Category: Poet

Copenhagen — Grace, Order, and Kindness Meet with Bicycles Outnumbering Cars

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People travel from around the world to take a photo from this bridge with this background. Taken on the “Nyhavn Bridge,” one of two iconic spans in Copenhagen: the historic Nyhavnsbroen spanning the inner canal or the modern Inderhavnsbroen connecting the Nyhavn district to Christianshavn.

Copenhagen — A City That Doesn’t Ask You to Notice

There are cities that wave their arms at you from the moment you land—desperate, loud, needing to be loved. Copenhagen isn’t one of those. It has better sense than that. It just goes quietly about being itself, and somewhere in the walking and the water and the long October light, it earns its place in you without ever asking permission.

I arrived at the tail end of September 2025, when the season was handing itself off like a letter passed between strangers—something finished, something beginning. The light had gone the color of old honey over the rooftops and the canals. I did what I always do in a city worth knowing: I walked it. Walking is an honest way to meet a place. It slows you down enough to catch what the taxis and the tour buses miss—the clean stone buildings holding their ground, the easy marriage between the streets and the water, the bicycles moving through traffic the way pickup trucks move through the Hill Country back home. Steady, unhurried, belonging there.

When the feet needed rest, I rode the hop-on hop-off buses through the wider story. From the upper deck you could feel the rhythm of the city. And Copenhagen’s rhythm is a particular thing—it does not rush for the sake of being seen to rush. There is movement, yes, but not the frantic kind that wears you out just from watching it. Something in the architecture, in the way the people carried themselves on the streets below, seemed to understand that a life lived at a dead sprint is not much of a life at all.

The City on Two Wheels

Over 60% of adults ride bicycle to and from work. They are orderly, follow the traffic laws, and politely line up in queues at traffic lights. Photo taken by Jimmie Aaron Kepler in Copenhagen Denmark in October 2025.

Here is something worth stopping to consider. Copenhagen is home to somewhere around six hundred thousand bicycles—more bikes than people, in a city that takes that distinction seriously. On any given morning, more than sixty percent of residents commute by bicycle. Not as a statement. Not as a lifestyle brand. Just as the plainest, most sensible way to get from one place to another in a city built to accommodate exactly that. The cycling infrastructure is extraordinary—wide dedicated lanes running parallel to the streets, their own traffic signals, their own unspoken etiquette. Cyclists move through Copenhagen with the confidence of people who know the road belongs to them as much as anyone, because in this city, it does.

I have been to Amsterdam, which wears its bicycle culture proudly, and even there the numbers do not match what Copenhagen has quietly built. This is the most bicycle-dense city on earth, and yet it never felt chaotic. It felt coordinated. Mothers carried children in cargo bikes the size of small boats. Businesspeople in good coats pedaled through intersections without breaking a sweat. Old men rode with the unhurried authority of people who had been doing this since before it was fashionable. Watching it from the sidewalk, you got the sense that the bicycle here is not a symbol of anything. It is simply how a sensible people decided to move through their days—economically, quietly, without making the earth pay too high a price for the privilege.

A Jacket, a Prescription, and the Schooling of a Stranger

I needed a jacket. The weather had its own opinions, and I hadn’t packed for them. So I found myself at Fisketorvet, the big mall along the waterfront, and inside one of those clean, spare shops I met a young woman working the floor—Swedish, from Malmö, just across the Øresund Strait. She was the kind of beautiful that makes you wonder if the Norse people just kept certain secrets from the rest of the world. She walked me through the options with a patience that had nothing performative in it, and she helped me find what I needed.

What I hadn’t prepared for was the VAT—Denmark’s value-added tax, set at twenty-five percent across the entire country, one of the highest in the world and applied without apology to just about everything you might want to buy. It reminded me plainly that the world has its own systems and expects a foreign traveler to learn them without much fuss. There was paperwork. There was a refund arrangement for tourists—some portion clawed back if you navigated the process correctly—that may or may not have caught up with me later. Standing there in the shop, working through it all like a man trying to read a map upside down, what hit me wasn’t inconvenience. It was humility. Even buying a jacket can teach you something about being a stranger. Travel has that habit. It finds you out in ways you never quite anticipate when you are packing your bag back home, feeling like you have thought of everything.

But the real lesson came later, from a pharmacy and the people in it.

I had left my glaucoma drops back in Texas. Simple enough to forget, harder to fix in a foreign country. Denmark runs a socialized medical system—generous to the Danes, somewhat more of an adventure for the visiting American. I found a physician who spoke English as a second language and spoke it better than most people speak their first. She was calm and competent and wrote me a prescription without making me feel like a burden, which I very clearly was. In Denmark, a prescription goes straight into a nationwide system—any pharmacy in the country can fill it. That is a sensible arrangement. It speaks of a country that trusts its own infrastructure and expects that infrastructure to show up when it is needed.

The pharmacy near my hotel had no English speakers. Not one. Before the trip I had worked through some Danish on Babbel—nothing grand, just enough to point and gesture and not embarrass myself too badly. I stood at that counter with my broken phrases and my willingness to look foolish, and the people behind it met me more than halfway. What you remember from a moment like that isn’t the logistics. You remember the faces. The tone. The quiet willingness of a stranger to help a man who is clearly a long way from home. That kind of thing travels back with you. It says something about a people that no guidebook can quite put into words. Competence is one thing. Kindness layered over competence is something else entirely, and Copenhagen had both.

Water, Steeples, and the Evidence of Grace

The Swedish Church in Copenhagen Denmark taken by Jimmie Aaron Kepler in October 2025

The canals gave the city its softness. Water does that—slows your thoughts the way a good song slows your breathing. I spent time along the harbor watching the light move on the surface, and it felt less like sightseeing and more like permission to be still. The city opens itself around the water without making any grand declaration about it. There are no billboards asking you to appreciate the view. The view simply stands there, available to anyone patient enough to stop walking for a moment and receive it.

And there were churches. That always matters to me. In city after city across a good many years of road, the old churches and cathedrals anchor a place—standing there with a patience that outlasts the noise around them. Copenhagen had that witness. Old steeples rising above the rooftops like punctuation at the end of a long and complicated sentence. Sacred spaces tucked between the modern and the ancient, neither apologizing for the other. Signs that even in a well-ordered, thoroughly functional city, there remains that ancient human ache to reach past the visible world—to be quiet, to be grateful, to acknowledge that something larger than commerce and public order is asking for our attention.

Tivoli — Where Delight Has Been Doing Business Since 1843

Tivoli Amusement Park Copenhagen Denmark, taken by Jimmie Aaron Kepler October 2025

There is an amusement park in the middle of Copenhagen that has been open since 1843, and the remarkable thing is not that it has survived that long but that it has survived without losing its soul. Tivoli Gardens sits just outside the central train station, tucked inside the city like a secret the city has been keeping in plain sight for nearly two centuries. Walt Disney himself walked these grounds sometime in the early 1950s, and what he found here—the human scale of it, the gardens, the way wonder and order could be made to coexist inside a defined space—became the seed of an idea that would eventually grow into Disneyland. Every theme park that followed owes a debt to this place, whether it knows it or not. That is not a small thing to carry around in your history.

I was there during Tivoli’s fall season, when the park leans into Halloween with the particular enthusiasm of a place that has been in the business of enchantment long enough to know how it is done right. Pumpkins and lanterns and theatrical shadow were layered over the gardens with a craftsman’s touch—not the cheap, grab-bag horror of a roadside haunted house, but something more like a fairy tale that had taken a darker turn somewhere in the third act and was not entirely sorry about it. Costumed characters moved through the grounds. The old rides wore their seasonal decorations with a kind of dignity, the way a well-traveled man might put on a Halloween costume and still look like himself underneath it. The whole park felt like it was in on a good-natured secret and was happy to let you in.

What Tivoli offers even beneath the seasonal dressing is not the modern amusement park experience of maximum velocity and corporate branding and food that arrives in a paper boat with a logo on it. It is something older and more considered than that. There are gardens with flowers and pathways and the kind of careful attention to beauty that takes decades to cultivate and means it. There are rides, yes, and some of them have been thrilling people for longer than most nations have been nations. But there is also theater and live music and the particular atmosphere of a place that understands entertainment as something more than distraction. At dusk, when the Halloween lights came on across the grounds and the evening air carried just enough of an October chill to make you pull your new Danish jacket a little tighter, Tivoli became something that is hard to name without sounding like you are exaggerating. Walking those paths, thinking about a young Walt Disney walking the same ones seventy years before and seeing in them the shape of a dream he hadn’t quite dreamed yet—well, that added a layer to the evening that no amount of pumpkins and lanterns could have provided on their own. Some places carry their history lightly but carry it all the same, and you feel it in your feet before you feel it anywhere else.

Art and Antiquity — Copenhagen’s Museums Hold Their Ground

Photos taken in Copenhagen Denmark by Jimmie Kepler in October 2025

A city reveals its values in what it chooses to preserve. Copenhagen has chosen to preserve a great deal, and it has done so with the particular combination of Danish seriousness and Danish understatement that runs through everything here. The National Museum of Denmark carries the long story of this place—from the Vikings who gave the world its most durable reputation for sea-going audacity, through the medieval kingdoms, through the centuries of trade and war and diplomacy that shaped a small Nordic nation into something punching well above its geographical weight. The artifacts are presented with a clarity and intelligence that respects the visitor without condescending to them. You come out knowing more than you went in, which is what a museum is supposed to do.

The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek stopped me in a way that I had not anticipated. It was built by the son of the man who founded the Carlsberg brewery—a patron who understood that a fortune spent on beauty is not a fortune wasted—and it houses one of the finest collections of ancient art outside the Mediterranean countries themselves. Egyptian antiquities. Greek and Roman sculpture. Impressionist paintings in rooms that give them the space and light they deserve. But it is the building itself that holds you first—the great glass dome rising over an interior garden of palms and silence, a place where the nineteenth century’s faith in art and civilization is preserved in the architecture the way amber preserves what it catches. I sat in that garden longer than I had planned to. Some rooms earn the time.

The SMK—the National Gallery of Denmark—carries the conversation forward into European painting across five centuries, with a particular strength in Danish Golden Age work that deserves far more international attention than it typically receives. Danish painters of the nineteenth century had a gift for light and interiority—a way of making an ordinary domestic scene feel weighted with something unspoken. Standing in front of those canvases, you understood that the same quality you felt walking the streets of the city had been here a long time before you arrived. The Danes have always known how to make the quiet moment carry the real meaning.

A Table Worth the Journey

Copenhagen has more Michelin-starred restaurants per capita than almost any city in the world, and the food culture here runs deep enough that it has reshaped how much of the Western world thinks about cooking. Noma changed everything when it arrived—put the Nordic larder on the world’s table, made the case that foraged herbs and fermented roots and the particular gifts of cold northern waters could produce food worth flying across an ocean to eat. The restaurant has since closed its doors in its original form, but the movement it launched is still very much alive in the city around it.

What I can tell you from the table is this: eating well in Copenhagen does not require a reservation secured six months in advance or a credit card that makes your accountant nervous. The philosophy has soaked into the entire food culture of the city. Even in a middle-tier restaurant—a neighborhood place with ten tables and a chalkboard menu—you encounter the same seriousness about ingredients, the same respect for what the season is actually offering, the same quiet pride in doing a simple thing with precision and care. I had a meal of smoked fish and dark rye bread and a bowl of something rooted and warming that I could not fully identify but did not want to stop eating. It cost less than a forgettable steak dinner back home, and I thought about it for days afterward. That is the measure of a food culture that has worked something out. It has decided that the question worth asking is not how much can be put on a plate but how honestly.

What a Place Leaves Behind

A Copenhagen Denmark Starbucks Coffee Cup. Yes, I found several Starbucks in Copenhagen.

What a traveler carries away from Copenhagen is not one landmark, not one moment of spectacle. It is the accumulation of small things handled with care—the walking, the water, the jacket and its paperwork, the doctor’s calm English, the pharmacy’s patient kindness, the old steeples standing watch, the Halloween lights of Tivoli coming on at dusk, the silence of a great glass dome over a garden of palms, the honest meal that cost less than it was worth, the cargo bikes rolling past with children aboard like a small daily argument for living sensibly.

Copenhagen felt civilized in the best and most honest sense of that word—measured, humane, grounded in the understanding that life is built mostly from ordinary moments, and that ordinary moments handled well are no small achievement. The city did not perform its virtues for you. It simply lived them, day by day, in the way its people moved through their streets and helped their strangers and kept the lights on and the canals clear and the bicycles rolling through the long Scandinavian afternoons.

I found God in Copenhagen the way I find Him in most places—not loud, not dramatic, not announced with any fanfare. More like the quiet testimony of a sanctuary still standing, the mercy of strangers in a pharmacy on a Tuesday afternoon, the grace of a city that has figured out how to be beautiful without asking you to applaud it.

In a world grown anxious and loud in its need to be noticed, that kind of quiet dignity is worth something. It sits with you on the flight home like a companion you didn’t expect to make—road-worn, unhurried, grateful in a way that is hard to fully explain but easy enough to feel.

That’s why Copenhagen belongs on this journey.

Grace and Peace,
Jimmie Aaron Kepler

Edinburgh — Where Writers, Worship, and Weathered Stone Meet

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Edinburgh Castle taken taken by Jimmie Aaron Kepler in October 2024
Stop Three in a Grand Journey Through the World’s Most Memorable Destinations

Then northward to Edinburgh.

Some cities make their case in a hurry. They flash their lights, show off their skyline, and seem determined to win you over before you have even found your bearings. Edinburgh is not that kind of city. Edinburgh comes on slower than that. It rises through stone and mist like something remembered rather than merely visited. It feels less like a place you arrive at and more like a place you have somehow wandered into from the pages of an old novel, one with weather in it, and church bells, and a little sorrow, and a good many stories.

A City Built of Story

If London speaks in history and Paris in poetry, Edinburgh speaks in story.

Sir Walter Scott Memorial in Edinburgh

That may be the first thing I felt there. The city does not simply contain stories. It seems built by them. They live in the closes and alleyways. They hang in the air around old kirks and weathered stone. They climb the streets with you and settle beside you when the mist rolls in. Sir Walter Scott feels near at hand there. So does Robert Louis Stevenson. Muriel Spark is somewhere in the shadows. Ian Rankin seems never too far away. Edinburgh wears its literary soul so naturally that it never feels staged or polished up for company. It just feels honest.

Where Harry Potter and History Shake Hands

And then, of course, there is J.K. Rowling.

Edinburgh carries that association too, and it fits the city better than you might think. Rowling lived there while writing much of the Harry Potter series, and she finished the seventh book at the Balmoral Hotel. Walking through the city, it is easy to see why Edinburgh found its way into her imagination. Many people connect Victoria Street, with its curve and color and old-world feel, to the spirit of Diagon Alley. Whether it served as a direct model or simply gave shape and mood to the world she was building, you can surely understand the connection. Edinburgh has that sort of magic to it—not the waving-a-wand kind, but the older kind, the kind that comes from atmosphere, memory, and stone.

Attribution: The Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh, Schottland. Taken by: W. Bulach, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

One of the moments that stayed with me most was finding the cemetery near the university, Greyfriars Kirkyard, where memory seems to lie heavy on the ground and the old stones lean like they are tired but still standing watch. There, among those graves, I saw the name Thomas Riddell, the real name on a headstone that so many connect with Tom Riddle, the villain in the Harry Potter books. Standing there, looking at that weathered name cut into old stone, I had one of those travel moments that catches a person off guard. Literature and place seemed to shake hands right there in front of me.

That sort of thing happens in Edinburgh.

Stone, Mist, and Memory

The city rises in stone and shadow. The castle stands above everything like an old guardian, watching over the rooftops and streets as if it has seen too much to be bothered by the passing centuries. The Royal Mile feels less like a tourist route and more like a long corridor of history, lined with memory, struggle, worship, commerce, and stories too numerous to name. Walking there, I felt as though I had stepped inside a historical novel and had been given permission to stay a while.

Every closet and alley seemed to hold something. A memory. A rumor. A prayer. A page from a book not yet written. That is Edinburgh’s gift. It does not hand itself over all at once. It lets you discover it slowly, one stone, one turn, one view, one hush at a time in a very old city.

There is beauty there, yes, but it is not the polished, easy kind. Edinburgh keeps its edges. The mist matters. The weathered buildings matter. The distant sound of footsteps on cobblestones matters. It all adds up to a city with gravity. A city with texture. A city that has lived long enough to know that beauty and hardship are often old companions.

Kirks, Cobblestones, and the Nearness of God

And, as in so many places I traveled, I found churches there too.

Church with castle on the hill in the background taken by Jimmie Aaron Kepler October 2024.

 

That always matters to me.

In Edinburgh, the kirks, cathedrals, steeples, and sanctuaries seemed stitched right into the city’s soul. They stood there as witnesses to centuries of longing, struggle, reform, prayer, and praise. They reminded me once again that no matter how far I had traveled, I kept finding evidence of God’s presence. Sometimes it was in a grand cathedral. Sometimes it was in a smaller church standing quiet along an old street. Sometimes it was in the hush inside a sanctuary, in the worn wood of a pew, in the upward reach of a spire, or in the simple truth that generations before us had built places to worship because they knew the soul needs somewhere to kneel.

For anyone who loves history, faith, and literature, Edinburgh feels almost sacred.

Not sacred because it is soft or sentimental. Edinburgh is neither of those things. It has too much stone in its bones, too much weather in its face, too much history in its walls. But it feels sacred in the way some places do when they hold the marks of humanity honestly. Our fear. Our faith. Our imagination. Our ambition. Our longing to write something, build something, believe something, or pray something that might outlast us.

That is what stayed with me.

Edinburgh is not merely a city you see. It is a city you feel. It settles over you slowly, like the mist itself. It gets into your imagination. It makes you think of old hymns, worn books, candlelight, graveyards, sermon echoes, and stories told in low voices while rain taps at the glass.

Some places entertain you.

Edinburgh haunts you a little.

In the best possible way.

And that is why it belongs on this journey.

Grace and Peace,
Jimmie Aaron Kepler, Ed.D.

Unless label otherwise, I took all the photos.

Did you enjoy this article? You can find more of Jimmie Aaron Kepler’s non-fiction books at NONFICTION and his speculative fiction books written as Jim Kepler at FICTION.

Paris — The City That Writes Its Own Poetry

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Jimmie Aaron Kepler standing in front of the Eiffel Tower in October 2024

From London, the journey moves to Paris.

A Slow Arrival in the City of Light

Paris does not rush out to meet you.

It unfolds slowly, like a poem read aloud on a gray autumn afternoon. It asks you to slow your step, take your seat, and stay awhile.

There is no city quite like Paris for the traveler who loves beauty, literature, memory, and reflection.

I was there in October 2024, and the city seemed to carry autumn with a kind of quiet grace.

The Seine Beneath a Cloudy Autumn Sky

The cloudy fall day along the Seine felt almost unreal.

Pictures of Seine River and selfie taken on a cloudy drizzly day in October 2024 by Jimmie Aaron Kepler

The bridges glowed in the fading light. The river carried reflections like liquid gold, and the whole city seemed to shimmer somewhere between history and dream.

This is a place made for lingering.

Paris does not ask you to hurry. It invites you to walk slower, look longer, and let the beauty have its say.

Where Hemingway and Fitzgerald Still Whisper

You feel it in the Latin Quarter, where the cafés still seem to hum with the ghosts of writers and artists who once sat at little round tables, smoking, arguing, dreaming, and putting words to paper.

Hemingway still seems close by in places like Les Deux Magots, Café de Flore, La Closerie des Lilas, Brasserie Lipp, and Le Select. Even the old Dingo Bar, now Auberge de Venise in Montparnasse, carries the echo of the night he met F. Scott Fitzgerald.

And then there is the Ritz on Place Vendôme, home to Bar Hemingway, one of the world’s most storied rooms for a quiet drink and a long memory. I had the opportunity to write in Paris. Woohoo!

Every corner of Paris feels cinematic.

Coffee at Cafe Richard in Paris France, October 2024, Photo by Jimmie Aaron Kepler

Architecture as Living History

The architecture is not just part of the city. It is the city.

Paris wears its history the way some people wear a well-cut coat — elegant without trying too hard. The broad boulevards are lined with cream-colored stone buildings, wrought-iron balconies, and slate roofs that catch the light like polished silver under a cloudy sky.

Walking here feels like moving through a grand open-air gallery where Gothic cathedrals, Beaux-Arts beauty, and Haussmann’s graceful nineteenth-century facades somehow live together without competing for attention.

Pictures of architecture taken in October 2024 by Jimmie Aaron Kepler

And what stays with you is not just the grandeur.

It is the way Paris makes beauty seem ordinary.

A corner apartment. A café terrace. A quiet side street. A flower stand. A woman crossing the boulevard dressed with such effortless style she looks as though she stepped off the pages of Vogue and onto the sidewalk without missing a beat.

The Atmosphere That Follows You Home

An afternoon beneath the Eiffel Tower.

An evening with coffee and a journal in Saint-Germain.

A slow walk along the Seine while the city settles into its evening glow.

Paris is less about checking off landmarks and more about surrendering to its atmosphere.

You do not merely visit Paris.

You feel it.

And once you have, some part of you never quite leaves.

Grace and Peace,
Jimmie Aaron Kepler

Did you enjoy this article? You can find more of Jimmie Aaron Kepler’s non-fiction books at NONFICTION and his speculative fiction books written as Jim Kepler at FICTION.

London — Where History Still Breathes

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Big Ben taken by Jimmie Aaron Kepler

World’s most memorable destinations that I’ve visited

The first step in a grand passage through some of the world’s most memorable destinations that I’ve visited begins in a city that feels both deeply known and forever new.

London

Every great journey needs a fitting beginning, and for me this one begins in London.

There are cities that make a strong first impression, and then there are cities that seem to reach out from somewhere deeper, as if you have been moving toward them for years without fully knowing it. London has always felt that way to me. It is a city of grandeur, yes, but never the loud or showy kind. Its beauty is steadier than that. It rests in old stone, river light, Gothic towers, quiet parks, red double-decker buses, and the unhurried confidence of a place that has nothing left to prove.

London is the capital of the United Kingdom, the official name of the country, but those are only the facts of it. Facts tell you where a city sits on a map. They do not explain how it settles into the imagination.

What struck me most about London the first time I arrived in its heart was the strong and curious sense that I already knew it. Not completely, of course, and not in the way one knows a hometown or a street where one has lived. But I knew its mood. I knew something of its silhouette, its weather, its voice. I had met London long before I ever laid eyes on it. I had met it in books, in films, in history, in speeches from darker hours of the twentieth century, in old newsreels, and in stories that have shaped so much of the English-speaking world.

Literatures Impact on My Knowing London

Both as a child and in my adult reading life, London kept appearing. Sometimes it stood at the center of the story. Sometimes it appeared only for a chapter, a train platform, a street corner, a fogbound pursuit, or a scene that stayed with me long after the book was closed. The same has been true in film. Again and again, London has shown up not just as a backdrop, but as a living presence. 

London is one of those rare cities a reader can feel he already knows before ever setting foot there, and a good part of that comes from the writers who have walked us through it for years. 

Dickens gave us the London of Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Bleak House, and Our Mutual Friend, full of fog, crowds, hardship, and human striving. 

Doyle gave us the gaslit streets and rooms of Sherlock Holmes, where Baker Street became as real in the imagination as any address on a map. 

Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and his elegant plays opened the doors to another London altogether, polished and witty on the surface, but often hiding darker truths underneath. 

Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde gave the city a haunted double life, while Stoker’s Dracula let London become the stage where old-world evil met the modern age. 

Ian Fleming made London part of the machinery of danger and intrigue in the James Bond novels, where clubs, offices, streets, and shadows all seemed to carry the scent of espionage. 

The residence on the left is where the late Sir Sean Connery, the first James Bond lived. In the below photo you can see the front entrance of the residence of his real life neighbor, Sir Roger Moore, who also played the part of James Bond. He lived in the white residence. Their front doors were around the corner from each other. Interestingly, across the street from Connery’s from door entrance was the grounds of Buckingham Palace.

Pictures of Sean Connery and Roger Moore’s homes in London

And J.K Rowling, through the Harry Potter series, made London magical in a new way, turning King’s Cross, hidden alleys, and secret doorways into places readers would forever look at differently. 

Taken together, these writers do something special: they make London feel less like a distant destination and more like a place we have already lived in through story, long before we ever arrive. I had already stood in its drawing rooms, crossed its bridges, entered its stations, and followed its shadows. By the time I finally came to London in person, it felt less like discovering a stranger and more like meeting, at last, a place I had known from a distance all my life.

London Feels Familiar

That may be one of London’s rarest gifts. It feels familiar even when it is new.

The city carries its history with remarkable ease. Westminster gathers together monarchy, Parliament, endurance, and national memory in one sweep of the eye. The Thames moves through the middle of the city with calm authority, as if it has watched the whole long story unfold and still intends to keep its own counsel. Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, the old facades and spires and bridges—these are not merely landmarks. They are part of a living conversation between the past and the present.

And yet London never feels trapped in history. That is one of the things I admire most about it.

Live in Present Tense

For all its pageantry and weight, London lives very much in the present tense. The cafés hum with conversation. The bookstores offer refuge and invitation. The West End glows toward evening with its old theatrical magic still very much intact.

During my last stay, my hotel was in the West End which can be considered the Broadway of London.

The parks give the city room to breathe. Even the weather, with its drifting rain and silver light, seems woven into the character of the place. And the traffic—Lord bless it—moves with a stubborn, relentless determination that may be as revealing as any monument.

Look up, to linger, to notice the details

Walking through London, I found myself slowing down. Not only because a city like that deserves your attention, but because it quietly asks for it. London does not shout. It does not need to. It invites you to look up, to linger, to notice the details—a clock tower against the morning sky, the worn dignity of old stone, the movement of the river, the sudden stillness in the middle of a busy square. It is a city best received at more than a glance.

For a traveler, that makes London unforgettable. For a writer, it makes London dangerous in the very best way. It stirs the desire to take one more walk, fill one more notebook page, sit one hour longer in a café, and follow one more street just to see what waits at the end of it.

I have now been to London three official times, and each visit has met me with a slightly different mood. That is the nature of great places, I suspect. They do not stay fixed because we do not stay fixed. We arrive older, more observant, more grateful, more burdened, more hopeful, and the city seems to answer the person we are when we meet it. Yet every time I have visited London, one truth has remained the same.

History there is not dead.

It is not locked away behind museum glass or confined to plaques and guidebooks. In London, history still breathes. It moves through the streets, lingers in the architecture, rises in the bells, drifts along the river, and waits in the spaces between old stones and modern lives.

And if you slow down enough, you can hear it.

This is where the journey begins.

The picture of Big Ben was taken by me in October 2025. I also took the picture of the former residences of Sir Sean Connery and Sir Roger Moore.

Grace and Peace,
Jimmie Aaron Kepler

Across Oceans, Old Stones, and Quiet Harbors

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The Journey Behind the Journey

The organ is 550 years old at St Mary’s Church in Lubeck, Germany. In 1705 Johann Sebastian Bach came to Lübeck to hear the music and study under master organist Dietrich Buxtehude. Photo by Jimmie Aaron Kepler, taken in Lübeck Germany, October 2025.

There are some trips that do little more than stamp a passport and give you something pleasant to talk about over supper or over coffee with friends. Then there are the other kind, the ones that settle somewhere deeper down, in that inward country where memory, gratitude, and wonder all seem to live side by side. These journeys over the past five years turned out to be one of those.

Destinations

What first looked like a list of destinations on a map slowly became something else altogether. It became a gathering of moments stretched across oceans and years. It carried me over the Pacific and the Atlantic, across the Tasman Sea, the Caribbean, the North Sea, the Baltic, and even the old blue waters of the Mediterranean. It took me from island shores in Hawaii, Tahiti, and Samoa to the Caribbean islands, and onward to the Azores, Madeira, Mallorca, and Mo’orea, each place bringing its own weather, its own light, and its own way of lodging itself in the heart. It carried me through cities like London, Paris, Edinburgh, Belfast, Bergen, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Gibraltar, Barcelona, Sydney, Auckland, Papeete, Hamburg, and Lübeck, places where the streets themselves seemed to remember what generations before had built, prayed, endured, and hoped.

Along the way there were old cities worn smooth by time, and weathered harbors where the salt air seemed to drift in carrying stories of sailors, merchants, wars, departures, and homecomings. There were quiet afternoons inside ancient cathedrals where the sunlight came soft through stained glass and laid itself across stone floors that had known the footsteps of centuries. There were island mornings washed in turquoise and gold. There were streets where history did not seem trapped behind museum glass, but alive and nearby, as if it had decided to stroll alongside you for a while and keep you company.

Churches

And nearly everywhere I went, I saw churches.

Sometimes it was a grand cathedral rising over the city square, its bells marking the hour and its spire pointing heavenward as if to remind everybody below there is something higher than commerce, traffic, or politics. Sometimes it was a small stone church tucked along a side street, plain and weathered and faithful in its own quiet way. Sometimes it was a chapel by the sea, or an old parish church standing watch over a village, or a sanctuary open in the middle of the day where a traveler could step inside, sit in silence, and feel the hush settle over him.

In city after city, island after island, there was evidence of God’s presence.

Not always in loud ways. Not always in ways that would make a headline. But there it was all the same. In the old cathedrals built by hands long gone to glory. In candles flickering before prayer altars. In carved stone crosses worn smooth by time. In sacred music drifting faintly through old naves. In the faces of strangers showing kindness. In the beauty of morning light on water. In the deep human longing that built churches in the first place and still draws people through their doors.

That may be one of the things that stayed with me most. No matter the country, no matter the language, no matter the style of architecture or the shape of the harbor, I kept finding reminders that human beings everywhere have reached toward God. They have built sanctuaries. They have prayed under vaulted ceilings and plain wooden roofs. They have lifted hymns in cities and villages and on islands far out to sea. The settings changed. The languages changed. The weather certainly changed. But the witness remained.

Every place had a voice of its own.
Some whispered.
Some sang.
Some simply stood there, quiet and sure of themselves, and let beauty do the talking.

Twenty-five Countries and Counting

Since April of 2022, I have traveled to twenty-five countries. I have not made that journey alone. Along the way I have had company from my walking stick—my cane, actually—named Virgil, as in Virgil Cane. My fiancée, she who cannot be named on the internet and who has no online presence at all, has shared much of the road with me. Friends from my writer’s group have also traveled alongside me from time to time, helping carry the laughter, the weariness, the wonder, and the occasional confusion that always seems to come with trying to find your way in a place where even the street signs look like they belong to somebody else’s story.

Travel, at least the kind worth remembering, has a way of humbling a person. It reminds you that the world is both far larger and far more intimate than you imagined. You can stand in a cathedral half a world away and feel something familiar stir in your chest. You can sit by a harbor in another country and watch the water move against old stone, and know deep down that human beings have always been longing, leaving, loving, grieving, building, and hoping. The scenery changes. The heart does not all that much.

That may be one reason I have loved these journeys as much as I have. They have shown me beauty, yes, but they have also shown me continuity. The world is wide, but there are threads that run through it all. Hospitality. Reverence. Memory. Music. Bread on a table. Light on water. The hush inside a church. The laughter of strangers. The sense, now and then, that you have stepped into a place that was waiting to tell you something if only you would slow down enough to listen.

And slowing down has been part of the lesson.

A cane will teach you that. Age will too. Travel has a way of reminding you that not every journey is meant to be rushed through as if you were checking items off a list. Some places ask for lingering. Some call for sitting still. Some deserve more than a photograph and a hurried sentence in a notebook. Some deserve your full attention.

That is what this series is about.

What follows is the story of that journey, told through the destinations that have stayed with me the most. I have ranked them not by cost or popularity, not by travel-brochure promises or online trends, but by memory, feeling, and by that harder-to-define quality of whether a place settled into my soul and decided to stay there.

These are the places that have lingered.

These are the old stones, the quiet harbors, the island mornings, the church bells, the cathedrals, and the city streets I still carry with me.

This is the journey behind the journey. I’ll be sharing the wonders of where I’ve visited in the weeks ahead.

Grace and Peace
Jimmie Aaron Kepler

Did you enjoy this article? You can find more of Jimmie Aaron Kepler’s non-fiction books at NONFICTION and his speculative fiction books written as Jim Kepler at FICTION.

Today, Yes, This One

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Morning By The Window

I had planned to meet God on the balcony this morning. Instead, I met Him at the window.

That is how this Friday began for me here in Branson, Missouri. Most mornings on this trip, I have stepped out onto the condo balcony with a cup of Earl Grey tea, my Bible, and my journal, looking out over Table Rock Lake before turning to my writing. It has become a sweet little rhythm. It’s been quiet, steady, and good for the soul. The kind of beginning that helps a man gather his thoughts and offer them to the Lord before the day starts making its demands.

But this morning would not be that kind of morning.

A cold front had moved in overnight. Before daylight had fully broken, I could already tell the whole character of the day had changed. The wind was up. The trees were restless. The lake had lost its calm. What had felt welcoming on the past few mornings now felt raw and sharp. The wind chill had dropped into the mid 40s, and instead of stepping out into the dawn, I stayed inside and stood at the balcony window, warm cup in hand, looking out at a darker, colder, more unsettled world.

And maybe that is what caught my attention most. The day I thought I was getting was not the day that came.

The Weather Changed

The last several mornings had been mild and pleasant. Cool enough to feel fresh, but not so cold as to send a fellow scurrying back indoors. The air had that clean Ozarks touch to it. The lake had looked gentle. The hills had seemed half asleep. Those mornings invited lingering.

This one did not.

This morning was dark in a different way. Not soft-dark. Not still-dark. It was a restless dark. The wind worked over the surface of Table Rock Lake until the water looked troubled. The trees along the shore bent and shifted as if the whole landscape had been stirred from sleep too roughly.

It looked, I suppose, a little like life does sometimes.

There are days that arrive warm and welcoming, and there are days that come in with a hard edge to them. Days when the spirit feels stirred up before breakfast. Days when the heart is already carrying something heavy. Days when the weather outside seems to match the weather within.

I stood there looking through the glass and thought to myself: this was not the morning I had planned.

But of course, that is often the way life goes. We make our little arrangements. We set our expectations. We imagine what the day ought to feel like. And then the Lord allows a different sort of morning to arrive.

The Verse That Met Me

It was right there, with the wind moving over the water, that Psalm 118:24 came to me:

“This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”

I have known that verse for a long, long time. It is familiar enough that a person can quote it without really stopping to hear it. But this morning it landed with fresh weight.

Because the verse does not say, “This is the easy day.”
It does not say, “This is the warm day.”
It does not say, “This is the bright and cheerful day when everything falls neatly into place.”

It says, “This is the day.”

This one.

The windy one.
The darker one.
The one that did not match my plans.
The one I might not have chosen for myself.

This day.

That is what makes the verse so strong and so tender at the same time. It reminds me that my peace is not to be anchored in the kind of day I wish I had received, but in the God who made the day I have been given.

Psalm 118 is a song of thanksgiving, but it is not shallow thanksgiving. It rises out of mercy, deliverance, and trouble overcome by the goodness of God. It has some backbone to it. It knows what it is to praise the Lord not only when the skies are clear, but when the heart has learned that God is faithful in every weather.

And that is what I needed this morning.

The Gift of This Day

Standing there at the window, I was reminded that before I had one thought about this Friday, God had already made it. Before I spoke my first prayer, He was already Lord over every hour of it. Before I wrote one line in my journal or one word for the page, the whole day was already resting in His hands.

That steadies a man.

The older I get, the more I think one of the great disciplines of the Christian life is learning to receive the day God sends instead of pining for a different one. That does not come naturally. We are forever looking backward with regret or forward with worry. We rehearse old sorrows. We borrow tomorrow’s burdens. All the while, the Lord keeps calling us back to the ground beneath our feet.

This is the day.

Not yesterday.
Not tomorrow.
This day.

The one in front of you.
The one in your hands.
The one under God’s rule and care.

And if that is true, then even a cold, windblown Friday morning can be received with gratitude.

Thank You, Lord, For One More Day

Let me say it plainly: rejoicing does not always look triumphant. Sometimes it is not a shout. Sometimes it is not a song. Sometimes it is simply opening your Bible when your heart feels tired. Sometimes it is taking hold of your coffee cup or tea mug, looking out at a day you did not expect, and whispering, “Thank You, Lord, for one more day.”

That too is rejoicing.

Maybe that is the mercy hidden in mornings like this. We do not have to find God only in the lovely moments. We do not have to wait for better weather, brighter light, or easier circumstances. He meets us in the day we have, not only in the day we would have chosen.

So this Friday morning, wherever you are and whatever sort of weather has found your soul, receive the day from His hand.

Not yesterday.
Not tomorrow.
Today.

And rejoice.

Love and Grace,
Jimmie Aaron Kepler

Did you enjoy this article? You can find more of Jimmie Aaron Kepler’s non-fiction books at NONFICTION and his speculative fiction books written as Jim Kepler at FICTION.

The Beginning

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1.1 
The Beginning

Before the worlds, were spoken to be,
The Liberator stood, in eternity.
His voice, a melody, His love, to set all free,
And from nothingness, came land and sea.

The heavens stretched, with a vibrant glow,
The stars awakened, their light did flow.
Each planet spun, in a rhythmic show,
A symphony sung, where life would grow.

He called forth oceans, their depths profound,
Where waves would echo, their eternal sound.
The mountains rose, the valleys wound,
His hand in all, His love unbound.

The beasts emerged, the skies took flight,
The birds rejoiced, in their morning light.
The Liberator smiled, at the wondrous sight,
Each life a reflection, of His delight.

Then from the dust, His masterpiece came,
A human form, both wild and tame.
With breath divine, He sparked the flame,
Of a soul unbroken, pure in name.

A garden He planted, serene and wide,
With rivers that flowed, and paths to guide.
Where man and woman walked, side by side,
Their hearts unburdened, their trust implied.

Yet freedom bore, a sacred test,
A choice to follow, to trust what’s best.
One tree stood tall, its fruit possessed,
The knowledge of all, a gift suppressed.

The serpent came, with whispers sly,
A cunning voice, that questioned why.
Its lies enticed, their hearts did try,
And the bond of trust, began to die.

The fruit was taken, their eyes did see,
The weight of shame, the lost decree.
Yet mercy flowed, from eternity,
The Liberator’s love, their destiny.

He clothed their shame, though exile came,
His plan remained, forever the same.
Through sorrow and trials, through guilt and blame,
His covenant endured; His love proclaimed.

Through Adam and Eve, the journey would start,
A story of grace, a mending of hearts.
Through dust and stars, His promise imparts,
The Liberator’s plan, a sacred art.

From: The Liberator’s Song: An Allegorical Retelling
of The Torah and The Pentateuch”
Book 1
1.1 – The Beginning
Poetry and Prayer Press
Copyright 2025
A Poetic Narrative by Jimmie Aaron Kepler

Artwork: by Jimmie Aaron Kepler

Did you enjoy this article/poem?
You can find more of Jimmie Aaron Kepler’s non-fiction books at
NONFICTION and his speculative fiction books written as Jim Kepler at FICTION.

Coffee, Ice, & a World Thawing Out

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Coffee, Ice, and a World Thawing Out

I’m sitting at the table this morning with a mug of coffee warming my hands, looking out the back window at a yard that’s finally starting to loosen its grip on winter. The ice didn’t leave all at once. It never does. It’s backing off slowly, stubborn to the end, dripping away like it’s mad it lost the fight.

There’s still three or four inches of sleet and snow on the ground—this is day six—but the sun has found a little confidence today. The shaded spots are still thick and hard, while the sunny places have turned slick and shiny, the kind of ice that’ll put you on your backside if you get cocky. I’ve learned this week to walk slow, take small steps, and pay attention. Turns out that’s not bad advice for life either.

It’s been a week of records—record cold, record ice, record flight cancellations. Folks still without power. Pipes frozen. Trees snapping like matchsticks. American Airlines canceling flights like they’re swatting flies. Plans all over the country tossed aside like yesterday’s newspaper.

I’ve been housebound, watching the same frozen scene over and over, like it might change if I stare hard enough. When the weather locks you in, your world shrinks. You stop thinking about next month and start thinking about right now. Heat. Water. Food. Staying upright.

That’s survival mode. And survival mode has a way of changing what you think matters.

The Morning the Ice Let Go

This morning, the ice finally decided it had overstayed its welcome. A heavy sheet slid loose from the roof and came crashing down without warning. Sounded like thunder. It scared the feral cats half to death.

They bolted in every direction, claws skittering on ice, dignity nowhere to be found. One poor cat lost all traction and slid straight into the deep end of the swimming pool. For a second, my heart just stopped. That water was cold enough to make a strong man gasp.

But that cat swam like he meant it. He paddled hard, found the edge, and hauled himself out—soaked, shaking, and very much alive. He gave the universe a dirty look, shook himself dry, and disappeared.

I stood there a long minute, coffee forgotten, thinking, Well, that about sums it up. Slipping, plunging, scrambling, surviving.

And it hit me: this whole week hasn’t been about progress. It’s been about perseverance.

Old Questions, New Weather

Success and motivation have followed me around most of my life. I’ve been chewing on those questions since my university days. What makes people move forward? What keeps them going when things get hard? What does success really look like when you strip away the trophies and titles?

Those questions followed me into doctoral work more than thirty years ago. I spent over a year buried in research and writing, wrestling with motivation theories and Scripture, eventually producing a dissertation with a title long enough to scare off casual readers. Back then, success felt like finishing, publishing, achieving.

But sitting here now, watching ice melt and coffee cool, I realized something: real life tests success in different ways.

The Bible doesn’t define success the way the world does. Joshua wrote, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth… For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success” (Joshua 1:8, ESV).

Not flashy success. Not Instagram success. Good success.

Because the usual measures don’t hold up well in a storm. It’s not how you look. Ice doesn’t care. It’s not how much you own. Power outages level the field. It’s not who you know. Connections don’t melt roads.

Paul said it plainly: “Let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor” (Galatians 6:4, ESV).

Success isn’t comparison. It’s character.

Paul’s Kind of Success

If you want a picture of real success, you don’t have to look any further than the Apostle Paul.

Paul had a sense of direction. He wasn’t wandering through life hoping things worked out. “I make it my ambition to preach the gospel,” he wrote (Romans 15:20, ESV). And again, “I press on toward the goal” (Philippians 3:14, ESV). Direction doesn’t mean ease—it means purpose.

Paul had understanding—earned understanding. “I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound,” he said (Philippians 4:12, ESV). He didn’t just know Scripture; he lived it. He prayed for hearts to be directed “to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ” (2 Thessalonians 3:5, ESV).

Paul lived with commitment. “I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself,” he wrote, “if only I may finish my course” (Acts 20:24, ESV). That’s not recklessness. That’s resolve.

And he never forgot compassion. “If I have all faith… but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2–3, ESV). He urged believers to put on “compassionate hearts” (Colossians 3:12, ESV), because success without love is empty noise.

Paul walked with enthusiastic faith. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31, ESV). “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13, ESV). Not denial. Trust.

He lived as a servant, willing to be spent for others (2 Corinthians 12:15, ESV). And he had staying power: “Afflicted… but not crushed… struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8–9, ESV).

His secret sits in plain sight: “So we do not lose heart… For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16–18, ESV).

When the Ice Finally Melts

I finish my coffee and look back out the window. Water is running where ice ruled a few days ago. The world is finding its footing again. Slowly. Quietly.

Maybe success looks a lot like this. Not constant motion. Not nonstop achievement. Sometimes it’s just holding on through the freeze, trusting that God is still at work beneath the ice, and knowing what matters when everything else slips.

A Few Takeaways From a Frozen Week

  1. Success isn’t what you accumulate—it’s who you become.
    Ice storms don’t care about resumes, bank accounts, or appearances. Character endures.
  2. Motivation changes in hard seasons—and that’s okay.
    Some weeks aren’t about moving forward. They’re about staying upright and faithful.
  3. Good success is measured by faithfulness, not flash.
    The kind of success God honors holds steady through cold, darkness, and delay.
  4. Don’t lose heart when progress feels slow.
    Ice melts one drip at a time. Renewal often works the same way.

The thaw always comes. And when it does, it tells you what was solid all along.

Grace and Peace,
Jimmie Aaron Kepler, Ed.D.

Reflections on Being Sick

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When the Road Gets Rough, Love Shows Up

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When the Road Gets Rough, Love Shows Up

Some verses don’t holler. They don’t raise their voice or wave their arms. They just sit there on the page like an old friend on a tailgate, telling the truth without fuss. Proverbs 17:17 is one of those verses:

A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

Proverbs 17:17

That verse has lived a little. It’s been through weather.

I’ve learned over the years that everybody’s friendly when the sun’s out and the bills are paid. Folks laugh easy when the coffee’s hot and the road’s smooth. But life, being life, always throws a curve. Out of the blue you have an illness, a loss, a diagnosis you didn’t order, or a phone call you wish you hadn’t answered. That’s when the verse stops being ink on paper and starts breathing.

A Friend Who Loves Without a Clock

A true friend loves at all times. Not just when you’re funny, healthy, useful, or easy to be around. Real friends don’t check the calendar or the mood before they show up. They don’t disappear when things get awkward or slow or heavy. They love you when you’re at your best—and they love you when you’re tired, worn thin, and quiet.

That kind of love doesn’t make speeches. It brings soup. It sends a text that says, “I’m thinking about you.” It sits without needing to fix anything. It’s steady, not flashy, and rare. And once you’ve known it, you never forget it.

Born for the Hard Days

Then there’s the brother (or sister), either by blood or by friendship, born for adversity. That word born matters. It means this wasn’t an afterthought. When trouble comes, family steps in carrying weight they didn’t volunteer for, because that’s just how it works. They stand guard. They share the load. Sometimes they speak the hard truth. Sometimes they just stand there and take the hit with you.

Life has taught me that some people are assigned to the sunshine, and others are assigned to the storm. Brothers are storm people.

When Adversity Tells the Truth

Hard times have a way of sorting things out. Adversity is a spotlight. It shows you who’s real. And Proverbs 17:17 reminds us that God didn’t design us to face the hard things alone. He built friendship and family into the plan. They are not there as decoration, but as reinforcement.

Sometimes family doesn’t share your last name. Sometimes it shares your faith. The church, at its best, is a room full of brothers and sisters who show up when life caves in. Not perfect people. Just present ones.

When the road gets rough, love shows up. That’s the promise. And it’s one worth holding onto.

Grace and Peace,
Jimmie Aaron Kepler

Did you enjoy this article? You can find more of Jimmie Aaron Kepler’s non-fiction books at NONFICTION and his speculative fiction books written as Jim Kepler at FICTION.