Adventurous Life

In my post "Ebensee" I mentioned that I have been reading for my PhD while travelling to different places in Austria. As I was on the train to Ebensee, I was reading Dirk Lange's Trauma Recalled: Liturgy, Disruption, and Theology . The focus of this book is how. How do you put a traumatic event into words? How do you describe it? How do you recall it? How do you remember it and bring it about in repetition? He writes, "What does it mean to witness or remember an event when the truth of the event cannot be represented?" (69). This reading set me up for what I was about to experience in at the former concentration camp location in Ebensee. Not much remains of the camp. There is the main entrance, the now cemetery which was and is the location of mass graves, and the tunnels in the mountains about a 5 minute walk away. The town has built up and on the camp. As I was walking around I thought back on Lange. How does one remember, continue to remember, when living amo...

I have found that I concentrate better on my PhD readings when I am on a train. Fortunately, I have a yearly ticket that includes about 95% of travel in Austria, so I decided that once a month I would hop on train, read and travel for a few hours with a destination in mind, tour the destination a bit, then board a train for home and read a bit more. This gets me out of hibernating in my hobbit hole, I see more of Austria, get some exercise, and am productive with my studies. Win-win-win.  This month's stop was Ebensee. I tend to choose a location not just based on how far away it is from my city, but also for what it offers culturally and the natural beauty around it. Ebensee did not disappoint. It is a small town on the southern edge of a lake, ringed with mountains at the beginning of the Alps. Yet, it has a dark past. Ebensee was a concentration camp site with the purpose of building tunnels in the surrounding mountains for armament storage. It is estimated that over 8,000 peopl...

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." ~ Hebrews 12:1 Last week I was talking with a dear friend of mine. She has been an active person her whole life and did something active every day. The past couple of years she has had some health issues that have forced her to rest and not be so mobile. To say that it's been hard for her is an understatement. She shared that Hebrews 12:1 is her life verse, and while she would rather literally run outside for exercise, she is having to learn to run and with perseverance in new ways. After our talk, I have been meditating on this verse, partially due to the fact that this verse holds a special place in my heart as it was one of the first verses I ever memorized, but also because I was and am inspired by my friend's desire to run in spite of her health. The pas...