Back From Beijing

Last week Nancy and I traveled to China for 3 days of meetings with the China Teaching Fellowship (CTF) team leaders. Nancy and I are the old people among them; the others are all young women in their 20's. Once again, I came away impressed at sense of purpose and depth of spirituality and commitment of these team leaders. You would be too.

I also came away amazed that anyone would want to live in Beijing. It's a sprawling mass of concrete and the air is as bad as they say. The funny thing is that it feels less crowded and less hectic than Hanoi because, even though it contains 5-6 times as many people, it's much more spread out so it's less densely populated.

Of course, I'm not much of a big city person anyway. Hanoi's a struggle for me until I remember a George MacDonald poem I came across years ago.

I said, "Let me walk in the fields."
He said, "No, walk in the town."
I said, "There are no flowers there."
He said, "No flowers, but a crown."