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“The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the people of Israel, and tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations and to put a cord of blue on the tassel of each corner.  And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after.  So you shall remember and do all my commandments and be holy to your God, who brought you out of the Land of Egypt to be your God:  I am the Lord your God.” (Num 15:37-41)

“We are fundamentally creatures of desire who crave particular visions of the kingdom—the good life—and our desire is shaped and directed by practices that point the heart.” – James K.A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom

I am a creature of desire.  As much as I like to believe that I live from my mind, and that the world can be tamed by the might of reason and brought into submission by the sword of analysis, I know the truth—I cannot conquer anything because what my heart desires will always conquer me.  We balk at this thought, downplaying the centrality of desire.  After all, we can in many ways delineate patterns of thought, but the heart is always and forever inscrutable.  More than inscrutable, the heart is insatiable.  It is ravenous, a slathering, gluttonous beast.  Further still, God calls the heart a whore.

And according to this passage, what the heart devours, the eyes provide.  There is an intimate connection between our eyes and our heart, so much so that what we behold fundamentally shapes what we desire. Where we fix our eyes is where we fix our hearts. Here God says if the eyes wander, the heart will wander too.  Because we are prone to uphold our minds as the center of our beings, we are unaware of how what we do and what we behold shapes us more than what we think. As embodied creatures we enact what we desire by what we do, so habits are not simply a display of our desires, they fundamentally shape our desires and therefore our hearts.  As James K.A. Smith notes, “Our habits thus constitute the fulcrum of our desire.”  In other words, if we would change what we want, we must change what we do.

God, of course, knows this.  The tassel he commands to the people of Israel is something to see, a way to behold the law itself, and in beholding the law he gives them a way to remember the covenant love of a holy God.  The tassel becomes a place for the people of Israel to fix their gaze so that they might remember their way. Indeed, if we understand ourselves as embodied creatures whose habits and actions fundamentally shape our desires, then we can see beyond the seemingly strange commandments to the heart of the law. The commandments of the law, the rituals and procedures, are in fact the habits of the holy, the enacted liturgy of the covenant people, meant to shape the people of God into a holy people.  A holy people for a holy God.

As Christians, we too are God’s covenant people, and we must ask ourselves about the habits of our hearts. As Smith says, we all crave a vision.  The heart is indiscriminate and will feast on whatever we feed it, so we must ask ourselves what we are feeding our hearts.  What are we beholding?  What are we allowing to shape our desire?

What is the measure of worship? If pressed to answer this question, most of us would probably say that worship should be measured in terms of sincerity.  After all, how can worship be worship if you don’t really mean it? This is true, as far as it goes, but it only accounts for the act of worship and not for the end of worship.  It does not ask who or what is being worshipped. Without an appropriate object, worship can be intensely sincere while also being wholly false.  To that end, sincerity can never be the sole measure of our worship because sincerity does not speak to the object of worship.

When the people of Israel brought their offerings for the consecration of the Tabernacle, all the metal objects, the basins, the bowls, the platters, were weighed against the “shekel of the sanctuary” (Num 7:86).  In other words, there was a standard by which their worship was measured.  The metaphor here is that worship our worship weighs something.  If we think of worship in terms of ascribing God glory do his name, this makes sense.  God’s glory literally describes his weightiness.  To say that God is glorious is to say he is weighty; he is worthy.

If this is so, when we place his worth on one side of the scale and our sincerity on the other side of the scale, our worship will always be found wanting. We weigh the shekel of our sincerity in our hands, feel its heft, and demand that God accept it simply because we really mean it.   But we forget that our sincerity is placed on one side of the scale, while the infinite mass, worth, beauty, and holiness of God is placed in the other side.

Perhaps this is why we want to measure our worship in terms of sincerity—we don’t want to be found wanting.  What do you offer an infinitely worthy God?  Nothing less than an infinitely worthy sacrifice. But raised hands, closed eyes, and shed tears are not the shekels we bring to God.  He does not measure the worship of his children by the shekels of the their sincerity, but by the true “shekel of the sanctuary”—Jesus. He is our North Star.  He is the Prime Meridian.  He is the plumb line. More than that he is the priest who is also our offering. If we lift up Christ, our worship is always acceptable.  And if that truth penetrates our hearts, our worship will not only be true, it cannot help but be sincere.

(I am currently reading through Numbers, so my posts for the foreseeable future will be reflections on Numbers.)

After a very toasty train ride from Vienna, we arrived in Prague. Tanner Hargrove, our good friend from Amarillo, had been studying in Prague for the last five weeks. We were glad to see a familiar face, and he was glad to have a reprieve from his studies. It had been a rough few weeks for him. Fortunately, he had acquainted himself with all the best the city had to offer. This made him the resident expert in places to see and places to eat, which was a huge boon to us at this point in the trip because I think we all needed to go on autopilot for a while. Figuring out logistics is one of the aspects of travel that most wears you down. At a certain point figuring out which restaurant offers the most authentic Czech cuisine becomes a chore. Now Tanner could just tell us where the best places to eat were.

All wasn’t roses though. Tanner’s accommodation fell through, and as a consequence so did ours, so we stayed in a centrally located hostel that Tanner found.

Now a hostel can mean a lot of different things. It can mean multiple bunk beds where you are constantly woken up by drunken Australians or snoring New Zealanders. It can mean disgusting communal bathrooms. And in my own experience, it can mean having your bed urinated on by a kid whose just been kicked out of the Peace Corp. True story.

I know that doesn’t paint the most appealing picture, but, I’ll admit it, I can be a tad snobby. Hostels are just very unappealing to me. I know the whole backpacking experience is supposed to include hostels so that you can rub elbows with fellow travelers and join the brotherhood of backpackers or whatever, but its just not for me. To me other backpackers aren’t colorful characters with interesting stories—they are generally just annoying. And even though our room wasn’t that bad, and even though it was in a great location, I would still rather not have to shower with flip-flops on. See. I’m a snob.  But I’m really not because nobody really wants the Swedish couple that parties all night and sleeps all day, snoring in their underwear, to stay in their hostel room. 

Still we had a good time. Because Tanner was quite home sick, he took us to a lot of places that satisfied that certain longing-for-home itch. For instance, there was a coffee shop that served real filtered coffee like in the States. For a coffee person like Joey, this was a huge deal. There was also a Tex-Mex restaurant that had ice tea with unlimited refills, both of which are generally unheard of in Europe. I think making ice might be illegal in certain parts of Europe, actually. I knew then for sure that I was homesick. When you start longing for the creature comforts of ice in your drinks and free refills, you may have been gone too long.

I know it sounds like I’m venting in this post, and I am, but we did have a really great time in Prague. The best thing about Prague is that the most satisfying part of being there is not seeing any particular thing, it’s just walking around. The city itself was relatively unscathed by the war so it’s historic buildings are intact. Walk down almost any street in Old Town and you will find beautiful buildings in all sorts of architectural style. My favorite thing was taking paddle boats down the Vlatava river for an hour.  You can take in the best parts of the city, Old Town and New Town, from the vantage point of the river.  Pretty cool.

Locals and tourists alike like to sit in the Old Town square at night, so we did that too.  That was quite fun as well.  Plus, Prague is home to some amazing gelato.  And as this trip has shown me, you can’t go to Europe without eating lots of ice cream. 

For more pictures, check out Joey’s website.

I can’t really say much about Vienna.  We did spend two days there, but we really didn’t do much.    In Vienna we all started to feel the weight of the trip.  We had covered a lot of miles, seen countless amazing things, and eaten numerous amazing meals, and in many ways we were just completely full in every sense of the word.  Plus, living like a gypsy out of a backpack takes its toll.

That’s not to say that we did nothing.  Doris, our couch surfing host, suggested a food market, an ice cream parlor, and a place to swim in the Danube river, and that’s pretty much all we did while we were in Vienna.

If I were explaining that to a non-travel weary version of myself, the fresh version of myself would probably say something like, “It doesn’t matter if you are tired.  Go see a classical concert.  Go to the Hapsburg palace.  Go see the Breughals paintings, for heaven sake.”  And it might sound crazy to you as a reader, but we were dead tired, and in travel there really is a law of diminishing returns.  You really can see too many churches, museums, historical sites, or whatever.

In this way travel is a great reminder that you can’t live life at full tilt.  A life of constant stimulation is ultimately futile because the stimulation that used to invigorate you is the same stimulation that exhausts you later on.  You need space.  You need distance.  You need rest.

Or to put it this way: I need space.  I need distance.  I need rest.

I was thinking about this idea of diminishing returns in terms to my approach to a particular place like a museum.  After a museum visit I was telling Joey how much more satisfying it would be to me if I had a membership to that museum, and visited it throughout the year to see a particular piece or a particular group of pieces after I had studied them on my own.  Then when you see the thing it isn’t about consuming it as a tourist, but enjoying it as an appreciator.  When you travel this way, so many places in a short span of time, you see most things as a consumer.   Honestly, the places and things I have enjoyed the most on this trip are not the surprises, but the things that I already knew something about, things that I already loved, like the Ghent Altarpiece or The Oath of the Horatii in the Louvre.

I went into this trip having down a minimum amount of research compared to previous trips.  This was for two reasons.  The main reason was that I had been to a large percentage of these cities before, and I already knew what to see and why it was important.  The second reason was that I thought being a little underprepared would add to the spontaneity of the trip.  I don’t know if that has been true or not, but either way, I wish I would have prepared myself more in terms of research.  For me enjoyment doesn’t come from just being in a place, but from understanding the place from a historical or artistic or philosophical perspective.  I have to have context, otherwise it is just a pretty place that feels strange and that I feel alienated from.

Anyway, I would like to go back to Vienna some day on the front end of a trip.  It really is a beautiful city.

Munich, in many ways, seems like a very large German annex at Epcot Center. The part of the city worth seeing is a self-enclosed square called Marienplatz, which all centers on a fantastic building called the Rat Haus. The opulent gothic spires, the glockenspiel, the dragon climbing the side, all make the building look like the entrance to a crazy ride, probably called “The Glockenspiel.” Adding to the amusement park-like feel is the church that supposedly bears an imprint of the devil’s footprint. Plus, everyone in the service industry wears traditional Bavarian garb. There’s nothing getting some brats and sauerkraut from a grown man in a lederhosen.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t begrudge this at all. I quite enjoyed it. I was just never sure if I was in Germany or on an elaborate movie set of Germany, a distinction that’s even harder to make when you visit a place like Neuschwanstein, a romantic castle nestled in the Alps, which is, interestingly enough, the basis for the Disney castle.

I hope none of this dissuades you to visit Munich because it really is an amazing city. I just found all of this kind of funny.

For sure, the castle is worth visiting. When your mind thinks of a castle, I’m pretty sure you picture something like Neuschwanstein. The idyllic alpine setting, the lofty ramparts and towers, the fantastic interiors, all come together to make pretty much the perfect castle. It even rained while we were touring the interior. We could hear the thunder echoing of the sides of the mountains. You couldn’t ask anything more of a castle tour.

Munich was an especially big deal for Joey. Due to a serendipitous entwining of time off and cheap flight, Joey was able to fly his girlfriend, Melissa, over to Munich for a few days. So for three days Tyler and I watched Joey be Mr. Romantic.

Actually, while Joey and Melissa were off being romantic and enjoying the city, Tyler and I were off being goofy and enjoying the city. We visited an amazing technology museum called the Deuthches Museum, walked along the river and in a large park, and spent most of the time speaking like 19^th century British explorers, claiming we’ve discovered things like indigenous drum tribes deep in parks of Munich. Basically, it was your run of the mill silliness, and it was quite fun.

I don’t know what it is about traveling overseas, but I find myself speaking in accents a lot of the time. Being with Tyler amplifies this, of course, but I think there are a couple of reasons why I do this. For one, it is my feeble attempt to “speak” another language, and more to the point, if I speak in a caricature of a language then I don’t feel as bad for not speaking that language. The second reason is that when you are deep in Bavaria, it is kind of cool to say silly things in British accent, like “It’s just around the bend. I’d bet my life on it,” because no one around you is going to understand. The language barrier affords you the opportunity to act like a kid again. Thanks, language barrier.

For more pics of Munich, see Joey’s website.

Our second full day in Paris was a lot like the first. We walked around the whole time stunned at how amazing the city was and shocked at how much money we were willingly spending. We went to the Louvre, enjoyed some shopping in a trendy neighborhood, had an amazing meal, and an amazing night walk along the river Seine.

I could describe it all but I really want to talk about Switzerland.

The next morning we headed to Lucerene, but first we had to settle our bill at the hotel in Paris. We had used the hotel’s laundry service to wash our all clothes, and when we went to pay out the receptionist informed us that we owed 300 euros. Gulp. That’s equivalent to $450, and was more than we had paid for the hotel itself. Apparently the French think washing other people’s underwear is the greatest and most luxurious service on the planet. I expected to pay a premium, of course, but not a king’s ransom just to get some clean clothes. The moral—always ask how much it costs. Alternative moral—don’t let the French wash your unmentionables.

We arrived by train in Lucerne where the couch surfing experiment continued. Our host this time was Natalie. If couch surfing were a business, Natalie should be its spokeswoman. She was an incredible host. She told us that when she was girl she used to dream about owning and running a hotel someday. If she did it would be the best hotel on the planet because she may be the most hospitable person I have ever met. She completely welcomed and integrated us into her life. She picked up from the train station, found us in her car when we were lost, gave us the keys to her flat, cooked us a traditional Swiss meal—I could go on and on about her hospitality, but the best part was talking with her.

When we were all chatting one night, she said something very interesting. We mentioned something about how trusting she was, and she replied, “I don’t think people have to earn trust, I think you just give it to them, you know?” This struck me as brilliant and as a pithy way of summing up a difference I have seen in European couch surfing culture and my own way of thinking. My thoughts on trust, and I would dare say this represents the American stance on trust, is that you distrust someone until they prove trustworthy. It is a guilty until proven innocent approach. And that is probably not the best way to treat people. Something to think about it.

The highlight in Switzerland was, of course, the Alps. The first day we went hiking on Mount Pilatus, a particular famous Alp near Lucerne. After riding the gondola up, we decided to hike down the backside. The first half of the hike was idyllic. It was peaceful, serene, where the only real sound was the jingling bells of the Swiss cows. The air was just cool enough and scenery was shockingly beautiful. The whole experience hardened my resolve that rest for me looks more like spending time in nature.

I mentioned in an earlier post that beauty is an echo of God’s Voice in the world. I also mentioned that art is an echo of the echo. I think one reason that I am connecting more with nature now is that it is one degree closer to the Voice itself. The heavens after all declare the glory of God. You would have to be sensory deprived not to see the truth of that verse in the Alps.

The next day we decided to take a train to Engleburg, a nearby town, to enjoy some adventure sports. We threw around the idea of biking and some other things, but what we really wanted to do was paraglide. So we signed up for a flight and soon enough we were on our way up a mountain to fly.

Like skydiving you have to tandem fly the first time. My pilot’s name was Ottmar. After a short gondola ride, he pulled out the glider and spread it out on a grassy plain on the edge of the cliff. He strapped me to the glider, counted to three and before I even knew it, Ottmar had me running off the side of the mountain. Just when I thought I would start plummeting down the mountain, the glider caught the wind, and we soared about twenty feet above the take off point. I was thousands of feet in the air. I was flying.

For the first minute or so I was in a state of shock, and Ottmar could tell. He kept saying, “The hard part is over. We have taken off and now we are flying,” in his most soothing Swiss accent. I was in such shock that I actualyl was flying, the best I could muster in response was, “Yes we are.”

It really was like flying in a dream. You don’t feel like you are tethered to anything. You feel like you are leisurely floating, which is a rush in itself, but add to that the stunning landscape of the Alps and the Swiss countryside, and you have yourself a dreamy 15 minutes of flight. Truly a highlight.

For pictures of Lucerene and of all our adventures, see Joseph’s website.

As a senior in high school, I took a humanities course. That complete immersion in the painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and literature of the Western world may have been what C.S. Lewis calls the baptism of my imagination. At the very least it created an appetite in me for culture and aesthetics, and I don’t know that I would be in Europe right now if it weren’t for that class.

One of the paintings I fell in love with in that class was Jan Van Eyck’s, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. I have been fortunate enough to see many of the world’s great masterpieces in the world’s greatest museums, but seeing this painting had always been at the top of my list. Part of my affection for the painting is that when I saw at as a high school student, it was one of the first times that I truly understood the ability of a painting to a tell a story. Even if you didn’t know the story of Christ, you could glean so much of what was going simply by looking at the subjects’ faces. I knew that I had to see it and since it was a short train ride away from Paris, we headed for Ghent, Belgium, home of the altarpiece and waffles. Clearly we were going to have a great day.

And it was.

Mostly.

It was windy, rainy, and overcast in Ghent, and because I sent all of my clothes to be cleaned, save for a short sleeve shirt and a pair of shorts, I was completely under dressed. I looked like Johnny America, Lord of the Tourists. I maybe saw one other person wearing shorts the whole day, and I think he was drunk. I decided to buy some pants.

I was so cold and so eager to see the painting that as soon as the tram dropped us off, I headed to the nearest gothic church, power walked through the doors, and proceeded to do a lap around the transept. I looked in ever side chapel, but the painting wasn’t there. I panicked. Maybe the painting was on tour. Maybe I wouldn’t get to see it.

It turns our Ghent has multiple Gothic churches. We found the right church and I continued my power walk search for the painting. And there it was in a side chapel.

But not really.

It was a life size, photographic copy. You had to pay to see the real one.

But I wanted to see the painting in the context it was painted for—in a side chapel meant for personal devotion. I have to say, it took me awhile to realize it was a photograph. Even as a copy, the colors, and the level of detail are remarkable.

And it turns out we were rewarded for looking at the copy. When we walked in the chapel, a slight, old man stood at the doorway. He had a small smile on his face, and you could tell he was waiting for a crowd to gather so that he could tell the story of the painting.

And tell the story he did. He loved the painting. He loved its beauty. He loved the attention it brought to his beloved Belgium and to Ghent. And you could tell he was still personally offended by the theft of one of the paintings panels in 1934, a panel that has yet to be returned. He spoke with pure devotion and illuminated many of the paintings mysteries and symbols. He spoke of the single horsehair brushes Van Eyck used for some of the finer details. He spoke of Eve, the mother of humanity, of Christ, the mystic lamb himself, and of God, enthroned at the center of it all. And because of this man’s passion and knowledge, when we paid to see the actual painting, I had a renewed sense of fervor for the painting.

It did not disappoint.

The painting has too much symbolism, too much detail, too much history to go into here, but it is so worth seeing. It is the story of the gospel, told in image and symbol. This painting exists to create devotion in the viewer for the mystic lamb who was slain from the foundations of the world.

So Johnny America had a good day in Belgium. We saw the painting, enjoyed Belgium’s two greatest inventions waffles and fries (though strangely not waffle fries), and we even were trapped in a parade.

For pictures of Ghent and of all our adventures, see Joseph’s website.

I’ll admit it. We were pure tourists in Paris. You can’t help it, really. For one, there is such an overwhelming amount of amazing things to see and something beautiful around every corner that you walk around with your mouth open and your camera out. Another thing is the French don’t ever let you forget that you are a guest in their country.

I know the stereotype is that the French are stuck up and snobby, but I don’t see it that way. I think they are proud of their country in the same way that we Americans are proud of ours, and to us that comes across as snobbishness. Americans can’t imagine that there is any better place than America, and the French can’t imagine that people aren’t falling all over themselves to learn French.

When you are in France you actually feel bad that you don’t speak French. It isn’t a guilt thing. I never felt guilty for not knowing French. I just had a huge desire to communicate with them in their language. In other countries I usually just go straight for English and then see what happens. In France I always tried to open with some French. I don’t know why that is, but it is something that I noticed. Maybe it goes back to their pride in their country—you want to respect that.

Since we had lost one of our Paris days to the horrors of the Barcelona train system, we knew that we would have to cram a lot of Paris into a little amount of time. And that is what we did. As soon as we got off the train and put our bags into storage at the station, we headed for the Eiffel Tower, then to a boat tour, then to the D’Orsay, then to St. Chapalle, then to Notre Dame. See what I mean—pure tourist.

Of these sites St. Chapalle is my favorite. It is a church in the gothic style, but it is not overwhelming in size. I love that the space is small because sometimes it is easy to get over stimulated by the size of cathedrals, so much so that you can’t take everything in. Not so at St. Chapalle, though it does overwhelm in other ways. The walls are almost purely stained glass, and the vibrancy of the colored glass makes all other stained glass seem anemic. As you turn your hands in the colored light, the color of your skin changes, at once deep blue, then vibrant red. The small space allows you to be swallowed up in colored light. Truly an unbelievable place.

I’m glad in one sense that we lost a day in Paris because it is an expensive city. I don’t think it costs more really than London, but you just want to spend money in Paris. You want the big meal. You want the desert. You want the coffee every couple of hours. You want Parisian clothes. You want everything you can get your hands on. There is something about Paris that makes you manic to experience everything.

I think this is because the French enjoy life in a way that is paradoxical to Americans. We want to figure them out. There are so many books in America about how French women eat incredible rich and decadent food and stay skinny. Which is true on both counts—the food is decadent and the women are skinny. I think the key to all of this is pace. They do enjoy life but they enjoy it at a more leisurely pace than us.

Take their café culture for instance. All the seats that are outside face the street so that the café goers can leisurely enjoy their coffee and people watch. This would never happen in America. When we are in a coffee shop it is for a specific reason. It may be to work. It may be to get a caffeine fix. It may be to read. It may be to study. Even meeting a friend for a chat is a stated purpose. I think the French take life more as it comes, and I think in that non-pragmatic, non- ends driven approach is at the heart of how the French do things. There doesn’t always have to be an agenda. Which is a hard pill for us Americans to shallow. We always have to have reasons for things.

The very premise of this travel blog shows that my American brethren and I are driven by pragmatics. With these posts I’m attempting to show why travel matters, which is a presupposition inherently about value and pragmatics. It is an attempt to show that the cost/benefit analysis of travel actual comes out in my favor in the end. And that may or may not be possible to quantify. Some things are just worth it, even if you can’t explain it.

Look what the French have done. They simply turned their chairs ninety degrees toward the street, and I’m questioning my pragmatic presuppositions. C’est la vie.

For more pictures, check out Joseph’s website.