And now, back to our magazine

The first article from the latest issue of Gilbert I want to discuss is the wonderful and inspirational story by Robert Moore-Jumonville in his highly unlikely column titled, Jogging with Chesterton. I think the essence of it is that Robert thinks Chestertonian thoughts as he jogs, not that he envisions Chesterton jogging with him.

Robert's article is about how he was able to join a soccer game (called football everywhere but in the US) in the Czech Republic, and then he recalls two other occassions in which this type of international conversation (or dance, as he metaphorically speaks of in his column) happened.

I really liked that image of people playing ball together, despite the inability to "communicate" on the speaking level.

It reminded me of a time I was in Germany and it started to snow these huge, gorgeous, Kodak-moment snowflakes. Everything was getting covered with a layer of white, and it was stunning. I happened to be walking along a path in a tiny little town called Garmisch alone, except for the hundreds of locals also walking (they walk a lot more there than we do here, I noticed). An older lady sort of caught up to me and smiled. I smiled back. She turned her head to the sky, where it was the kind of sky that looks like the start of a Star Wars movie, just white points falling from nowhere coming at you, and the whole thing means "infinity" when you look at it, and she said something in German, like "Dies ist schön, ya?" and I said "Ya" and I felt connected with all of mankind for just a second. (I don't speak much German, but knew schön meant beautiful.)

Music connects people, too. Dancing can be done without a translator. Art, when beautiful, needs no translation.

Did anyone read Robert's article and want to comment?