DearMe: lost and found in Europe and Africa

   On this day ...  Ghent in 1967 July 26, 1967 From Brussels.  This month is becoming a variety fair.   Let’s break it down.   One week in Paris , my passport lost the 14 th of July but fortunately found the next day with the help of  high school friend Rachel.   She is a missionary kid who grew up in Luxembourg and is staying with missionaries, the Gingrichs.  She is very nice, but not made for me.   I really appreciate all that I received and learned.   It was really wonderful to spend several days in the presence of a girl.   Next, two days in the company of Willard Roth.   One day to see Brussels, the next to see Ghent where on the sidewalk of a café we spoke of my writing style, my stories, more or less in detail.   He bought one, “Half-Past Eleven.”  I like Roth, but he is, above everything else, a church administrator and not an artist, even though his ideas are quite liberal.  If I wanted to attach myself to a literary patron, I’d have to find someone else.  Then, the choir

  On this day ...  Typical telephone of 1967 18 July 1967 Dear family,  On Paris TV today I heard pessimistic reports about Congo.  At the moment visas are not being given.  No visa, no go. Then I read the NY Times reports about Newark —twenty-one dead, The Times headline includes:  Negro Sniping Widens.  It reports snipers throughout the city.  It calls it a riot. I feel safer in Europe.  And perhaps Congo isn’t really so dangerous.  "Merrily we roll along" as my friends in Vietnam snipe daily. At any rate, I wonder if God is "with" the wealthy or the dirt-poor in all these conflicts. The lone phone call I made to our 6226 number cost the fantastic sum of $28.50 ($28 in 1967 is worth $263.29 today in 2024). All of 12 minutes.  I’m not kidding!  Did you time it? Thanks for taking turns. I was able to have a few words with all seven of you.  Love, Glenn,

  On this day ...  A Remington-Peters bullet, the kind that killed King.   5 April 1968 Dear brother, The crackly short wave radio has just brought us the news of America’s heinous crime.  The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated.   I love my country and my heart is sorely touched, man.   How long, oh Lord?   Did the long, hot summer have to begin so soon?   Do we really think that the new muscle put into our police arsenal and the chemical guns we have built can save us?   Is our dollar going to save us?  What is the way for a suppressed minority to gain equality?   Marx’s answer may be all right for an oppressed majority, but I think King’s genius was his answer for the oppressed minority. Should we be willing to lay aside our tools we’re using in constructing the tower of Babel and get working on the task of first uniting us of many tribes and languages?   I think to us the building of the tower is more important than understanding people.   After all didn’t God give u

Behind our house in Kikwit: the Kwilu River;  in the foreground the pointed pool umbrellas; and the groundsman. On this day ...  March 17, 1968 .  Dear Annie*, I was floating in our pool when your letter came.  I paddled over to the ladder and pulled myself up and yanked my towel off the sun umbrella, where it was drying lickety-split in the equitorial sun, and rubbed down. I was thinking, maybe a letter from you will help me.  These latter afternoons have been heavy on the spirit.  I teach till one p.m.  I’m happy in front of the kids.  But it’s a tug-of-war with the lead weight of the lethargy of the centuries at the other end. One example of the weight: most believe that the world is flat.  At one thirty our domestique , Baudouin, serves us the three-course European dinner.  The weather is now at its hottest, 85 degrees F.  That is not counting the humidity.  I want to retreat to myself then and do some writing.   But I hesitate and don’t want to really face myself so I hedge and ta

     On This Day Seven years before I wrote this letter, I was a senior at Lancaster Mennonite School and editor of campus newspaper.  Faculty advisor is Omar Eby, standing. I am seated, left. The invitation to teach came from the Dean.   March 18, 1969 to Lancaster Mennonite School.    Dear Bro. Good,  I was fore-warned of your letter by my sister Loretta.   She's in your German class.  She is half hopeful that I accept your offer although she "wouldn't want to be in any of my classes." I see my vocation as teaching in the broadest sense of the word, be it writing, preaching, or teaching.    Therefore, I plan to do graduate work in theology next year.   Perhaps  in a European university. Was it your infectuous love and facility with languages which gives me this desire?    I spent one year in Belgium and France learning French.   Prior,  I had thought that the Germanic tongues were my cup of tea.   B ut my love has gone to the Latins. I recall you saying to us incred

   My room at 4 rue du Conseil, Brussels, 1966-67   On This Day from my journal and mail 16 March 1967,  Thursday Dear Family,  You risk a lot having me as a son:    I think like a poet, write like a pessimist, speak like a prophet, take advice like the pope, pay my debts like the poor, date like a priest, and eat candy like a pig.    Moreover, my brethren, be ye followers of me as I am of Menno Simons and I guarantee you a happy life.  My letters probably give you a lop-sided view of me because my letter writing is for me a psychological recreation period.    That is, when something is irking me, I take to pestering other people.    So you miss all my composed, mature, pastoral moments.    They slip by unused across the pages of a book or are absorbed by the keyboard of a piano or just simply vaporize in the solemnity of my celibate room. Nobody is around to reap my pleasantness, so I learn to stand content reflecting the beauty of the universe like a flower unnoticed on the bare step