Two eyes - one crying, one smiling

As our family was  leaving Budapest last month, my friend Zoltan Monos shared this Hungarian saying with me: "Egyik szemem sír, a másik nevet" (~My one eye is crying, the other is smiling).  This is an apt description of our readjustment to life in Grand Rapids.  Many thanks to Zoltan, and to other generous and hospitable Hungarians (and some Americans, Kenyans, and others as well!) for making our five months abroad life-altering and positive.  Here Zoltan and I are outside a favorite cafe, Morricone's, last August.

My days lately have been spent reading and reflecting in a beautiful new spot, here at the headquarters of the Inner City Christian Federation, a top-notch housing organization working to provide beautiful and affordable quality housing in Grand Rapids.

I don't think there are any easy answers to the question "How was your semester in Hungary?" but we are grateful for all the interest, and for the time to ponder.  We are also grateful for the on-going involvement we have with the students from our semester.  Last night at our home, in addition to sixteen of our Hungary students,  we welcomed also Akos Molnar,  a Hungarian student who has spent January as a transfer student at Calvin. 

Moving forward, my sabbatical time from January through May is, and will be occupied with questions about how learning takes place, particularly in college and university settings, and what connections there are between co-curricular activities like community service-learning and students' intellectual and faith development.  I've just finished re-reading my 2004 doctoral dissertation, and am excited to return to the quest linking movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with today's reality in higher education.  Recent experiences in Europe make the task more complicated, but more interesting as well.

One of the poems we read in class during the fall semester, Healing, by Wendell Berry, concludes with these two stanzas, and I find them intriguingly relevant to my current project:

VIII

There is finally the pride of thinking oneself without teachers.

The teachers are everywhere. What is wanted is a learner.

In ignorance is hope. If we had known the difficulty, we would not have learned even so little.

Rely on ignorance. It is ignorance that teachers will come to.

They are waiting, as they always have, beyond the edge of the light.

IX

The teachings of unsuspected teachers belong to the task, and are its hope.

The love and the work of friends and lovers belong to the task, and are its health.

Rest and rejoicing belong to the task, and are its grace.

Let tomorrow come tomorrow. Not by your will is the house carried through the night.

Order is the only possibility of rest.

–from Wendell Berry’s Healing, in What Are People For?