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December 2 It snowed last night. In years past, this would have brought a bounce to my step, a lightness to my spirit. But not today. I just felt heavy and cold as I departed from home for my bi-weekly Czech language class. When I arrived my teacher, Vera, asked me a surprising question:“Can we begin to read the Revelation together?” Revelation!? I almost laughed out loud. ‘Why would anyone in their right mind want to read and discuss this strange last book of the Bible?’ I wondered. Of course, I didn’t say that. I am here to teach Czechs about the God of the Bible, and I have been praying for my teacher. So I agreed. But I didn’t tell her the truth — I have never read the Revelation from beginning to end! Thankfully, I have the weekend before me so I can read it by our next session. After a long and painful lesson about perfective and imperfective verbs (I can’t believe the Czechs have more than ten words just for the verb, ‘to go.’), Vera asked if I knew what language would be spoken in heaven? “No,” I replied. “Czech will be spoken in heaven because it takes an eternity to learn!” You would think this was the funniest joke ever. All I could think was, ‘Czech will probably be spoken in hell as a way of doing penance.’
Perhaps because my teacher had just asked me to study Revelation, I fixed my eyes on the Apostle John, the apparent writer of Revelation. ‘What was his life like?’ and ‘Why did he write this odd book?’ I mused. As I stared at the beloved disciple I felt a strange affinity for John that I never had before. Somehow I sensed that John knew what I was presently feeling: isolated, even exiled, and so far from home during Christmas. Perhaps he does have something to say to me as well as to my teacher. |
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Before
taking the subway home, I decided to walk to the Old-Town Square in order to
get something hot to drink. I slowly wandered the cobble-stone, winding
streets, looking down and wondering about the thousands upon millions of feet
who had walked this way before me — Mozart, Einstein, and Havel to name a
few. I was deep in thought when the clanging bells of the ‘Apostle Clock’
awakened me back to the present. There was a crowd in the square, as there is
on the hour every hour, watching carved figurines of the 12 Apostles appear,
and then return to their place of rest inside the chambers of this magnificent
orlogical clock.