I've had a number of people ask me what I did for New Year's Eve this year, and the truth is that I have absolutely no idea what I was doing at the moment the calendar changed from 2009 to 2010.  This is not, however, because I was asleep or drunk or anything like that.  It's because I was in an airplane racing across seven time zones to meet the dawn of the new day, the new year, and the new decade.  And though we left just before seven o'clock in the evening (Central Standard Time) and arrived in Europe at 10:35 the following morning (Central European Time), it was never announced when the hour struck -- because time is a very fluid concept in trans-Atlantic aviation... So I don't really know where I was, what I was doing, or precisely when 2010 began.  I suspect it was somewhere between Newfoundland and Greenland, while I was watching some crappy movie on the in-flight entertainment... but I guess we'll never really know.

What I do know is that we had a great couple of weeks in Ohio at Christmastime.  It didn't feel like we had nearly enough time -- but then again, it never does.  And as much as I could bemoan the shortness of the vacation, I have to admit that we actually managed to fit quite a bit into the time period.

We rode an antique train to the North Pole (surprisingly accessible from Connersville, Indiana!).

We enjoyed snowball fights and sledding and lots and lots of Christmas lights.

We baked cookies and went carrolling from house to house in the country.

My brothers and I made lefse (traditional Norwegian potato-based flatbread).

We played basketball and American football, and we watched basketball and American football on television.  My Dad, my son, and I got to go to our first professional basketball game together -- watching LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers trounce the Houston Rockets.

We re-enacted the biblical account of Jesus's birth on Christmas Day.

And we just spent a lot of good quality time together with family who don't often have the privilege of gathering together any more.

It was really everything we could have hoped for.  Of course, it wasn't without its stresses either -- driving in heavy snowfall, coordinating schedules with a lot of families who each have their own priorities, sharing one bathroom with 16 people (when the water heater went out for a couple of days!), and traveling through busy airports... But so is life.  We made the most of the experience, and for that I am very grateful.

Time passes so quickly, doesn't it?  Some of the family we only get to see in parking lots and every five Christmases.  Some members of the family are quite advanced in age (Marci's grandpa, for example, turns 93 later this month).  It's difficult to project life's trajectory.   And even with all other things being equal, there's nothing to say that someone won't get cancer or some other sickness (over the holidays, I happened to hear about two particularly tragic discoveries of cancer, plus a suicide and a teenage car crash).  It can be terrifying to think of all the possibilities that a new year could hold.

But we can only take it one day at a time.  One city at a time.  One conversation at a time.  There are a lot of anxieties for the coming year, but there is a lot of hope and opportunity as well.  It'll be interesting to see what 2010 will hold.  Happy New Year to all of you...

It feels like weeks have passed since last Thursday, when I set out on my brief pilgrimmage to Bowling Green.  In just five days, I saw so many wonderful people, ate so many wondeful meals, and enjoyed so many wonderful experiences... It was a great trip.  Now that I'm back in Amsterdam, I feel physically exhausted, from all the late evening conversations and accumulated jet-lag -- but emotionally, I am totally rejuvenated.  Good quality time with good quality people seems to have that effect on me.

The reunion / 25th anniversary celebrations at h2o-BG were a very interesting (and enjoyable) experience for me.  Perhaps not quite what I had expected -- but then again, I didn't really know what to expect!  It wasn't like being back in 1999 at all.  Most people have grown / matured / mellowed / changed-for-the-better in quite significant ways.  A few have gotten weirder, their idiosyncracies more pronounced and exagerated with time.  But no one has stayed exactly the same.  Even those who seemingly "haven't changed a bit" still betray subtle signs of their changes -- be it a slight graying at the temples, a deepening of the wrinkles around the eyes, a few pounds heavier or lighter, or whatever.

As narcissistic as it may sound, I can't help but wonder how everyone perceived my own return to Bowling Green.

On some levels, I felt like some kind of out-of-place foreign exchange student.  Like the French teenager who stayed with my family for a month one summer while I was in high school.  His name was Guillaume.  He came with his uniquely European clothes and hair, bearing gifts of wine, fragrances, and European delicacies.  And he left with hundreds of photographs and several pairs of Levi's jeans (which he pronounced like "Levvies").  He talked a little bit funny and didn't always completely get how things were supposed to work in the USA, but he was a likeable guy.  Just a bit unusual.  I know, of course, that none of my American friends would say it so directly, but I can't help but wonder if some kind of comparison like that might be on their minds, too (seeing how I've now got the photographs and Levvies, just unpacked from my suitcase, now that I'm back in Europe).

On other levels, I have to confess that I felt a bit like Harry Bailey from the film, "It's a Wonderful Life":  a war hero, returned from distant shores -- arriving to the party as a last-minute exclamation-point surprise.  I realize that this comparison may seem (and that I may actually be) a bit conceited, given that Harry Bailey was so handsome, charming, heroic, and all that.  But listening to the things that others were mentioning about me, it's not hard to see where the parallels come from.  "Church planter"... "in Amsterdam"... "the pastor"... For a lot of people, these words may not seem like much -- but in the circles of h2o-BG, Great Commission churches, and well Evangelical Christianity in general, these traits are highly celebrated (for better or worse).  And while a lot of different people reconvened in Bowling Green from a lot of different places, scattered far and wide, Amsterdam always made the list of places mentioned as derivatives of h2o-BG (while, say, Orlando or Seattle did not).  It's understandable, of course -- given the fact that alumni in Amsterdam give the overall movement a sense of an "international" influence -- and I do feel blessed to receive a "hero's welcome" when I return to Ohio.  A part of me certainly enjoys the attention.  But the fact of the matter is that the party was not about me.  Harry comes back to Bedford Falls to toast George, not the other way around.  So while I was a little bit uncomfortable (though simultaneously gratified) by all the Harry Bailey attention, more than anything I was just glad to simply be there with the rest of the crowd, raising our glasses and singing Auld Lang Syne with the rest of them.

More than anything, though, my experience of the 25th anniversary celebrations was like sitting in the auditorium, listening to the debut performance of Mr. Holland's Opus.  Have you ever seen the shamelessly emotionalized conclusion to the movie?  Where various graduates of Mr. Holland's school orchestra come together to form the orchestra that performs the piece of music that Mr. Holland had been tinkering with for decades but never got around to seriously composing?  I'm not sure if the comparison to the h2o-BG reunion would make me the awkward braced-teeth red-haired clarinetist who became governor or the punk James Dean wannabe who became the affable dad or what... I just know that I've been privileged to play a small part in a much greater work.A 25-year retrospective offers a unique glimpse of ministry that is not easily noticed in day-to-day life.  Everyday interactions which seem like no big deal at the time become powerful testimonies of God's power with time.  A little conversation about God's grace, a simple act of kindness, a well-timed question... Although these things seemed so insignificant at the time, it turns out that these were life-changing moments, long-remembered foundations to new lives and relationships.  Three or four people told me, on separate occasions, that they kept coming back to our church (some of them eventually choosing to follow Jesus) because I remembered their name.  Something as little as remembering a name!!!  And I only heard a small fraction of these stories of significance (the ones that were shared publicly or in personal conversation) from h2o's 25 years of ministry.  There were so many beautiful stories in that room of 400-some people -- and even that group was just a small representative sampling of those who have been impacted by the ministry of h2o through the years!  All these people and all these stories came together to create a magnificent, symphonic opus of God's glory.  Enough to make a grown man weep -- just like the dramatic conclusion to Mr. Holland's Opus.

I still don't know what to think about everything, but it felt so good to spend so much time laughing and crying and remembering over the course of the extended weekend.  I still don't know exactly how to interpret my own place in the midst of such a scene, but in the end it was just good to remember that it wasn't about me.

P.S. - For those who might be interested in downloading high-resolution versions of any of the photos included in the collage above or otherwise uploaded to my Facebook page, you can go to my Flickr site for easy access to all of the best photographs from the extended weekend in America:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/amsterdamasp

It was a perfectly dreadful, perfectly iconic November day in Amsterdam.  The clouds hung their heavy shoulders and sobbed cold, steady rains.  The trees were down to their last leaves, and the ones which gave up their stubborn hold on their tree branches quickly found themselves pasted to shoes, wheels, and sidewalks.  Still my heart was light and dry because I was leaving it all -- though just for the week -- on my way to reconnecting with old friends from exotic faraway places like Cleveland and Kent, Bowling Green and Orlando.

Walk, train, jog, train, walk, walk, airplane.  I'm ready to fly.

The South of England drifts below, white breakers on populated peninsulas, scattered cloud cover.  It takes about half an hour to traverse this sceptered isle, this jewel of the North Atlantic... When Ireland comes into view, it's white breakers leading directly to patchwork fields, green as photoshop-enhanced brochures... And then, the great expanse of the North Atlantic.

Somewhere south of Iceland, monotony starts to set in.  The hours between half-past one and four o'clock in the afternoon stretch exponentially.  The distance grows neither shorter nor longer.  A trip to the mid-cabin lavatory reveals yellow teeth and eyes, wan skin, the beginnings of little white-headed pimples.  My hair is wiry, greasy, opaquely covering my pale scalp.  I'm in no-man's land.

I can't help but wonder what awaits me on the far side of the Atlantic.  My heart wants it to be a return to 1999:  old friends full of innocence and idealism, no children, no mortgages, no diaspora, watching ice hockey games from the student section, more sheltered from responsibility than I led myself to believe at the tender age of 22.  Before Amsterdam, before heart-breaks and disappointments.  This is what my heart wishes for.  But in my head, I know that it cannot be this way.  Or even if we were able to pull off the requisite pageantry for the course of the reunion weekend -- "for old times sake" -- it could not continue past Sunday, Monday, maybe Tuesday... Much has changed.  Not for better or worse -- just for differenter.

I'm trying to sort out my expectations.  These are good friends, of a rare and aged vintage, that I will be seeing.  I'll be having pizza and playing basketball with men who have shaped me, spiritually, who have known me for the better part of 14 years, who knew me before (and during, and after) I became me.   And I will be visiting many of the old places that served as the scenery for some of the most magnificent times in my life.  Surely, there's something beautiful about the opportunity to be in such environs -- if only for a fleeting moment.  But I don't want to exaggerate or falsely glorify the past either.  I don't want to forget that God has done a lot in my life over the past ten years -- through people and places vastly different, unimaginable and unintelligible to the Eric of 1999.  I don't want to forget that God has blessed me with relationships and experiences, with three children -- three amazing developing people -- since those old days in Bowling Green.  How can we continually remind ourselves that today's "exile" can be tomorrow's "golden years"?!?

Don't forget.  But don't forget to stop reminiscing sometimes, too.  That's my mission for the next week. 

I thought you might like to see some pictures, after the fact, to go along with my most recent posts about my Casual and Critical Observations of Berlin and growing up as Children of the Cold War. 
I didn't bring my own camera -- but here are some pictures, taken and generously copied for me by
my friend Anthony Testa, of our time in Berlin.

The traffic lights (above) were, apparently, deliberate throwbacks to the days of East Germany's different ways of doing things.

The sculpture for remembering Berlin's victims of war and tyranny (above) was very powerful...

Not much is left of the old Berlin Wall (above) -- but still just enough for photo-tourism.

It was a good group of men, leaders from various GCE churches throughout the Continent.  We had some very fruitful discussions and had fun while doing it...  In case you're interested, there are a few extra pictures from Berlin posted in the Zolder50 Pictures section of the website.

In addition to Anthony's pictures from Berlin, I thought I would also link to some of the pictures of Marco and Claudia's wedding, taken by my friend Timo de Winter.  I had written about this Full and Complete European Wedding Experience a couple of weeks ago -- but I just noticed today that some pictures were now up on Timo's Flickr site.

A special note to the above pictures is that the bakfiets (bicycle) pictured as the "official bridal couple vehicle" was in fact our own family's everyday bakfiets!

Above, you can see some of what it looked like in the church, during my sermon...

And here to the left is one of the many beautiful shots of the beautiful couple on their special day.  I hope I'm not stealing Timo's (or Marco and Claudia's) thunder in any way, by referencing these photographs.  I just saw them "go public" earlier today and enjoyed them so much that I figured I'd pass them along...

If you want to see more images from Marco and Claudia's wedding, I would again heartily recommend a visit to Timo's Flickr site.