These days Lydia has become very fond of what we nicknamed the “drum CD.” Its true title is “Orient-Occident 1200-1700.” The performers are musicians all the way from Afghanistan to Spain, who play traditional instruments such as the rebab (fiddle), tulak (flute), oud (lute) and daf (drum). Lydia likes the energy, the movement and the…
When you’re a journalist, the story you are interested in isn’t always the story you find, so you have to think how to bring the two together. That was an insight I heard from Miles Smit, a participant in the summer intensive programme “God in the City”, held in Toronto this August. I had not…
Late this summer I went to Mass in small-town Ontario, after being warned that the service at the local Christian Reformed Church (CRC) would probably be long due to a baptism. It turned out that the Catholic church had a baptism that day as well. The coincidence gave me food for thought. Baptism is, after…
Next month, the Christian Courier and several respected academic bodies in Toronto will collaborate in a conference titled Re-enchanting the World: Philosophy, Spirituality, Ecology and the Arts. The document that was circulated to invite potential contributors lists a wide array of relevant contemporary thinkers and a few older ones, mostly German philosophers of the turn…
Heraldry is the study of coats of arms. The somewhat grim picture here shows the arms of a noble family that occupied ecclesiastical offices in various places in central Germany. Notice how the so-called “ironhead” motif on the escutcheon (the shield) reappears in the crest above the helmet. I believe this is a sign of…
Last year I also wrote a summer column from the Netherlands, “Look for hope.” Then we were here for a few weeks, mostly on an extended family visit, but now it is five months because of my wife’s sabbatical. As a result, we have had a much more in-depth experience of the state of this…
My home town of Kampen is a very pretty, small town near the mouth of the river IJssel in the Netherlands. In Reformed circles it became famous because of the seminary founded there by the “separated congregations,” one of the two branches of the Afscheiding of 1854. During the time I lived in Kampen, there…
Sometimes the whirlwind of U.S.-related news carries interesting topics. One such is the “order of love” (ordo amoris in Latin) that hit the news in February. The controversy itself is not worth revisiting, but it prompted knowledgeable people to write on the subject of love, explaining where the idea of an “order of love” really…
Amersfoort used to be the city we’d see from the train, my brother and I, as we travelled home for the weekend during our student days. It was the last stop of the fast “intercity” trains from Utrecht before they passed through the Veluwe forests to arrive at Zwolle. There, we would run to catch…
One of the poets-translators involved in the 1973 Dutch psalter-hymnal, Jan Wit, wrote the hymn “The Word That Called You Into Life.” It is no. 7 in the Liedboek voor de kerken and set to the melody of Psalm 113 in the Genevan psalter. Here is the final verse: “Rondom u klinkt de stem van…
I’ve been with the Christian Courier for a year now, and it’s been such a joy. Looking back on this year of columns, including the one the editors wisely rejected, I asked myself what common thread runs through them. It is, simply, the Christian life. It’s a wonderfully inexhaustible topic, if there ever was one!…
I believe in the great discovery.I believe in the man who made the discovery.I believe in the fear of the manwho made the discovery . . . This is the beginning of the poem “Discovery” by the Nobel laureate, Polish poet Wisława Szymborska (pronounced ShimBORska). It was first published in a 1972 collection. Poland was…
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