Last night I tried my first glass of kvas (квас), a fermented drink made from black or rye breads, popular in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and other slavic countries. Mine was non-alchoholic, and I liked it, but am looking forward to trying it from a street vendor in his barrel of kvas.
I also just picked up a Ukrainian phrasebook from Rock Point Books, a relatively new bookseller in downtown Chattanooga, right across from Lupi's and Greyfriar's. I've been working on learning the Ukrainian alphabet, and am hoping in the next three weeks or so to learn a few basic phrases.
Drinking kvas, speaking a few choice Ukranian words: cultural aquisition at a 5409 mile (8704 km) distance!
... while I'm in Ukraine the end of next month, teaching English with Campus Crusade. Here is my prayer letter.
http://swanson.kepler.covenant.edu/babynathaniel/
When my aunt Becky saw those pictures she wanted to see me holding Nathaniel, because she thought Aaron looks a bit aprehensive or unsure about holding a newborn. Hopefully my experience holding my friends' babies (Adia and Lyle) came in handy here...
My friend Mark Rico just emailed me this quote, from the Minnesota Crime Commission, probably circa 1960:
"Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it: his bottle, his mother's attention, his playmate's toy, his uncle's watch. Deny him these once, and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness, which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He is, in fact, dirty. He has no morals, no knowledge, no skills. This means that all children - not just certain children - are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in the self-centered world of his infancy, given free reign to his impulsive actions to satisfy his wants, every child would grow up a criminal: a thief, a killer, or a rapist."
So, those of you who read my blog will know by now that I'm consistently infrequent in my entries. Yesterday evening I set out to write an entry about the past three weekends, in which I traveled through or to Knoxville each weekend. Then I inadvertently closed the my browser window while previewing what I wrote, and I lost it all. What follows is a quick attempt to reconstruct some of what I wrote.
3 weekends ago: I drove up to Knoxville to catch a ride with folks from a friend's church up to Louisville, KY, for the New Attitude (Na) conference on Discernment. Na's multi-year theme is "humble orthodoxy" or the conviction that truth is real, is revealed in the Bible and in Jesus Christ, and that believing in him and the truth of Scripture should transform us, so that we live and proclaim orthodox truth with the humility of rescued sinners. (Incidentally, I think "humble orthodoxy" is an excellent answer to McLaren and the emerging church's generous orthodoxy, which sadly fails to give God's Word the appropriate place of final authority.)
The preachers/teachers at the Na conference were: John Piper, C.J. Mahaney, Al Mohler, Mark Dever, Eric Simmons, and Josh Harris. All eight of their messages can be downloaded as free mp3's from the www.newattitude.org website, and they're well worth listening to. C.J Mahaney's sermon on discerning and destroying idols of the heart was very convicting, and Piper's sermon on discerning the obedience that pleases God was both an incredibly refreshing reminder of God's grace for us in the gospel of Jesus, and an direct answer to the new perspectives on Paul and other views which would try to drive a wedge between Jesus' and Paul's understanding of how grace works in our salvation. Piper directed us to Luke 17 and 18 to see how Paul's teaching is in accord with what Jesus himself taught.
2 weekends ago: My parents and I headed back up to Knoxville for Kathleen Luster's wedding to Matt Bowman at Cornerstone Church of Knoxville, which is affiliated with Sovereign Grace Ministries family of churches. From the little I've seen, these churches are theologically reformed, charismatic, and place strong emphasis on the Word of God and the importance of the local church.
last weekend: I made the trek to Knoxville again, this time meet a guy who has a nyckelharpa, to hear him play it, to try it myself, and then to participate in the Country Boy Olympics at Cornerstone Church. I hope someday to save up and buy a nyckelharpa. It sounds similar to a fiddle, except that there are 12 resonance strings under the 3 or 4 melody strings, which are tuned half-steps apart, so no matter what note you're playing in the melody one of the open resonance strings is resonating with it, creating a richer sound than a regular fiddle.
And now I'm back in Chattanooga, at work, and my lunch break is over (I took a very late break today), so I've gotta get back to my job. Until my next infrequent post, hej då. (Swedish for "goodbye")
"When you have given nothing, ask nothing." - Albanian proverb
"For being in the water, is the fish less free than the bird in the air?" - African proverb (Hamidou Kane)
"In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, diversity; in all things, charity." - attributed to Augustine, and emphasized by the German reformers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.