One of the gifts from this summer that keeps on giving is being introduced to a new author who feels like an old friend I hadn't met until now. The picture below was taken during my week at C.S. Lewis' home, and includes Walter Hooper (second from left) who I blogged about previously, and Aiden Mackey (second from right) who is one of the world's experts on G.K. Chesterton. Who is G.K. Chesterton, you ask? I didn't really know much about him, but Aidan wrote a brief primer on Chesterton that he gave me, and it turns out that Chesterton's book, "The Everlasting Man", was a crucial part of Lewis' conversion to faith. When I read Aidan's booklet, I was dumbfounded at Chesterton's insights and brilliance on politics, family, faith and more. I'm now reading a longer introduction to Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist called "Chesterton: Apostle of Common Sense". Here's a sample of how Chesterton sees all of life as sacred - which is itself one of the main lessons I learned from all my summer travels and experiences:

You say grace before meals. All right.
But I say grace before the play and the opera,
And grace before the concert and pantomime,
And grace before I open a book,
And grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing;
And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

Dale Ahlquist writes: "Chesterton was complete thinker. That is why he is such a challenge to the modern world. We have come to prefer incomplete thinking. We want things in fragments. That way we do not have to think about our inconsistencies. That way we do not mind when our jobs contradict our ideals, or when politics contradicts our faith, because we keep each thing in its own watertight compartment. But Chesterton was utterly consistent. He was consistent because his faith touched everything. He wrote about everything, and everything he wrote was imbued with his faith."

We returned late Friday night from Paris (thanks Alan and Cynthia for the SeaTac pickup!) and are glad to be home, though saddened by the recent death of Kasey Sorum, a teenager connected to our church who had been fighting cancer for two years. Our prayers are with Kasey's family.

Paris is truly all you imagine it to be - the wide boulevards and iconic monuments fill the city with a sense of both beauty and order that is palpable everywhere you turn. It is an example of urban planning done in the 1860s under Napoleon when the medieval city was transformed into a new Paris with broad streets and long lines of sight (making it easier to thwart uprisings!). And the Eiffel Tower is not just a great photo-op but is also a monument you experience because you not only admire it from the exterior, you climb up the interior as well.

So we return home with a profound sense of gratitude for a lifetime of adventures packed into the last 10 weeks. God has been so gracious to us, providing safe travel, good health, family harmony and even unbelievable weather. There was not a single day this summer in which our sightseeing plans were altered due to weather - and in Europe that's saying a lot. And compared to European flats, our home seems palatial.

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We arrived on Saturday in Paris after taking the channel tunnel train. When we couldn't find the address of the flat we rented, we initially feared that we'd been scammed and that we'd be homeless for a week. But then we realized that we were just on the wrong block. Oops. Sunday we worshiped at a 4-month-old English speaking church in west Paris called "The Bridge" which was really cool and met in a hotel. Had a great talk with one of the pastors and learned that several families had moved from the US to form the core group - talk about a step of faith! It's wonderfully multicultural, and the service had live translation into French via audio headset. The message really spoke to us in light of our grief of this summer, and the people were really friendly. We have found this summer that Sunday worship has been a hugely important anchor in our spiritual lives.

Then it was off to visit Notre Dame, which began construction in 1163 and wasn't completed until 1345. Glad I wasn't on that building committee....the facade is gorgeous but the interior was dark and not particularly worshipful or beautiful relative to other cathedrals we've seen (no snootiness intended).

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OK, so you may be getting tired of my superlative-filled travelogue, but I can't help it. It's one blessed experience after another, but somebody's gotta do it. Today we left London and took the train to Bath, named after hot water baths used since the Roman times. I fell in love with the beauty of the town right away - the Georgian buildings with symmetrical beauty, the ornate Bath Abbey church, the various street musicians, and all without the hubbub of London. We continue to pray for Beth's family as they make their way through this difficult time and make plan for their future.

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We've been in London since Sunday night and finally posting. It's been a rich time being with Jill's family and seeing the myriad of historical sites in this unbelievable tapestry of a city.

Today, in addition to seeing the Changing of the Guard, we visited St. Paul's Cathedral, England's "national church" and the site of events such as Churchill's funeral and Charles and Diana's wedding in 1981.

There has been a worshipping church on that site since 603AD, meaning that Christians have been gathering there for only 1400 years longer than Sherwood Presbyterian Church. For SPC to match that longevity, we'll need to hang on until the year 3410 at least, by which time I will have likely retired. The sheer scope and beauty of this building is awe-inspiring and worshipful, not to mention the thousands of brilliant craftsmen who gave themselves and their immense talents for the glory of God. St. Paul's even became a national symbol of faith and hope when it survived the Nazi bombings of 1940.

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I feel profoundly grateful and humbled and inspired to have walked and talked where C.S. Lewis did this week. Attached are pictures of me and my wonderful new friends John and Den at the pub "The Eagle and the Child" in the exact seats where Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien and other writers would meet weekly to discuss their books and have beer. Then tonight was the highlight of the week: a 3 course dinner sitting next to Walter Hooper (pictured with me), who was an incredibly gracious and full-of-faith man who lived with Lewis briefly and served as his private secretary. He told these amazing stories of intimacy and hilarity about his time with Lewis. Wow. And for some reason Walter took a real interest in me tonight, asked me lots of questions, and affirmed me. I'm trying to savor the phenomenal gifts God is granting me!

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Walking now in Oxford where Lewis studied and later taught. It's the City of Spires founded around 760 years ago. Its got beautiful buildings, the Bodleian Library with 110 miles of shelves, gorgeous college chapels and more.