Johnstein!

Most of you are familiar with the concert ministry that we have been involved in for the last two years, bringing Christian bands to Vienna...well, one of the first bands we were involved with is preparing to release a new album. Good Weather Forecast is a band from Germany that has visited us in Vienna 3 times now. They have become good friends and we are excited to be a small part of their ministry. As they were preparing to record their album, they approached us to see if we could help out. The album is called Dream City, and they wanted to use the "dreams" of their fans to underscore the meaning of their album. The band gave of their time and talents to play for a benefit concert last year (which raised almost 1000€); after the concert they asked students to share their dreams. They set up lights and cameras in my classroom and we stayed up late having students share their dreams. The following video is the result of that filming session... All but 2 of the peopl...

I recently finished reading a book that really encouraged me;  Surprised by Laughter: The Comic World of C.S. Lewis  written by Terry Lindvall. While the book is a thick academic tome, I believe it really discusses some of the necessities of humor in a very accessible way. This is not a book that you read casually; this academic study of C.S. writings cannot be understood with out a pen to underline and write notes in the margins. Despite the repetitive approach, Lindvall slickly introduces subtle nuances in his analysis. While this is great for the detailed reader, his subtle insertion of new ideas sometimes is lost through the distraction of redundancy. One of my favorite chapters is entitled "The Quiddity of Life". Quiddity is an idea in philosophy in which you study the "whatness" of something. Lindvall states that "The commonplace becomes quite startling and marvelous when one actually pays attention to it and forgets oneself"...in fact, it is...