European Vacation 2015

This summer, Diane and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary.  It was pretty low key, but cool nonetheless.  All seven of the young couples whom we have taken through premarital classes came over in late June for a backyard cookout and conversation.  It was sweet, and a lovely way to remember 4 decades of married life. We had decided to delay the big destination anniversary celebration until Fall, when I knew that I would be in London anyway for my annual business trip there.  Saves on one plane ticket, anyway! 

So, in October, I went to London as usual, and we agreed to rendezvous in Amsterdam (doesn't that sound romantic?  "Meet me in Amsterdam, baby").  From there we boarded a Viking River Cruise ship (yes, just like on PBS) and cruised southbound up the Rhine for a week to Basel, Switzerland.  From there, we switched to train travel for the next week through the Swiss and Austrian Alps, staying in AirBnb locations while we visited Salzburg, Vienna, Neuschwanstein, and Bavaria before heading home from Munich.

Photos taken with my trusty Samsung Galaxy Note 3 are here, should readers care to peruse.  They are pretty much in date order, so you can progress with us from London to the cities on the Rhine to the mountains and cities of southern Germany and Austria.  For the rest of this blog space I show only a small selection of my very favorites:

 

 

 

 

The Don Quixote of US Politics

After moving to Iowa in 2010, I had the opportunity to experience the runup to the Iowa Caucuses first hand, and took full advantage of the craziness.

Working as a volunteer for Ron Paul, who turned out to be the darling of college campuses, and the pariah of the mainstream Republican establishment, I got involved enough to actually become a delegate to the district GOP convention and one of the voting members from my precinct at the local county party affiliate.

But as the year rolled along, the factions at the party level, both state and local, became so sharp and intense, that I decided partisanship was not for me.  So, I changed my party affiliation following the election to "no party", more or less in a huff, and resigned my post at the county party level.

Now here we are 3 years later, and I find myself volunteering again, this time for Son of Ron.  Down to campaign headquarters I went, working the phones (again); it was the same drill as 4 years prior, same phone system, except for a small improvement here and there which no doubt came from volunteer feedback on the prior campaign.

The only difference this time around?  No party involvement for me.  Just working for the Don Quixote of US Politics (and his kid who has taken on the mantle of tilting at windmills).  It may be futile, but it's principled.  :)

Experiencing God vs Experiencing Wine

Easy there, dear reader.  No blaspheming here.  But in the latest issue of Winemaker Magazine (one of the only two magazines to which I subscribe, the other being Relevant), a guest columnist (Steve Sieberson) described his recent travels to Greece, relating a lovely little story about tasting Greek wine and then connecting that vignette to another story about visiting a Greek Orthodox priest in Seattle and talking about Orthodox worship. The stories nestle together beautifully:

A Greek friend of Sieberson's introduced him to the landlord of the place where the friend lived, who proceeded to then serve local wine from a jug to the pair.  Sieberson relates it like this:

We proceeded to work our way through the contents of the jug.  At some point I noticed that the old man tapped the table with his glass before every sip.  Looking more closely, I saw that he also raised the glass and sniffed it before each drink.  I asked [my friend] what the ritual meant.  He translated my question, and the man smiled before launching into a detailed explanation.  He made liberal use of his hands to illustrate.

When the landlord paused [my friend] turned to me.  "He says that wine is too important to just drink it.  You have to experience it with all your senses - with your ears by touching the glass to the table or clinking it with another glass, with your eyes by holding it to the light, with your nose by sniffing it.  Finally, in your mouth you feel it on your tongue and taste it with you taste buds.  Only when you drink it this way can you truly appreciate it and give it the proper respect."

Some months later a Greek Orthodox priest in Seattle would describe his concept of worship in a similar way.  Touching the holy water, seeing the icons, hearing the cantor, smelling the incense, and tasting the communion bread - these, he told me, work together to create a complete physical awareness of the presence of God. 

How familiar this sounds to me, and how natural.  Yet it hadn't put the two together until reading this latest issue.  In another place, I've written about my own quest for a worship tradition in which to experience God with all my senses.  It seems like such a natural and simple idea, but is so hard to find in the modern and rational West.  I appreciate very much the Orthodox and Catholic traditions for their emphasis on apprehending God with the natural senses.