayer as I have lived here and begun my PhD.

⁴ Make me to know your paths, O Lord;
teach me your ways.
⁵ Lead me in your truth, and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;
for you I wait all day long.

It is a prayer of submission, an acknowledgement that I do not know the best way to go. It is also a prayer for guidance (in fact, the first word in v5, translated “lead me” is a verb form of the word “path,” so it’s something like “path me in your truth,” which doesn’t work in English of course, so we say “lead” or “guide”), which is an implicit acknowledgement that I am either blind or incompetent (or both), and that only with the Lord’s guidance will I ever arrive anywhere – even on the right path to walk, and facing the correct direction.

My reflections on and prayers through Psalm 25 have intersected two other profound reflections on paths that I have discovered recently: the movie The Way, and a poem by David Whyte called “Santiago”. Interestingly enough, both of them are “about” a pilgrimage route that runs northwester Spain called the Camino de Santiago. I had never heard of it until a friend recommended that I watch the movie The Way, which is about a father walking the trail on behalf of his son, who died shortly after beginning the trail, somewhat against his father’s wishes. It is a powerful movie. The story is told very well and invites you to think deeply about your own life and what you are living for.

Finally, another friend recommended a podcast from the poet David Whyte that has been reverberated in my head and heart ever since I first listened to it. Whyte is a powerful communicator, and he speaks like a poet (as you would expect, I guess), with carefully chosen words, talking about normal life experiences from different vantage points that shed light on their sacredness, etc. He recites several of his poems throughout the podcast, and one of them hit so close to home I almost couldn’t get through it. And then I listened to it 10 more times. And then I memorized it.

If you’re interested, the podcast can be found here (I’d start at the 10 minute mark, though, and skip the introduction. The date of the podcast is July 17, 2012)

The poem “Santiago” is about arrival – but not an arrival in which you arrive; rather, the kind of arrivals that are ultimately invitations to going “higher up and further in.” It’s a poem about the expectations we bring with us about the locations we will arrive at, only to find that once we arrive “at what we thought was the end of the road,” it ends up being nothing like what we expected. It is, rather, “another invitation,” and what we realize when we get there, if we are attentive enough to look deeply into ourselves, is that we have become very different people along the way. It’s a profound reflection that goes beyond the cliche “the journey is the destination.”

What was so moving to me about the poem – and Whyte’s reflections about it before and after his recitation – was about how fundamental the experience of heartbreak is to each of the roads we all walk on every day. In the podcast he said this remarkable line: “It’s lovely to rehabilitate the experience of heartbreak, because it’s astonishing how much time we waste as human beings trying to find a path where we won’t have that imaginative organ broken. And yet there is no path you can take where you won’t have your heart broken – no path of integrity or sincerity, no path you can take unless you wall yourself off from reality.”

The life lived in the face of reality is a life in which the “trouble” Jesus talked about (Jn. 16.33) is unavoidable. But, the “deeper magic” of the kingdom of God somehow transforms the trouble, the suffering, the hardship, the pain, the anxiety, the self-loathing, the bullying, the loneliness, and the heartache into something beautiful, namely hope and joy (Romans 5). In other words, the experiences of heartbreak along life’s path are a part of the larger vision of us becoming more fully who we are. I don’t know if David Whyte would say it that way, but that is the path his poem and reflections lead me down.

But heartbreak is not the only experience we have in life, of course. As I prepare to leave Amsterdam and head home, I am reminded of all the people who’s paths crossed mine over the last 9 weeks, and how little heartbreak I experienced here. Sometimes our paths are narrow, treacherous, dark, and full of dangers around every bend. But other times our paths are wide, clear, bright, with broad horizons dotted with hills and fields and flowers and birds. This time has been largely the latter for me, which I’m deeply grateful for.

But the heartache we hold in our hearts is never far from us, and all of our living is a tender balance of joy and pain, celebration and grief, the paradox inherent in what Richard Rohr calls “bright sadness.”

The interesting thing about the path as a metaphor for life is that, as David Whyte sees it, the path continues on as far as the eye can see. Each destination is, in actuality, a trail head, each ending a new beginning, “and the road still stretching on.” The beautiful thing about the path as a metaphor is that the best traveling is done with others. I’m grateful for those whose paths have become my path for the last 2 months, and am eager for our paths to cross again. I’m also eager for my path to return to those I was walking it with before I left, hoping we are still walking in step when my feet hit the ground next to theirs.

“The Glimpse” a wood carving by Hilary Paynter, the piece that, in part, inspired David Whyte’s poem

Santiago
by David Whyte

The road seen, then not seen, the hillside
hiding then revealing the way you should take,
the road dropping away from you as if leaving you
to walk on thin air, then catching you, holding you up,
when you thought you would fall,
and the way forward always in the end
the way that you followed, the way that carried you
into your future, that brought you to this place,
no matter that it sometimes took your promise from you,
no matter that it had to break your heart along the way:
the sense of having walked from far inside yourself
out into the revelation, to have risked yourself
for something that seemed to stand both inside you
and far beyond you, that called you back
to the only road in the end you could follow, walking
as you did, in your rags of love and speaking in the voice
that by night became a prayer for safe arrival,
so that one day you realized that what you wanted
had already happened long ago and in the dwelling place
you had lived in before you began,
and that every step along the way, you had carried
the heart and the mind and the promise
that first set you off and drew you on and that you were
more marvelous in your simple wish to find a way
than the gilded roofs of any destination you could reach:
as if, all along, you had thought the end point might be a city
with golden towers, and cheering crowds,
and turning the corner at what you thought was the end
of the road, you found just a simple reflection,
and a clear revelation beneath the face looking back
and beneath it another invitation, all in one glimpse:
like a person and a place you had sought forever,
like a broad field of freedom that beckoned you beyond;
like another life, and the road still stretching on.

From Pilgrim, copyright 2012, David Whyte

The Netherlands is More Than Amsterdam

Yesterday was one of the most wonderful days I’ve spent in Holland yet. Two new friends of mine, Iwan and Anne, invited me to join them on an adventure, since they were going to have a car available to them for the weekend. They suggested we explore two places in Holland that have a very unique, and in some ways complicated history: Schokland and Urk. Both of these places used to be islands. Yes, used to be.

First a bit of the historical context, then pictures galore to come later on. If you consider blog posts to be more like newspapers or magazines and prefer to just look at the pictures and read the captions, or if you just want to hear about the different things we did yesterday, feel free to scroll down to the photo section below! For the inquisitives among us, read on…

I don’t know all of the details, or even many of the details, but what I do understand is that back in the 40s and 50s the Netherlands was conducting massive “land reclamation” projects in which it was literally expanding its borders out into the ocean by converting ocean into develop-able land by building dikes and walls and doing all manner of other ingenious things. I think this process began before the 40s, but it was around this time that Urk and Schokland ceased to be the very thing that had always and forever been the marker of their most fundamental identities: they were islands, but islands no longer.

Schokland was an island in the Zuiderzee (“South Sea”, pronounced zow-der-zay) and was constantly under threat of flooding. It was abandoned by government decree in 1859 when the coast had shrunk so much it was no longer safe to live there. Today the border of the small island is lined with trees and a path, which we walked yesterday in an hour or two. Here’s a picture in which you can see the path/border quite clearly:

As you can see, very little water remains! It is mostly farm land, I think. The majority of the area within the older border is pasture (see photos of goats and cows below!).

Sidenote: Yesterday morning was quite chilly and overcast. I actually felt the very light spray of a misty rain as I rode my bike to rehearse with Eugene for the service we led together this morning on the guitar. It was still overcast as Iwan, Anne, and I began our trek around Schokland. However, as we began to make our way from the Schokland Museum gift shop through the parking lot, the sun poked its arm through the clouds, beginning a process that continued for the next 30 minutes, until almost the entire sky was clear and the sun could bathe the entire horizon with its light. By the time we got to Urk it was downright hot! It was a glorious gift, though it also meant that none of us put on sun screen, since the cloud cover had been so dense. Luckily, none of us got very burnt!

After wandering around Schokland we drove to Urk. Urk is still inhabited, by about 18,000 people, and is a very unique location culturally. As I understand it, many of the men are still fishermen, though the fishing industry drastically changed when Urk was rejoined to the mainland (Urk still has a coast, as you’ll see below) because the process that reclaimed the land and reconnected Urk to the mainland had the effect of transforming the Zuiderzee from a salt-water sea to a freshwater sea, thereby cutting it off from the ocean and transforming the fish population, the fishing industry, and the fabric of Urkan culture (not sure if that’s the correct adjectival use of Urk…) along with it.

Note: I’m not entirely sure if all of the details of what I said above are correct, but the main thing is that the sea on the coast of Urk changed from salt water to fresh water, which was really significant!

Urk was an island that took great pride in being an island. Its people were a people set apart. Everyone I have told who lives here that I went to Urk (or told beforehand that I was going to Urk) has had something to say about it, a lot of people commenting on how Urk is a very unique place, and that it’s kind of a different world from the rest of the Netherlands. I know a man from Urk – Bert de Jong. He’s in my small group. I like Bert quite a bit. In talking with him about Urk, he also describes it as a unique place. It is very close-knit, everybody knows everybody else (and their business!). There are many churches, and “98% of the people go to church,” although it is done primarily out of custom and obligation. Bert said you would be thought of as weird if you didn’t go to church in Urk.

While we were walking around Urk I was joking with Iwan and Anne about how I’ve been trying to find various equivalents to my experience here in America (since I’m American and all, and therefore everything revolves around us). It struck me later on that Urk is a bit like Holland or Zeeland, or the smaller towns of Drenthe or Vriesland in West Michigan (not surprisingly all of these historically Dutch cities in Michigan are names of cities or provinces in the Netherlands). It’s not a perfect analogy, I’m sure, and I don’t know a lot about the cities in Michigan I just referenced, but the analogy seemed to fit the West Michigan Dutch stereotype at least.

Now, the photos!

As I’ve posted on Facebook before, cars in Amsterdam are quite a bit smaller than in America as space here is a super-premium (and they are a bit beyond us with regard to fuel-efficiency standards, I do believe). I was a bit nervous when I saw the car we were going to be taking:

Interestingly enough, however, I ended up having more leg room in the front seat of their car than I do in the passenger seat of my Ford Taurus sedan – even with the seat moved up a bit to give Anne more leg room in the back! Small, efficient, and spacious – brilliant!

The further out from condensed civilization you get, the more modern windmills you see. This was a particularly impressive stretch of them along the highway (you may have to click on the image to increase its size to see them fade into the distance)

This is a unique piece of art along the highway. It is made of bricks and is a house with a chimney out of which water is flowing, upon which a boat rests. The level of the boat upon the water is the indicator of sea level. At this point we were 6 meters below sea level!

First, walking the border of Schokland:

Anne walking on the path next to the cow pasture. The image of the path stretching on into the distance left a real impression upon my imagination, and got me thinking about the significance of paths. I may post another blog about that later on.

This was the official national symbol of something or other. Iwan told me, but I forgot. It was just sitting in the middle of nowhere, and didn’t seem to capture the spirit of anything other than curiosity. Though the many arms coming to a point at the top and pointing to heaven is certainly an interesting thought.

Iwan and Anne striking an artistic pose.

A dead tree that captured my imagination, particularly against the striated blue sky, and the deep green grass. I paid for it, though (and made Iwan do the same) because we rubbed against stinging nettles on our way off the path to get the shot.

This is a shot of the old harbor at Schokland. You can still see the lighthouse standing there, and beyond it a small building that had a foghorn on top of it that was operated manually and blown when the mist would settle on the sea, rendering the land hard to see. The building is called The Misthoorn.

Me making friends with the locals. This guy actually licked me a couple of times, which was both fascinating and gross. Cow tongues are ginormous, and prickly!

Back in the parking lot and ready to head to Urk!

Next up: Urk!

We parked the car in the lot right next to this site. For those of you who live in or have been to Holland, Michigan, I felt for a moment as if I was sitting on the deck of the Piper looking out at the Aldean Shipyard across the bay from Holland State Park.

There is something absolutely captivating about the sea. Just to the right of this photograph, the sun was still high above the horizon and its light danced in a million sparkles on the surface of the water, constantly changing its rhythms according to the wiles of the wind. It was magical. If it hadn’t hurt my eyes, I probably could have looked at it for hours.

Apparently, if we had neglected to get a shot in front of the lighthouse, we could not have officially said we had been to Urk. 🙂 So, here’s proof!

Now I had heard that a very traditional Dutch culinary experience is eating raw herring. I am not necessarily a fan of eating raw fish, but since Iwan loves it, and I therefore had a knowledgeable guide who could walk me through the correct way to eat it, I felt like this was my best chance to do it. And, he said he’d finish it if I couldn’t stomach it, so I knew it wouldn’t go to waste! (And, in the back of my head I remembered Mariah telling me to eat more fish for the healthy omega 3 fatty acids, the benefits of which Anne is researching actually – so it seemed like the planets were aligning for me here to eat the fish)

Here’s a play-by-play that Anne kindly took while Iwan was instructing me.

Iwan and Anne pointed out how particularly Gollum-like I was here as I ripped the raw fish out of the clutches of my teeth…

Here’s me after my third (and last) bite. I can’t say I liked it, but I’m glad I tried it!

This is the place where it all went down.

After washing the fish down with the best fried fish I’ve ever tasted, then some delicious gelato (and a scoop of berry fro-yo) we headed back toward Amsterdam, but stopped first at Iwan’s parents house for dinner. They live in that most beautiful home – made beautiful by their meticulous commitment to growing and loving their elaborate flower gardens. Martin, Iwan’s dad, grew up on a tulip farm, and has “green hands” – not just thumbs! I can testify! Here’s just a couple of shots, but the flowers were everywhere, and they were all incredible.

Here’s the delightful family (and a nice shot of the greenery that flanked us as we sat facing the canal right at “golden time,” just before the sun set), with whom I had great conversation and a delicious meal (with another round of ice cream, for good measure! Kyle, do as I say, not as I do…):

Mint tea, grown by Martin, and a delight to all the senses!

After all was said and done, I reflected on something that a couple of people told me before I came here: the Netherlands is more than Amsterdam. Yes, it is absolutely true. The Netherlands is Urk and Schokland too. But, more than any of the places in the Netherlands, I think the real heart of the Netherlands resides in its people: in Iwan and Anne, and Iwan’s parents, and the people of Christ Church that have so warmly embraced me, and the people living in Oude Zuids doing ministry in the Red Light District, and the professors and administrative assistants at the VU, and all the tourists that flood Amsterdam from Centraal Station every day, and all the people living here who are just living their lives in the same way each of us are. The people of the Netherlands, I’m coming to realize, are the beating heart of the place, and the dynamic that gives the place its power and allure.

The people, without a doubt, are what I will miss the most when I head back to Michigan in 10 short days.

Photo Journal of the Last Few Days

Ever since I listened to a podcast in which the poet David Whyte was interviewed about a book he’d recently written (the interview took place in 2009) titled The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self, and Relationship, I’ve been thinking about what it means (and what it takes) to invest in healthy and holistic ways in each of my “three marriages” (to Mariah, to my vocation, and to myself). Over the past week, as I have been investing a lot of mental energy in preparing, organizing, and now beginning to write one of the chapters of my dissertation (vocation), it has become imperative for me to reflect on how to keep each relationship healthy.

In my efforts to do so I have made some decisions I may not have otherwise felt the freedom to make. For instance, yesterday I left the office at 2 and went on a bike ride to downtown Amsterdam in order to tour two historic churches. My brain was fried, and I realized the need to create distance between me and my dissertation then, so that I could cultivate a deeper intimacy today, and next week.

You will be glad to hear that I have not included any pictures of me thinking about what to include in the chapter, or puzzling over the best way to phrase this idea, or if this paragraph fits better in this or that section. Instead, I’ve chosen to show you pictures of me investing in my other marriages – but mostly my marriage to myself (since my wife isn’t here to pose in the pictures with me!).

I will start with Mariah, though. She sent me this picture on Sunday, and it is now the lock screen image on my phone (which, by the way, means that I see it multiple times a day…).

She’s standing in front of a bunch of sweet peas, which were our wedding flower – they are in season every year around our anniversary!

On Tuesday I had the delightful opportunity to share a meal with a couple from my church that are becoming dear friends. They have shown me such hospitality – as so many from Christ Church have. Very near their house is the beautiful and quiet Amstel Park. We walked there from their apartment to have a picnic meal, which was delicious.

Here I am with Iwan and Anne after putting all the food and dessert to rest!

On Wednesday I was invited to yet another home for dinner! Brenda and Matthijs (Brenda was the first person in Holland that I met; she’s also a PhD student in OT at the VU, and did her M.Div at Calvin Seminary; she and Matthijs have been super thoughtful and hospitable to me throughout my stay!). Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of us sitting on the roof of their apartment. But here is a picture I took on the way as I rode along the Amstel River:

I call it “Three Generations.” It’s so adorable, and also a rather typical scene in Amsterdam. A younger person rides on the flat part above the rear tire and the parent rides the bike. Here the mother is apparently talking to the grandmother while putting her arm around her shoulder. I almost hit them taking it, but I think I swerved nonchalantly enough to not be noticed…

Yesterday (Thursday), I went into Amsterdam and visited two historic churches. The first is called de Oude Kerk (Old Church). Construction on the first version of it began in the early 13th century (it was originally made of wood), but the stone edifice was consecrated in 1306. An interesting part of its history is that it was built a Catholic Church, and was so until the mid-16th century when the Reformation swept through Amsterdam. The church was defaced and its furniture and iconography destroyed – the only thing untouched were the paintings on the ceiling, for they were unreachable. Services are still conducted in the church to the present day. If I am feeling particularly bold on a Sunday evening, and desiring to attend a Dutch service, I may go to their evening vespers service before I leave.

The striking facade of de Oude Kerk today. It dominates the skyline of the area (directly across the canal from the church is the boundary of the Red Light District)

This gives you a bit of a perspective of the scale of the church. Its interior is massive, and the central portion is lined with pillars. Magnificent windows fill the walls on either side, many of them with colorful and very detailed stained glass images inspired by scripture (and, in one case, the life of the donor of a window, whose family was placed in a vaguely Medieval looking setting, that also appeared to be set in something quasi-scriptural)

Looking from beneath the organ toward the front of the sanctuary.

One peculiar thing about the Oude Kerk is that strewn about the outer walkway surrounding the actual worship area is a variety of modern art of all shapes, sizes, and styles. This one seemed particularly meaningful, but many of them strained the imagination as to why they were on display in this location (or at all!)

I love winding staircases. I couldn’t resist taking the picture.

From there I went around the corner and visited Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder (Our Lord in the Attic), a fascinating church completely invisible from the street. Built in the 17th century (it began holding services in 1663, precisely 350 years ago), this Roman Catholic church was constructed in secret because the government wouldn’t allow Catholics to worship in town openly. They were tolerated if the church did not appear to be a church from the outside, and so a wealthy businessman began constructing the church in the upper 3 floors of a building he purchased in the heart of Amsterdam. It took a couple of years to build, but when it was finished it could seat 150 people, had two balconies (which were situated around the edges of each of the two floors they cut away to make the church), and space enough for an organ (which, I think, wasn’t installed for another hundred years). It is undergoing a renovation process, but it all seemed to be pretty much open. They restored the color of the church to what it looked like sometime in the mid-nineteenth century. A few pics:

You can see pretty much all of it here. It’s a striking space to be sure (the pink ensures that much at least), and to think it’s all in the upper 3 floors of a building and is completely invisible from outside! You cannot judge a church by its exterior walls!

View from the top floor balcony.

The confessional booth.

The rest of the building was home to various people throughout history, but the priest of the church always resided there. This was his bed, called a “box bed.” It’s about as wide as the photograph on your screen. I thought Dutch people were supposed to be tall!

The only accessible stairs where the original, 17th century oak stairs are still exposed. The design of the staircase is really imaginative!

Again, not the most height-friendly of doors!

There was a latrine in the same room as one of the prep rooms in the kitchen. Of course there was, you wouldn’t want to be caught chopping vegetables and not be able to get to the bathroom because it was in the other room!

Today I went for a leisurely bike ride along the Amstel River, taking photos of some of the incredible homes that line the river. Some of the homes themselves are the main attraction, some of the homes give way to the real event: the garden. Others chose to have the main event be the courtyard, replete with a surface level pool and a glass-enclosed workout space. To each his own. Enjoy the photos!

 

Do you see the fountain and the edge of the garden in the back? Wowzers!

Can you make out the tree house on the right hand side of the photo? So cool!

Every once in a while there was a house whose owners took a bit less pride in maintaining appearances…

Goats! The most energy efficient and economical option for lawn care.

Cows lounging around on a Friday afternoon. And there are sheep in the background, across a small canal! It’s so green everywhere.

The one who makes it all possible: my bike. I’m really going to miss her when I head back to the states.

And, I’ll end where I began. This is me talking with Mariah on FaceTime today. What a gift she is to me!

A Legacy of Giving and Forgiving

I’m not the kind of person who does a lot of pre-planning before going on trips or visiting new places. Part of it is laziness, probably. Part of it is that I generally am where I am most of the time (think through that one, it’s profound, I know) and attempting to live fully in the present, so preparing for a future visit in that way is a mental switch I don’t always make. Part of it is that I just don’t get a kick out of that kind of planning and administrating.

Knowing this about myself, I ended up making two important decisions. First, on the way to the airport in Michigan I purchased Rick Steves’ guidebook to Amsterdam, which I read a bit of on the plane, and a bit more of my second weekend here. I learned a lot from it, though my second decision probably made my first decision unnecessary. The second thing I decided to do was to ask locals about what to do, and to ask other people who were visiting, or who lived here but weren’t born here what they thought I should see while I was here.

My first weekend here a new friend, Matthijs, told me I should visit the Corrie ten Boom house in Haarlem. I knew of Corrie ten Boom and “The Hiding Place” though I had not read the book or seen the movie. I added it to my growing mental list of places to see.

Yesterday ended up being the day I chose to go to Haarlem. The weather was perfect, mild, partly sunny, slight breeze, no chance of rain. Haarlem is about 22 km from my apartment, so I knew this would be a bit of a stretch for me on the bike (I have never ridden 45 km in a single day before in my life), but I wanted to take my chances.

Besides starting out 2 or 3 times, only to swing back either to go to the bathroom or to get something I’d forgotten (or turning around and around because I couldn’t figure out how to get myself to the starting point of my Google map route…), I eventually got on the road and in the right direction.

The initial phase of the journey was routinely breathtaking. I traveled through a park of some sort (perhaps what I hear people talking about as “the forest”??) that made me feel like I was in either northern Michigan or the pacific northwest with dense rows of trees blocking out much of the sunlight that suddenly break open to large meadows of wild grasses lined with tall pines of some sort. At the top of the first hill I encountered, this was the gift I received for my efforts:

Later on, after getting on the long, straight road that basically took me all the way from Amstelveen to Haarlem, I almost fell off my bike. I smelled it before I saw it. It was intoxicatingly sweet and fragrant. I don’t know what kind of a field it was, and I couldn’t get as close as I wanted to because of a canal between the road and the field, but as far as the eye could see was this field of white flowers, stretched in either direction:

Eventually I arrived in Haarlem and found my way to the Corrie ten Boomhuis. As I was locking up my bike outside the door the last few were entering the house for the English speaking tour. I asked to join, and even though it was overbooked already, she allowed me to come (the next English tour was 1 hr, 45 min later). 28 of us crammed into the great room of the ten Boom residence to hear the history of the house and the family. It’s quite a remarkable story. Here are some highlights I recall.

The house itself was built in the 1400s. I literally cannot fathom that.

Corrie’s grandfather, Willem, purchased the home in 1837. In 1844, inspired by a passage in the book of Isaiah, he began a weekly prayer meeting, held in the home, in which part of the time was devoted to praying for the peace of the Jewish nation and Jerusalem, as Isaiah had instructed. Every week for 100 years the family and friends would gather to offer up prayers for the needy, the broken, and for their Jewish brothers and sisters, and for Jerusalem. In fact, exactly 100 years later, on Feb. 28, 1944, during one of those weekly prayer meetings, the family home was raided by the Gestapo and they were arrested and taken to concentration camps.

Corrie was around 50 years old when they joined the underground movement in Haarlem to protect Jews from the Nazi policies during their occupation of Holland in the second World War. In fact, she was the ringleader of Haarlem, and the underground system contributed to saving around 800 lives in Haarlem alone. The ten Boom house contributed to saving 80 lives (not all actually hid in the home, but were helped in other ways, the home being a center for all kinds of justice work).

Eventually the Gestapo got wind of the operation running through the ten Boom house, and set up a trap for the family. Corrie’s sister, at the very last minute, suspected some kind of trap and buzzed the warning signal through the house shortly before the Gestapo entered to search the premises, and all 6 Jews in the house at the time raced to the hiding place.

The Gestapo were very skilled at smoking out hiding places; they knew all the tricks to look for: floor boards running under walls would suggest a false wall. Knocking on the walls would reveal hollow spots/false walls, etc. The man who built the hiding place in the ten Boom house also knew all the tricks, and he incorporated them into creating a truly undiscoverable room. The false wall was built out of bricks (which had to be very carefully and systematically brought into the house to not raise suspicion), and the floor boards were torn up and re-laid to end at the new wall. The entrance was at the bottom of a floor-to-ceiling shelving unit and was only openable from the inside, constructed with counter weights.

The space is 8′ wide and 2′ deep, and 6 adults hid in it for 47 hours straight (the house had been put on 24/hr surveillance, even though nothing had been found. They figured they had just missed something, so they kept looking). Two of them took turns rotating to apply pressure to the sliding door at the base of the shelves, because it would have sounded hollow when struck.

The hiding place had a small can for bathroom needs, a small ventilation hole, and a few wafers. They had forgotten to refill the water jug that morning.

After two days of hiding, two Dutch police officers that were friendly to the resistance movement negotiated to get themselves on duty to watch the house. When it was safe they entered the house and convinced those in hiding to come out. The stench of feces (the bucket had accidentally tipped over) was so overpowering the officers had to leave the room and not help them out of the hiding place. They escaped by way of the roof. I don’t believe all of them lived through the war, but 4 of them did (I think).

Here is me and a few other visitors in the hiding place itself:

And here are a couple of other shots of the room and the access point to the hiding place:

Corrie and her family were taken to the concentration camps, where her father and sister died. She was actually released, on a clerical error, one week before every woman in the camp over the age of 50 was killed. She was 52.

In 1947, two years after the war had ended, she returned to Germany for the first time to speak about her experiences. She went to a church and told her story. Afterwards she experienced a life-changing event. A man approached her whom she immediately recognized as the single most brutish guard at the camp she had been shipped to. As he approached, all of her memories of her own and other women’s abuse and terror came flooding back to her memory. She was paralyzed.

He told her that he had been a guard at the prison she had been in, and when he heard her story, and the camp she had been in, he knew he had to speak to her. After the war he had heard the Gospel, been convicted of his sin, received Christ and joined the Church. He longed to meet a woman from the camp that he had acted so brutally in, and to confess his sin to her and ask for her forgiveness.

Corrie wrote about how she was faced with a powerful internal struggle at that moment. She knew she had been forgiven, so who was she to withhold that from another sinner? And yet, she couldn’t extend her hand to him to accept his confession and offer her own forgiveness. Praying for strength, the resolve of the Spirit overcame her, and she reached out to him to forgive him. She wrote that that moment forever changed her.

*     *     *     *     *

Last week I listened to an interview a former boss of mine at Calvin College conducted with the theologian Miroslav Volf about a recent book he wrote, the subtitle of which includes the phrase “Giving and Forgiving.” Inspired in part by I John 4.8, 16 (“God is love”), Volf reflected on another way of interpreting that fundamental affirmation of God’s character is to say that God is essentially a Giver. At the root of God’s character, revealed in Christ, is a God who gives, freely, even unto death on the cross. Forgiveness, then, is a supreme expression of the love of God. Forgiveness is something that God the Giver gives, and our responsibility as disciples is to live into God’s legacy of giving and forgiving by “going and doing likewise.”

Corrie ten Boom left a legacy of giving and forgiving that we all can learn from and imitate. I was reflecting on her legacy earlier today as I was reading the confusing and complicated results of the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case earlier today. What does it mean to forgive George Zimmerman for what he did, regardless of whether he was convicted or not? How do we forgive in a way that doesn’t create apathy but mobilizes communities to seek justice and righteousness (which are very frequently paired in Scripture, I think for a good reason)?

I’ve been considering these things as I reflect on the life and witness of Corrie ten Boom and her family. I’m grateful I had the opportunity to see it yesterday, and invite you to consider along with me how you, too, can leave a legacy of giving and forgiving with whomever God brings across your path.