Today we continued the trip west into Alsatian France, driving through the Black Forest to meet my brother's and my college Sunday school teachers. Thanks to email, the husband has remained a bit of a spiritual father to me.
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After taking a night train to Vienna, I came to the home of a long-time friend from my New York days, with whom I'm staying until Friday morning
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I had a fun, full 10 hours in Krakow yesterday (mostly the old town), but it was not without some drama.
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So far this trip, my lack of Polish hasn't been an issue, but I knew that could change on my visit to Zuromin, the town from which one of my paternal great grandfathers immigrated more than 100 years ago. Unfortunately, my apprehension proved warranted.
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After yesterday's post, I went to a museum of Jewish history in Poland. I have always been interested in the period of history around WWII, but I'd either forgotten or didn't know the particular role of Poland in the Holocaust - particularly that Hitler built all the death camps in occupied Poland.
I had another taste of that history when I went to church this morning, because the congregation met in a building on the historic Jewish street of Próżna, part of the former Warsaw ghetto.
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Today was my first full day in Warsaw, Poland. It's raining here today, so I had to go back to change shoes. When I got back to the main street, to walk to Old Town, a protest of some kind had begun.
Read MoreThe sequel to youthful rebellion against one's elders is often a quieter rite of passage that comes later, when you start shaking your head about "kids these days." Other times you wonder: Are they doing OK? Have they known true joy? For the past decade, sociologist Christian Smith has sought answers to questions like that through the National Study of Youth and Religion. For the latest book in the series, 2011's Lost in Transition, Smith et al. examine what they call the "dark side" of emerging adulthood.
Read MoreEvery few months—if not weeks—it happens: another Christian article on sex is published, usually lamenting some trend or event or book that is out of step with the biblical sexual ethic. Such pieces are usually also united in a focus on what that ethic says about the boundaries for sex. Thus, a preoccupation with the single, the gay, and the unfaithful. What seems of less concern than these boundary transgressions is the reputation and character of the God who apparently forgot that he built his children with libidos that kick in early in life, even as marriages happen later and later and women continue to outstrip men in church attendance, if not conversion.
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