The Story So Far…

The story so far, is already here…I don’t care what I’ve lost, I just thank God I’m alive

Flogging Molly, The Story So Far

My life is…

my Life is….

I…um…

(heavy sigh)

Here’s a quick rundown:

*Formidable years spent in Arizona (hot, dry, always the same), adult years spent in WI and MA (cold, lots of changes, WEATHER!)

*Spent the last 13 years trying to date my friends; each time I tried to make that work, I lost friends.

*I’m 31 years old and (kind of) just started a new career.  Since I was 12 or so, I’ve been told that I’m a mature adult, and less than a year ago I was ordained as a Minister in the United Church of Christ.

*My little sister is getting married in about two weeks.  I’m currently considering modelling my life after Project Runway’s Tim Gunn (celibate for 30 years and no regrets).

*I live in the Boston area and I’m about to share an apartment with one of my best friends, and in the meantime we’re living in a giant house with another friend, her 8 year old son, and Marvel, the worst cat I’ve ever met (and I’ve met some cats, you guys).

Despite his excellent rendition of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” he is terrible.

That seems like a good place to start: I have moved at least once a year, every year, since graduating high school.  As annoying and inconvenient as that sounds…as it turns out…it’s actually worse.  It only occurred to me recently, but moving from one place to another for 13 years has actually forced me into a weird little subculture.  My whole adult life, I’ve looked around me and seen other adults with interests, hobbies, relationships that work and last, these are people with diets and exercise regimens and weekly routines.  I have observed these people like E.O. Wilson observing ant colonies; surveying the landscape with great fascination, maybe even a little envy, forever distinct and alien from the object of my fascination.  It’s not that I didn’t have all these things–interests and routines–it’s that I literally thought my purpose in life was to be dedicated to something else.  I didn’t understand how a weekly routine could make anyone happy, and I didn’t quite get how hobbies or activities could fulfill a person’s life to the point of not worrying about the inevitable scythe of death coming to collect us all.  For me, my time and energy needed to be spent in larger pursuits, attempting to find the thing that would make my life complete, even after my own death.

Well as it turns out, this is what happens when you move all the time:  Your beliefs and identity take on supreme importance, because everything else around you is foreign and temporary.  It’s one thing to go on that journey for a time, but to live your entire life a state of flux has begun to feel exhausting…if not misguided.  One of my favorite teachers of all time is my Hebrew Bible professor from Andover Newton Theological School, Greg Mobley.  I remember a lecture Greg gave about four years ago on the function of exile.  If you’re even passingly familiar with the Hebrew Bible, Israel gets decimated by a couple different empires, and the elite are all exiled from their homeland.  Mobley pointed out the hardships of exile; not just the theological questions and identity crises, but…finding water?  If you want to not simply defeat your foreign enemies, but also ensure that they can’t mount a counterattack for a few generations, then you exile them, you uproot their entire existence so they have to spend a few decades rebuilding their entire society.  Flash forward a few thousand years and we find 21st Century America, a place of such privilege that no one on earth can force its citizens into exile…except those citizens themselves.  Venturing far from home, discovering new things, taking big risks; these are all essential parts of developing into a full, healthy adult human being.  But after 13 years, it’s starting to occur to me that those adventures are supposed to end at some point.  It’s just as essential to know when to put down stakes somewhere, or a once purposeful endeavor can turn into fanciful madness (Don Quixote).  One can remain on the fringes forever, clinging to one’s ideals rather than compromise (Han Solo, Malcolm Reynolds), but the cost is a life of turmoil, and more than a little loneliness.  Heroes go on a journey of self discovery, but then they have to return to share what they have learned (insert your favorite hero here).  So, that’s my life.  Or at least, that’s my life right now.

It’s time to become what I’m going to become…even though it’s easier and more fun to be Mal Reynolds….it’s time to re-enter the world.  Before I start tilting at windmills.

I started this blog a few years ago to document a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Germany.  I think it’s safe to say that experiment did more for me than anyone else.  The writing and reflecting I did during that year changed my life.  And then I got back to the States, where things were easy and my life was full and I once again had the privilege of being able to non-reflectively exile myself anytime it suited my purposes.  And in recent months it’s occurred to me:  I don’t like living that way.  I think it has been beneficial to me as a spiritual person; it’s a journey that has possibly set me up to be an important Wisdom Teacher.  But right now…it feels like a lot of unnecessary chaos.  I wanted to confront demons and slay dragons…and now I’m 31, and I would like to have some fun and a stable home environment.  And I regret slaying dragons that could have been befriended.  And I may have picked up more demons than I loosed.

This is where my story picks up.  Getting out of the exile game, getting my feet on the ground, and starting to build something out of my life.  Re-dedicating myself to the blog, re-dedicating myself to the things that balance out the chaos of life with structure and seasons and daily devotion.  Doubling down on my commitment to an intentional life of love and justice and humility.  Eating a friggin’ salad from time to time.

This IS My Life.  Thanks for being part of it.

Next Week: Homecoming, Internet Dating, and My Pet Demon (No, I’m not talking about the cat.)

Once More With Dialogue

Years from now, someone might say to me, “Hey, you studied abroad, what would you say is the most important thing to do during that time?”  And I will laugh, rub my belly, and smile knowingly at them, “Oh, my stars,” I’ll say, “the key to all if it is quite simple.  When you enter your last two weeks in the country, when you’re closing up and winding down and stressing out about the move back home, make sure you take that time…to go traveling for a week to another country.  It’ll make all the difference.”

I’m in Croatia right now.  Friends from the seminary got together at some point this year and said, “Wir sollen nach Kroatian gehen diese sommer!”  And someone else said, “Ja, das clingt so gut!  Das ist so toll!”  I figured it was like anything drunken groups of people say, “Sure, we’ll go to Croatia and chill at the beach for a week!  Awesome, huh?”  And no one ever mentions it again.  Not in Germany.  These folks have what I like to call “follow through.”  So…like it or not, I’m spending this week on a beach in Croatia.  Then next week back to Germany, then six days later I’m back in America.  I’m breathing heavily just thinking about it.

One of the most interesting things about this last trip:  It has indirectly been the spark of 2 separate conversations I’ve had in the last week about religion.  The first conversation was extremely indirect, but my friend and I got into a conversation about what a diverse religious region that is, and my friend came down pretty harshly against the Muslim faith, saying that the evidence speaks for itself and Islam is a patriarchal, no-good-very-bad-day, backwards stone age faith that keeps its people trapped in oppression and poverty.  Like I said, harsh.

Then, almost the same day I think, I had a conversation with another friend about almost the same thing, except she came down against Christianity.  She said she couldn’t stand the hypocrisy of Christians, to always point out the worst parts about other religions while ignoring the countless human rights violations that have been done in the name of Jesus Christ.  She said it made her negative about the whole Christian project, that Christianity was a religion that made room for its members to sin with one hand and pray forgiveness with the other.

These were great conversations, and I wish they had both gone on longer because there was so much there I wanted to sift through.  What I couldn’t quite get around to before we ended was: Why do we think a particular “religion” is to blame for these problems, rather than putting the blame on the groups of individuals who choose to do these things in the name of their religion?  I hear this from people all the time, that certain religions are better/worse, or all religions are invalid/arcane because the religions themselves somehow force people into doing horrible things.

I understand the distaste for hypocracy, and I am in total agreement that violence and oppression have no business being on the agenda of any person of faith…but I don’t blame “religion’ for these problems.  That seems absurd to me.

That’s like blaming science for racism.  It’s true that white supremacy as it exists in our world was derived from early observational “sciences” that were seeking to define and categorize all of existence (see Cornel West’s essays regarding the development of white supremacy in The Cornel West Reader for a more in depth analysis).  But does that really mean that “science” is to blame for racism?  Of course not.  Also, scientific discoveries and methods would come back into the discussion a few hundred years later to demystify the very problem it created.  Thanks to modern genetics, we now know “race” to be a fictitious, systematic social construct that is not actually rooted in any real scientific foundation.  But make no mistake about it, our concept of “race” was derived from the same fields of study that would eventually give us the table of the elements and astrophysics; all of them derived from the process of hypothesizing, observing, testing, and “proving.”  And those who are committed to this process are able to bring it in to critique the work of those who have come before, paving the way for a more true and just future.

And that’s exactly what we need to do as people of faith.  Critique our brothers and sisters, and not allow neigh-sayers to stereotype and dismiss entire traditions because a bunch of crazy people have tried to use said traditions to legitimize their violent schemes.  We need to separate one faith from another, recognize the distance and the tension between faithful traditions and their extremist off-shoots.  Science isn’t racist, but it birthed racist frameworks.  Religion isn’t violent and stupid, and we shouldn’t let people treat it as if it were from within or without.

I mean really, it’s like saying, “Oh, comic book movies are so stupid and don’t make any sense.”

“No, Green Lantern didn’t make any sense, but don’t put that on ALL comic book movies.”

Grow up you guys.

Managing Political Chaos Part 1

“I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!”–Captain Renault, second before collecting his winnings in Casablanca.

For a self-identified Christian Nation that is probably un-Christianly Proud of its own Christianity, we sure do go out of our way to ignore, demonize, and outright deficate on the people that Jesus Christ was most interested in serving: the poor, the outcast…the tax collectors.  And that, in a nutshell, is what this project “Road to Wahnfried,” is all about.  It’s my attempt to sort through the various delusions the world creates, the illusions of my own heart, and isolate the Real of Life, and to find peace with the Real.  Here’s the most Real Thing I know:  Human beings need one another to survive.  Plain and simple.  We need each other for survival, for the acquiring and sharing of resources, and we access the divine in the presence of one another.  Which is why it is such a surprising, curious, and hazardous, part of the human experience that we have an endless capacity for casting illusions upon the world that are designed to separate us from one another.  So we have this prominent notion of ourselves, “America is a Christian Nation!” and we have The Real right in front of us, in which 1% of our country control something like 80% of the resources, the middle class is disappearing and the poor and outcast are increasingly demonized and/or outright ignored.  How can both of these things exist?  They can’t, they don’t make sense together.  So there’s The Real, and there are the illusions of our own hearts and delusions created by the world that cover up and dismiss The Real.  Is it possible to separate the two?  Is it possible to love America while also telling the truth about who we are as Americans?  That’s what I’m interested in finding out.

Here’s a personal example:  Yesterday, I took a trip to the Netherlands.  There was a group of homeless people gathered in a park, enjoying each other’s company.  I saw that my path was leading toward them, and I instinctively left the path, trotted across a big grass lawn that made my shoes muddy, and quietly envied the laughter and conversation the homeless folks on the path were enjoying together.  It was one of those things that I did without thinking, and as soon as I had done it, I felt stupid, childish and alone.  So, why did this happen?  As a self-proclaimed person of the Christian faith, someone who longs for greater connection with the world, why did I actively choose to distance myself from joyous human beings and then immediately regret my decision?  Well there’s any number of possible reasons, but here are the ones that I believe to be the MOST true:  I have been raised in a society that has taught me to hate poverty and fear the poor.  I have been conditioned to expect others to be jealous of me, and to expect jealous people to take things from me that don’t belong to them, and to expect them to do this through any number of devious means, including deception and violence.  I have been instructed–either explicitly or implicity–to suspect poor and homeless people of being lazy, psychotic, and/or dependent upon drugs and alcohol that make them do things a normal person would not, hence explaining their poverty.

All of these things are 100% untrue.  They are stereotypes, they are illusions created by the world to explain and dismiss the problem of poverty and its effects on God’s Beloved Children so that the successful and wealthy elite can continue to ignore and/or profit from the situation of “the less fortunate.”  I did what I did yesterday because I am still in the process of unlearning these things that had unconsciously seeped into my psyche for 20-some years.  Could I be unlearning better and faster?  Absolutely, and I strive to do so, mainly be being honest about when I fail and challenging the assumed values and inherited illusions that lead to the failure.

In an interesting twist of fate, on the same day that I had my personal failure, my country’s elected representatives got together to vote on a national failure: The Deal to Raise the Federal Debt Ceiling.  Most economists (like, for example, Paul Krugman in yesterday’s New York Times) are pointing out, not only how ridiculous the entire, drawn-out-way-too-long debate has been, but that there were any number of opportunities along the way to work in some policy that could actually help our struggling economy, make life easier for the poor and elderly, rather than doing what it is probably doing, making things worse.  As I go to work on myself, I realize more and more that I also need to do this same sort of work as it concerns my ability to act as a Citizen.  Because the more I learn about our government, and how it works, and the more I reflect on what it means to be a responsible American citizen and dedicated Disciple of the Christian faith, I’m realizing that the political process in our country is having less and less to do with The Real–human beings surviving and thriving together–and more to do with an endless list of illusions, inexplicable assumptions, and outright lies that are designed to benefit the few by confusing and disenfranchising the many.  This means that the elected representatives of our country are vastly more interested in things other than helping us survive and thrive as a whole society.

Whether my assessment is correct or not is something I am more than open to discussing, but I’ve been living in another country for the year, and almost to a person, I have seen friends, family, professors, and cab drivers shaking their heads at the circus sideshow that we laughingly call our government, and they have asked, “What is this about?  Why are they not addressing any real issues?”  This is an excellent question:  If our elected officials are so ineffective at collectively solving even the simplest problems that we face, what is it about?  What is going on?  The best theory I have to work with: that there are more people in government interested in defending their careers and running for re-election than there are Patriots willing to put aside talking points and start hammering out solutions.

So for me, as I think about how to be a Responsible US Citizen and progressing as a flawed but serious Disciple of the Christian Faith, my biggest question is this:  How can I act as a political person (which in my country primarily, but not entirely, means I vote for policies and people that represent my values) in an honest and just way?  And from there it seems necessary to ask:  Is there a way I can distinguish between people who are serious about tackling and solving legitimate problems in our society–and the absolute biggest problem we have is the rise of Poverty–and people who are more focused on their own careers or other objectives?   Is it possible to construct a list of guidelines that help us to separate out what people claim to believe from what they actually do?

This seems important, especially when we’re looking at a major upcoming election season and the candidates who are running seem more intent on telling us who they are and what they believe rather than having any actual political experience or knowledge that will help us solve problems at the government level.  And, at the same time, the information they give us about who they are and what they believe, matters ONLY IF we have reason to believe that what they SAY is the same as what they will DO.  Is it possible to construct a kind of framework that will give us indications of how strong the relationship between rhetoric and action will be?  Is it necessary at this point to become completely cynical about the whole thing and just assume that they will tell us whatever we want to hear while doing whatever seems most politically expedient for them in the moment?  I hope not.  Is it still possible to take people at their word, and expect nothing more or less?  I really don’t think so.

Personally, as is reflected in this whole “Wahnfried” project, I believe that following the pattern of creation that is put forth in the book of Genesis, we can create new possibilities and opportunities through the sacred act of Naming and Separating, Truth Telling and Critiquing; in other words, just as God manages Chaos so that love and life can flourish, I believe it is possible to manage the complicated messes in our society by Naming and Separating.

So that’s what I will be spending this week reflecting on, the criteria that could be used to create a more helpful and meaningful dialogue in our public sphere in the upcoming political season.  Because we really can’t afford to allow our current process, which is high on conflict and low on problem solving, to continue.

I’ll post some suggestions later this week, and i welcome any/all comments and observations you may have for what I should add.  What do you think are some areas of public discourse that need to be named and separated so that we can create progress where currently there is only conflict?  I would LOVE to talk to you about this.

Our Patriarchy is Showing

The Women’s World Cup is currently being held.  Were you aware of this?  If not, that’s kind of OK, because even the country that is currently hosting the event seems to be only mildly clued in.  That would be Germany.  You know Germany, yeah?  One of the world’s biggest soccer enthusiasts?  The games are all sold out, they are shown on national TV, people seem to be aware of who is placing where (though, to be fair, they were mainly aware of how Germany was doing…and they lost last weekend…so…), but if you didn’t do some research on your own, you would never know that this country is hosting the biggest tournament in the world for the world’s most popular sport…even if you live here.  Now, of course, that statement in itself needs some clearing up:  The World Cup is the biggest tournament for the world’s most popular sport (what we in America call soccer)…but the Women’s World Cup is not quite the same thing.  And I have come to see that as a problem.

When Inka first told me that Germany was hosting the Women’s World Cup, I was ecstatic!  I got into the 2010 World Cup in a big way last summer, I think primarily because I was in Honduras the week they found out they were going to the tournament in South Africa, I have friends who have been to South Africa, I was dating someone from Germany (and about to go there myself), I was looking for a reason to like America…my sister, her boyfriend, Inka and I all had a side bet going with March Madness-style brackets…it was a very exciting time!  So to be living in Germany at the same time as this huge every-4-year event…what could be better?!  Sadly, by the time we were looking into getting tickets to any of the games, they were all sold out.  I was not completely surprised, given Germany’s love for soccer I felt confident that, not only would I not be going to any of the games, but there would be a prompt shut-down of all public services and Toronto-style rioting!  I was ready and excited!

Well, the Women’s World Cup is entering the finals this week, and…it was just this last weekend that we actually watched part of a game, we saw Germany lose to Japan and get kicked out of the tournament.  Apparently the USA team earned their way into the final round about an hour ago and I didn’t even know there was a game on.  Last summer, in August, when we arrived in Germany, Inka’s home street was decorated in German flags that were streaming and flowing and waving out of windows and around houses.  I said, “Inka, I thought you said Germany is not particularly patriotic?  What’s with all the flags?”  Inka said, “It’s left over from the World Cup.”  The event had ended over a month before, but the evidence of the support and celebration was still in clear sight.  This year, while the country is hosting the event…not a single new flag on the street.  In fact, I may have seen one from last year finally get taken down a couple weeks ago.  At first, I was stunned that the whole thing wasn’t getting more attention, that even the seminary students who seemed to talk soccer all year long have not mumbled a word about it.  It was confusing.  Now I find it…troubling.

Especially because I finally watched a game last weekend.  I got really excited about every game I saw last summer, and I found that amazing because of how slow the games were.  If it isn’t clear already, I’m not a soccer fan.  Not a sports fan in general, but soccer is something that I am least tangentially connected to.  I mean, I don’t even get excited about baseball and that’s the one sport that I played throughout my entire childhood (6-12 years old), and I was even on the #1 undefeated Cubs team one year (it was only later that I appreciated how awesomely hilarious it was that the Sierra Vista Little League Chicago Cubs had an undefeated season…with me as one of their star players…ok, star right-fielder).  So the fact that I getting excited about soccer, a sport I played for maybe three months during which time I was constantly ridiculed, it’s a minor miracle.  All summer, the ball went up the field and down the field, the score usually at 0-0 right up until the end, for two hours this would go on…and I was RIVETED!  Now that I’ve seen a WOMEN’S soccer match, I don’t think I will ever be able to pay attention to a men’s game ever again.  Because, as opposed to their masculine counter parts, Women soccer players MOVE!  The Germany/Japan game was 0-0 right up through overtime, but they were RUNNING that field and firing soccer balls towards the goals every…well it seemed like…every three seconds.  Do you know how many times I saw the men’s soccer games stopped on account of someone falling over and crying (even though the video clearly showed–nearly every time–that no one was near him when he fell over)?  I don’t know either because after awhile you get tired of counting these things and you need to go get a beer.  How many times did this happen during the women’s game?  Only once, when a Japanese player was clearly (accidentally) spiked by a German player.  The rest of the time, these women ran, full speed, juggled the ball in ways that boggled my physics-challenged brain, they had a time out just so that everyone could lay down for a minute, get rubbed down thoroughly by their trainers, run in place(!) and then get back out and continue the most fascinating and exciting display of human endurance I have ever witnessed with my eyes.  It was astonishing, the level of intensity these women showed CONSTANTLY for over two hours.  I used to get winded doing half hour One Act plays in college.  These incredible women play on the same level, on the same size field, with the same rules as the Men’s World Cup players, with far MORE energy and intensity…and they get a fraction of the attention.

Again, to be fair, the ratings in Germany during their team’s early game against Canada actually bested the ratings of the men’s German team games last year, by a LOT.  Roughly 18 million people, that’s 25% of the country, watched that game!  That really is astounding, but it makes it even more confusing to me why such a highly watched sports event can be virtually non-present in subsequent public discourse.  In America it’s another story entirely.  Last year, the final game of the World Cup was the highest rated soccer match in the history of the US (and the world!), with 15 million US viewers and 700 million world wide!  Among those 700 million were 25 million Germans, 10 million more than tuned in for Germany’s opening game this year, even though Germany was not in the final game of the 2010 World Cup.  In the US, the American team’s victory over Brazil in the quarterfinals on Sunday was seen by 3.89 million people.  Seemingly not bad, but, in comparison, that is about half as many people who watched the Home Run Derby the next day.  As far as I know, that’s not even something that has to do with an actual competition.

OK, that’s a lot of numbers, and a lot of it may mean nothing.  Of course final matches attract more attention than earlier ones.  Of course America would watch more baseball than soccer.  But those numbers, combined with the lack of cultural support and enthusiasm in the hosting country itself…it really is a powerful reminder of how little praise and attention our patriarchal world gives to women’s activities, triumphs, and social issues.  All things being equal, why should it matter that about 1% of America  watched the Women’s Soccer game this last Sunday, but over 50% of America watched this year’s Super Bowl?  Clearly that can and does demonstrate a preference for American football over soccer as much as (or more than) men over women.  But things aren’t equal.  The women play the game better, at least from what I’ve seen.  I can’t remember the last time I saw a display of human physical prowess in a Super Bowl that was even half as enthralling as what the women in the Germany/Japan match pulled off on Sunday.

Part of my journey to Wahnfried is to check and correct the cultural blind spots that I have inherited; and among that long list is an outright insistence that I pay attention to our greatest displays of masculine dominance while ignoring the far more impressive achievements of women.  This is not just true in sports, but in an entertainment-fueled culture, that may be one of the most obvious and important areas.  And it is a phenomenon that is easier to spot in Germany, because it’s comparing one World Cup to another World Cup, where the only difference is gender; but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hold true for America.  Think of the jokes you’ve heard about the WNBA versus the number of WNBA games that you’ve watched.  Think of the funding challenges faced by high school women’s sports teams versus the guaranteed luxury of the men’s high school sports teams.  Now, remove sports from the picture and think of every other aspect of our society and tell me if you don’t see a similar pattern.

We are trained to pay attention to certain things and ignore others.  This is a big part of what it means to be “enlightened” or Wahnfried “free of illusion”; recognizing that anything we know as “truth” is a small sliver of a larger reality, which is hidden from our view by our own biases and prejudices.  We favor America over the rest of the world, we favor our religion over others, we favor our friends over our strangers, and we favor men over women.  I don’t know if it’s possible for me to make a more obvious statement than that, but I also know that there are many things that exist in this world, things that are worthy of my attention, my prayers, my money, my time…things that I don’t even think about because my culture convinced me from an early age that they aren’t important.

I don’t know what will be more interesting to me: to see the numbers from the Women’s World Cup Final Match when America plays later this week, or to see how much more popular Soccer becomes in America when/if the Men’s soccer team ever wins the World Cup Final.  Because the Women’s team did it over ten years ago already.  I don’t know if we ignore this because of our disinterest in soccer or our disinterest in the achievements of women in our country.

We have no control over the cultural biases that are instilled in us, but if we care enough, we can work to change those biases for future descendants of our culture.  And that begins by becoming aware…paying homage…celebrating and naming…publicly and proudly.

Women’s World Cup Finals–Sunday, July 17 8:45 p.m. (German time); USA vs. Japan (probably).  Be there.  Start to tell a new story.

Mischief, Mischief….Prayers for Cities on Fire

Isaiah 43: 1-2

 ¹ But now, this is what the LORD says— 

he who created you, Jacob,
he who formed you, Israel:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
² When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.

Last week, the mountains which house the Coronado National Monument, south of Sierra Vista, where I grew up and still kind of claim residence, burst into flame.  In the few days that have since passed, incredibly hot and windy days, the fire has made itself at home in the bone-dry forest of the Huachuca Mountains, and like all unwanted visitors, has begun stealing everything in sight, stretching its legs, making a general nuissance of itself and burning through people’s homes and neighborhoods while doing it.  And as troubling as this fire is for me and my community, there’s also the Wallow Fire in the eastern part of Arizona which is the biggest in the state’s history.

For me, there’s an extra, ironic sting as I sit here…looking at my sister’s photos of the smoke, Skyping with my family while they hurriedly evacuate their neighborhood….it’s part of that sick humor that exists in the world, the thing that makes your belly twist and turn, your blood pump a little bit faster with frustration, yet you can’t help but laugh….I drove through the Northern Half of Germany today, and it is cold, it is dark, and it is pouring buckets.  The story of my life, I spend a weekend bathed in abundance, while people I love are left sitting high and dry.

So now….I pray.  Because there’s nothing else to do, but pray.  And here’s something I figured out a couple years ago, somewhere between watching friends lose loved ones to war and watching other friends lose loved ones to cancer: We don’t pray because it makes us feel better.  We don’t pray because it “wins” us anything.  We pray simply because, especially in the face of tragedy we have no way of explaining, and especially in the aftermath of suffering we cannot escape….it is all we have.  It is the one thing we can do, which makes it the one thing we must do.

As always, your prayers are needed and invited, whether you add them here or just hold them in your own heart.

God of All Creation, God of soothing rains, God of Pentecostal Fire, Maker of Frozen Tundra and Scorched Desert–

Be with the men and women who fight the flames and protect those in their charge.  Keep them safe and cool while they stand against the raging heat.  

Be with the thousands of dislocated people in Sierra Vista, as they sit and watch, sit and wait, uncertain of the challenges that lay ahead, missing the safety of home.  Open their hearts, God, work those tickers open with your loving hands, so the physical displacement they are feeling does not become needless anger towards others.  

The words of the Prophet Isaiah provide a challenging reminder of your presence, Lord of All Things:

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
² When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.

These words remind us that we are claimed, first and foremost, by you, Dear Loving God.  Whatever physical challenges we face, whatever scars of struggle we incur, we have a home in you that does not go away, we have an identity in you that cannot be stripped from us.  As fire drives folks from their homes, while heat and flame and smoke separate people from the lives they know, help us to have the strength and courage to take You up on Your Extravagent Invitation…to come home to love and grace that never disappears in smoke, and can never be threatened by fire.

Also, if you could send an Angel of Mercy to Arizona and pee these fires out, that would be awesome.

All of this we ask and offer to you, God of Creative Love.  Amen.

Betwixt and Between: Creating New Things and Making People Nervous!

This year has been, and continues to be, one of the best experiences of my life.  And similar to the other best experiences of my life, this primarily means that I have cried a lot this year.  Because all the best things I have done share one major thing in common, and that is they are things I had to grow into, I required time to acquire new skills and put certain, unfortunate parts of my old life to death before I could truly live into the new possibilities that came with college or leading a youth group or living in another country.  The year that I first heard a call from God to a life of ministry, that was another one of those times.  Lots of tears, lots of emotional hardships…and for the life of me I could not figure out how or why the more I came to understand myself, the more difficult the world seemed to be.  Then I took a trip to my alma mater, Beloit College, where the campus spiritual director, Bill Conover, handed me a book by Franciscan Priest Richard Rohr, and I was introduced to some spiritual practice concepts that would end up being vital to my development as a person attempting to walk a spiritual path without losing my mind.  The first of these concepts, one that would be central to my understanding of spirituality, is called Liminal Space.

So, what is Liminal Space?  Allow me to introduce you to the words of Richard Rohr:

. “Limina” is the Latin word for threshold, the space betwixt and between. Liminal space, therefore, is a unique spiritual position where human beings hate to be but where the biblical God is always leading them. It is when you have left the “tried and true” but have not yet been able to replace it with anything else. It is when you are finally out of the way. It is when you are in between your old comfort zone and any possible new answer. It is no fun. Think of Israel in the desert, Joseph in the pit, Jonah in the belly, the three Marys tending the tomb…IF YOU ARE NOT trained in how to hold anxiety, how to live with ambiguity, how to entrust and wait-you will run-or more likely you will “explain.” Not necessarily a true explanation, but any explanation is better than scary liminal space. Anything to flee from this terrible “cloud of unknowing.” Those of a more fear-based nature will run back to the old explanations. Those who love risk or hate thought will often quickly construct a new explanation where they can feel special and again in control. Few of us know how to stay on the threshold. You just feel stupid there-and we are all trying to say something profound these days…Everything genuinely new emerges in some kind of liminal space.”

The Wattensee:

So a few weeks ago, we vacationed to the north of Germany, and i mentioned here briefly that we saw something called the “Watt” otherwise known as the “Wattensee.”  It is a fascinating sight for a beach, because when the tide goes out, it goes WAY out.  In the morning and evening, it is a normal looking beach (insert photo here?), but in the afternoon, the sandy beach is separated from the ocean waters by several miles of mud.  Apparently it is a mud flat (which is what the word “watt” means) formed some time between the 10th and 14th centuries by a series of intense storms.  Over the past several hundred years, however, the unique environmental conditions of this area have “given rise to an abundance of highly specialized forms of life,” which include “a high proportion of organic substances, which form the first link in the food chain.”

Vacationing there is beautiful and fun, but far from a typical, refreshing weekend at the beach.  As Inka learned when trying to swim, even when the water is at high tide, resembling a normal looking beach, swimming is impossible unless you venture out six miles to where the mudflat ends.  Visitors obviously don’t bother with this, especially since the water spends the majority of its day…out to sea.  So you spend most of your time either sunbathing or walking around in the miles long stretch of mud.  It is completey cool and completely surreal.  We saw tiny, mollusk-looking things that look like they fell out of a Pirates of the Carribean movie.  The field is littered with sink holes, and everyone is just wandering around aimlessly, basking in the wonder of an ocean that is…missing.  Sometimes you feel like you are at the dawn of creation, other times the end of the world.  You are not on the beach, you are not in the ocean…you are forever in between, in this nowhere world…where new life is born.

It is a perfect geographic example of Liminal Space, and it helped me appreciate the importance of that hard-to-come-by realm.  Obviously when we speak of Liminal Space we are primarily talking about a spiritual, non physical, space.  But we humans need physical concepts in order to visualize and process spiritual realities.  Rohr has talked about Liminal Space as a doorway, the small space you occupy when leaving one room yet not quite entering the next.  It is illustrative, but it can imply that liminal space is something we encounter briefly and fleetingly.  The Wattenmeer is a better example of a space that is occupied over a longer period of time, which is exactly the kind of liminal space required by folks like us who do not do well with complex, abiguous situations.  For those of us who are looking for spiritual enlightenment, but held captive by a digital, 24/7 world, those whom Rohr describes as, “those who love risk or hate thought,” we are in deep need of the new life that is formed within the space that is neither beach nor sea.  And we need to recognize that these new forms require a substantial amount of time to develop…maybe months…maybe years.

For those of us who long for something new in our lives, we need to begin finding models for Liminal Space that we can occupy long enough to give shape to the new.  I suppose we could look at it this way: For those of us who long for something new in our lives, how often do we make room in our lives for new possibilities?

From the title of this blog, you can tell how essential this image of liminal space has been for my formation; actually, the entire purpose of this blog can be seen as a liminal project, documenting my journey from the life I had been living–with all my old hang ups and habits, most of which I have not really outgrown or left behind–towards Wahnfried, which is the term I have adopted for my personal goal of living in a way that is not preoccupied with escapist fantasies of the future, or illusions that suit my personal needs, but a life that seeks truth in all its messy, unattractive complications with an eye toward a future that is more just for everyone, if only a tiny bit, if only through my own choices and actions AND, ultimately, being at peace with the outcome.  I am not able to go from one place to the other out of sheer willpower, nor can I do it without taking a good length of time to unlearn old habits and acquire new skills.  Liminal space is the space I require in order for that to happen.  It is the space that Spiritual Practice makes available to us.  It is the space that I have made for myself–in a literal sense by choosing to spend a year abroad, and in a spiritual sense by starting this blog.  The combination of these two things have offered new tools with which I can grow, learn, create and move forward.  In sharing my journey on the web,  I am challenged to be honest and accurate in my recounting of events.  In offering my story to others–weather nor not anyone is interested in that story is a different matter entirely–I find an incentive to regularly (at least a weekly basis) reflect on my life and decisions.  It’s an interesting tool, because I can actually look at everything from the content to the increased frequency in posting and actually measure some of the ways in which I have changed since last August.  While searching for Wahnfried could be a lifelong process, there is a lot of reason to believe some new things have developed…ideas, view points, beliefs, the most basic forms of intellecutal life…that will begin to take form when I return to America in a few short months.

But, enough about me.  I mean, really.  Always with the run-on sentences, this one.

Despite my blow-hardiness in this blog, EVERYONE, at some time or other, comes into contact with liminality…liminalism…liminiminima…you know.  Every time something comes to an end, we are encountered with a brief period of time before something new rises in place of the old.  If we apathetically cruise through our days, or if we angrily suffer the time away as victims, then we are likely to encounter a lot of old, familiar problems in the new time.  But if we are attentive and reflective, if we can mull through the destruction of yesterday and see what can be salvaged, if we apply a little creativity and hope…then ordinary time is transformed into Liminal Space, and tomorrow ceases to be “just another day” and magically offers something legitimately new….for you and the world.

And the good news continues, because we actually encounter potential Liminal Space everyday, in major catastrophes and ordinary tasks.  And when we look at situations that have the potential to be Liminal Space, we can also see why such space is hard to come by.  It tends to come within situations that are painful, disorienting, or just plain old annoying as all get out…and these are not situations we usually enjoy occupying for any length of time.

Zum Beispiel (for example)

1. Airplanes

Ordinary Time:  There is literally no end to the ways people can find to complain about traveling in an airplane.  Security is ridiculous, the plane takes off late, or, like when I was coming back from America, not at all, and we are redirected to others planes and other locations.  It is cramped, the food is no good, in-flight entertainment is often a not funny joke.  If there is a baby on board, or if you have a stomach bug, God help you!  Flight attendants are rude and/or incompetant, and people  are loud and/or stupid.  Not to mention that it is expensive and you spend a long time disconnected from the very important things you could be doing if you didn’t have to keep your electronic divices in the “off” position while traveling to a place you don’t want to be, and for crying out loud, how much could a text message from 5,000 feet hurt things anyway?!

Liminal Space:  Unless you are an astronaut, it is difficult to imagine a place a human could go that would be more removed from the constant hustle and bustle of 21st Century living than sitting in a pressurized cabin for a few hours, thousands of feet above the earth.  No phone, no lights, no motor cars…although, lots of other luxuries these days, with TV and/or movies, video games, and….yeah internet sometimes.  You can read, listen to music, or just sit and stare into space.  Literally, if you have a window seat, you are a lot closer to space than you usually are, and you can just stare into it.  And if you are traveling to a far off place, then you are even removed from time, you take off and it’s Tuesday, you land and it’s somehow the next week.  This can be a space that produces a lot of anxiety and a lot of complaints.  But it is also the only thing outside of a camping trip to the deep woods or a work trip to a non-industrialized country that allows you to totally shed the stressful flow of your 24/7 digital world.  You have a brief window to reflect, pinpoint some areas of your life that not working in a way that is healthy for you or your community.  You can literally walk off an airplane with a different rhythm to your life than you had upon boarding.  Check your baggage and don’t pick it back up.

2.  Graduation

Ordinary time:  For the most part, graduating from anything is, to one degree or another, an acheivement worth celebrating and is usually a milestone that would not be described as “ordinary.”  The temptation with milestones, though, is to live our lives from one to another.  Rather than putting the emphasis on the journey (which is where we live the majority of our lives), we focus all of our attention on isolated acheivements, rather than on daily living.  This keeps us constantly moving, rarely reflecting.  We acquire a lot to be proud of…but are we proud about the lives we are living in order to make those acquisitions?  And as joyous an occasion as a graduation can be, does it deliver what it promises, allowing us to graduate one system in order to enter a new one, or does it keep us forever striving, never satisfied, never feeling qualified, just jumping from one acheivement to another, eternally impatient and annoyed with the time in between milestones?

Liminal Space:  Now adays, most of us who tend to graduate things tend to have our next thing lined up–whether it is more school or a job–before we actually have the degree.  I remember the last semester of college, as everyone diligently plugged away on tests, resumes, and applications, trying to get in on the next thing before we were quite done with our current thing.  I didn’t do that, and I have never been able to figure out if that is because I am naturally disorganized, woefully bad at making decisions, or just flat out lazy.  But it seems to me that the parts of my personality that make me suitable for ministry make me equally unsuitable for anything else, things that require planning and auditioning and prematurly committing to a situation that I have no business being in.  So as a result, I spent the summer after college living in Beloit, working for the Residential Life office, living from paycheck to paycheck with no real idea about what would happen in August.  It was a great experience, even though it was as painful and stressful as it was fun.  Liminal Space is typically not something we appreciate at the time, until we are trained to look for it.  And the reasons we don’t appreciate it are the same reasons that it is necessary; it comes with a lot of doubt, a lot of uncertainty, and virutally no false sense of control.  Graduating puts us in limbo, for better or worse.  Even if we know what comes next, we usually have a brief period of time–a few days or a few months–before the next thing begins, and it is in that Limbo time that we can make some powerful decisions about what the future will look like.  But only if we have the courage to tell the truth about who we are, and not give up on the things we truly want.  With no system putting pressure or expecting certain things from us, we have a short opportunity to collect the pieces of our fragmented souls and mend them, and fortify them so we stand a better chance of staying strong when the next system comes along and attempts to demand everything from us.

BTW: Congratulations to The Class of 2011!

3.  Jobless

Ordinary Time:  It’s a situation far too many people are facing right now.  When we lose our jobs, we are not just losing precious resources, we are losing our identity.  For Americans this is especially true.  When someone asks what we do for a living, we answer by telling who we are.  I am a teacher.  I am a programmer.  I am an engineer.  So when that is taken away…we not only have to figure out how to support ourselves and our family, we not only have to search long and hard for what comes next, we also have to figure out who that makes us.  The loss of a job is the loss of…potentially everything, and the time after that is typically filled with stress and worry and desperation.

Liminal Space:  It can also be a time of rebirth.  Last fall I heard a lot about an organization called We’ve Got Time to Help, a network of folks who have lost their jobs, can’t find new ones and have decided to use their time to assist others in need with various projects.  I haven’t been in the States much this year, so I don’t know how widely publicized this group is, but look them up immediately if you are not familiar with them…especially if you are among the nearly 20% of Americans currently out of work.  I have also heard recently about Adrienne Marie Brown and the work of herself and other folks around Detroit, Michigan, developing jobs and economic systems among Detroit’s “unemployed” so that, as she put it on a recent interview on Smiley and West, “…everyone, from young people to old people, everyone is being valued for what they can contribute.  Rather than their value being marked on them from external sources, that they can see themselves as a meaningful part of the community, and everything they do in the community leads to them getting the resources they need.”  There is no doubt that joblessness creates a time of great stress, anxiety, and desperation, BUT those are the emotions we sit with in Liminal Space.  No wonder we don’t stay there too long, who wants to live with those emotions longer than necessary?  But the better we practice being in that space, the more we learn to let go of those negative feelings just enough to discover the freedom and creativity that lies underneath them.  Joblessness is, in the end, being without a paycheck, which IS a problem; but that is different than not having work to do.  And for some of us, especially people of faith, it sometimes takes a brief period of being without a paycheck before we learn what kind of work we are truly called to engage in.

4.  Vacation/Holiday

Ordinary Time:  Germany may get more “holiday” or “vacation” time than we get in America, but everyone seems to think about that time in more or less the same way; we all see it as extra time.  We call it “free time,” but really it is extra time in which we typically spend a lot of money to experience new things, or reconnect with family, or just to be entertained.  It usually means time off work, but it rarely means time off from our normal way of doing things, which is to consume, to spend, to pay for privileges on our time off that we are not afforded during our “time on.”  We can have fun, we can do once-in-a-lifetime things, but how often do we feel genuinely recharged and revitalized by this time off before returning to the daily grind?

Liminal Space:  My friend Vaughn Hillyard has always been an amazing person to talk to.  I met him when he was 14, but his reading level was already way past mine.  By the time he was 18 he had already started his own non-profit organization.  Vaughn is an extraordinary person for many reasons, not the least of which is that he knows what a holiday is for.  He recently started a blog, which you should read, and on Memorial Day last week he wrote:

“It sometimes takes these occasions and holidays to put into perspective what kind of life I live and compare it to those of others.  I’m at the age where I now have former high school classmates and thousands of other men and women my age that are in the country’s armed services.  Many will go to Afghanistan and Iraq.  The others are on standby…I give those in the military all the credit in the world for their bravery.  It’s something I could not begin to fathom being a part of.  Yet, I do what I do [Journalism] because of them.  They’re fighting for us and have dedicated themselves to the military to allow Americans to live a life of freedom and hope.  And accordingly, that’s what I’ll continue to do. I’ll hold up my end of the deal, and I’m committed to giving this country reason to continue fighting for what’s right in the world.  I’ll do everything I can to make their time and efforts worthwhile.”

It could be that this is part of the reason why Americans don’t always even take all the vacation they are given.  Maybe vacations already reek too heavily of liminal space, time that can not be controlled, time that is “free” in the sense of “wasted” time or “not earning money” time.  What if a vacation was more than the few days a year when we don’t work?  What if it was also a few days of truly living differently than we normally do?  What new things could we do and discover if we forced ourselves into the woods, or just kept our cars in the garage?  What could be born from our days of remembrance if we actually took an entire day, as Vaughn did, to remember, to reflect, to honor people and causes?  Sometimes you don’t have to do anything to find Liminal Space, it’s already scheduled on the calendar!  All you have to do is not waste the opportunity.

5.  Diet

Ordinary Time:  I think I have mentioned before how my friend, Anna Tinker, bought me a book for my birthday a few years ago, the beloved Dr. Oz’s “You On a Diet.”  Up until that book, my experience with diets was strictly second-hand, just watching others go through various phases of various eating regiments.  I always admired the will-power involved, but even after I gained thirty pounds during my senior year “eat a whole pizza a week because of ridiculous sadness” program, I never thought a Diet was something I actually needed or wanted to do.  I knew that, even if I could work a particular program, I would reach a target weight, and then…what?  A lifetime without sadness pizza?  I didn’t see it happening.  Dr. Oz opened me up to a whole new side of dieting.

Liminal Space:  This summer marks my first serious attempt at a “diet,” specifically because of Dr. Oz’s approach to dieting, which is, essentially, not about eating differently but living differently.  I read this book four or five years ago (thanks again Anna!), but it took me until now to finally appreciate how to make it work because the goal is not to lose weight, or to look good, the goal is to get your body to work the way it is naturally supposed to work.  And I had lived too much inside the life modernity gave me, the lifestyle that is completely counter to the You on a Diet Diet, to figure out how to make it work.  Now I am seeing it for what it is, some Liminal Space born out of sheer will power and medical science.  It is entering into a period of time of living the way humans were meant to live (primarilyin motion, rather than primarily sedentary) and eating the way humans are meant to eat (foods that actually make your metabolism work better, rather than foods that stop it entirely), so that after a month or two, you no longer require a “diet,” because you have something even better, a healthy life.

And, in the end, this may be the best example of what Liminal Space offers, a future where creative new possibilities replace old, debilitating patterns.  What a diet should be is some self-created liminal space, where you give up your past actions and habits and attempt to grab on to some newer healthier ones. Think of the possibilities we would have for healthier living if we could practice more liminal space, if we had “diets” in gas consumption (getting more exercise instead of driving everywhere), entertainment consumption (opting for active, engaging entertainments rather than passive, sit-around-and-eat activities), and just strait up Consumerism in general, getting out of the culture that forces us, in so many ways, to identify with specific identities which must be purchased and consumed?  After the disaster in Japan, Germany had a giant, collective Liminal Space experience, when weeks of protesting all throughout the country lead to Germany’s decision to get off nuclear power in the next ten years.  Obviously, this raises a lot of questions, and it’s freaking a lot of people out, especially fellow European countries.  But Germany is committed to giving it a try.  That is on the macro level, but going completely the other way, there is a family refusing to divulge the sex of their newborn child, so that the child will develop her/his own gender identity, rather than allowing the world to decide for him/her.  It is freaking a lot of people out.

And that is the thing about Liminal Space…it’s not just difficult for those inside it…it can freak out other people too.  It’s uncomfortable for everyone.  And that is why we don’t spend as much time there as we ought to.  Give it a try.  Create something new in your life.  Freak some people out, including yourself.

I’ll be home soon, America.  But not too soon.

Bunch of Strange: May’s Swan Song and the Coming of June!

Germany is, essentially, beautiful.  This is not up for debate.  It is a gorgeous, lush sprawl of green that comes in shades I never knew existed outside of a Crayola Crayon box.  That beauty, however, comes with a cost.  There are times when Germany is plagued with what I am affectionately calling “Gray Day Time Suck of Sadness.”  What does this mean?  Glad you asked.

This is what the outside looked like at 7:30 in the morning one day (complete with time stamp!)

This is what it looked like twelve hours later:

That continued for three days.  For three days, it was either pitch black night, or THAT.  Three days of constant, exact same gray time suck light.  This is…not OK.  I understand that Germany is not the only place with this unfortunate condition…but it is the first place I have ever lived where this happens.  It is very strange.  Especially since, on sunny days, the summer sun takes 18 hours to traverse the sky, which makes you feel strange in the complete opposite way of Gray Time Suck (GTS)…it makes you feel euphoric, like you are living in some strange, vivid fantasy world filled with song and chocolate, where there is no darkness and everyone smiles.  GTS just makes you feel like you are living the same grey, humid, timeless day over and over and over.  Because you are.  And it sucks.

Fortunately, my life is jam-packed with things that leave me too busy and tired to spend too much time reflecting on God’s practical joke that is hot and cloudy days.  Jamie and Oscar were here last week, and we saw…everything.  We did…everything.  It was fantastic to see them, and it was especially awesome to discover talents with the German language that I never even knew I had.  It is one of those things where you don’t even realize how much you have learned until you find yourself in a situation with just two non-German speakers and having to say to others, “Sorry, we did not mean to steal your shopping bag,” and “Sorry, she is wanting Ranch dressing for her french fries…yes, I know you don’t have that, it is a salad dressing.  Yes, I know salad dressing on french fries sounds terrible.  She will have ketchup.  Oh, wait…ok…she will have nothing.  Sorry.”  I swear, I said all those things in German.  Didn’t even know I knew how.

In 20 minutes, it will be 5:57 in the morning, and Inka and I, along with most of the seminary, will be heading to the far west of Germany for Der Kirchentag, which is a giant church festival for EVERY church in Germany.  It will last for five days.  Among my favorite quotes as we were all preparing to leave, “Bring those for snacks, we’ll be so drunk we will want food!”  That’s right…big church event…drinking…church outside of US Puritan roots is quite alright by me.  I’m excited about Der Kirchentag, excited to walk around an awesome city (it’s in Dresden!  Who would have thought I would be returning there?), hang out with friends (it will be like the end of a video game, where nearly everyone I have met throughout this year will randomly pop up at various times), including my advisor from Andover Newton, Mark Burrows who got me hooked up with this program in the first place.  It will also be an interesting prologue for when I attend the UCC General Synod in July.  Yeah, that’s right, I get to travel to and from America yet again before the year is over.  Pretty awesome.  General Synod is….sort of like Kirchentag but only for my denomination, I think there’s far more church “business” that takes place at General Synod than Kirchentag, and…there’s drinking, but it’s not as out in the open.  I mean, you have to go to bars to do it.  You can’t just have a beer during outside worship.  Which is what I will be doing in about twelve hours.  Just saying.  Although, General Synod is in Tampa, so…not complaining about having to be indoors.  But I digress….it will be interesting to compare and contrast giant church gatherings..because I like stuff like that.

So, happy June!  What a Happy June it will be!  Just like May!  I can’t believe my life sometimes!  Need to go learn witty churchy jokes in German.  Have a great week!

I can’t believe my life.  It’s awesome.

So, it’s come to this…A Road to Wahnfried Clip Show

Since coming back to Germany, life has decided to pick up the pace a bit.  No time to process, no time to document…only time to move!  Such is spring time in Germany.  Things move pretty fast, and if you don’t stop and look at it every once in awhile…well, you know how it goes.  So, very quickly, my last four weeks (roughly):

The following pictures and captions were uncooperative with my lack of technological skills and, therefore, may appear to have been thrown together haphazardly, indifferent to how it may look.  If you get dizzy, you should skim or walk away from your computer.  Apologies.   Sinerely, Management.

Week 1: Back to Germany, Spring, BBQ

Inka picked me up from the airport.  And she bought me coffee!  And she didn’t care that I was jetlagged (even though I don’t believe in jetlag) and falling asleep and talking gibberish.  Talk about Best Ever!

When I left Germany in March it was way cold and dark and horrible. But spring came to Germany while I was away!After spending a month in Arizona…it was seriously like Dorothy stepping out of her house into Oz.  The world went into hyper techni-color overload.  It’s awesome.

The weather has been so warm and awesome ever since…and the sun is up for 15 hours a day, so it was the perfect time for the first BBQ of 2011!

Now it’s actually fun to take Pedro for walks in the field behind the house.  Before it was cold and wet and gross.  And now it still is, but it’s a good excuse to get out of the warm house.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but now in the spring, it’s especially interesting to look at.  This is a hole in the earth in out in the field where we walk Pedro.  There are many such holes of various sizes, and they were all created by American bombs during WWII.  This is no more than 100 yards away from Inka’s house.  Her mom said that children used to go swimming in them.

Week 2: Easter!

For Easter weekend, we retreated to Monika and Eugen’s place in a town called Duhnen; which is on the beach in the North of Germany.  You know…as you do.

There’s this amazing thing that happens here, and I don’t have any idea why.  When the tide goes out every day, it goes WAY out.  So for huge chunks of the day, you can walk on the ocean floor that is usually under water. It’s called the Watt and it goes on for miles.   I’m going to write more about it sometime because it was really cool and unnerving.  You aren’t in the ocean…but you’re not on the beach.  And people just wander in and out of your field of vision…like some kind of wasteland.  It was fantastic.

Germany is a very religious country.  But they are not what us Protestant-inspired American folks think of when we think “religious.”  For instance, Easter is huge in Germany, and EVERYONE celebrates.  But, it is not the solemn Black Friday through Saturday kind of celebration….it’s an ACTUAL celebration.  Observe below:

These signs were everywhere throughout Duhnen.  Apparently the biggest thing that was happening on Easter was Party Bomb hosted by Fatman Scoop.  OK, admittedly, this is among the more “secular” Easter celebrations.  Everyone gets an Easter break, so this is really more for the Spring Break-type crowd.  The religious folks are much more reserved on Easter…

…and by “reserved” I mean they just have music, food, beer, and a bonfire down on the beach at sunset the night before Easter.

Supposedly, this tradition stems from an ancient pagan ritual of scaring away the evil, cold winter specters and welcoming in the new, warm sprites of spring by starting a giant bonfire in the heart of town.  Later, the Christians co-opted the Easter Fire as a ritual to symbolize Christ’s death.  They would actually burn their Christmas trees in the fire, and then use the ashes for Ash Wednesday.  Cool, huh?  Over time, it drifted back to a celebration that happens the night before Easter.  Creating light in the night.  Life overcoming death.

We treated Monika and Eugen to dinner at the Easter Fire as thanks for an awesome weekend.  They paid for everything all weekend long…but I bought them two bratwurst.  So..ya know…it was almost even.

The Next Morning: Easter!  We must have gotten all our American Easter traditions from Germany because, as opposed to Easter, the celebration was remarkably similar.  Apparently in France, they don’t have an Easter Bunny, they have an Easter Rooster.  I asked if this is where the Easter Egg tradition comes from…if we all stole it from France?  Monika laughed at me and said, “Roosters don’t lay eggs.”

They even made us do an Easter Egg hunt!  It was awesome.

Later we went to church, which was cute because it was way too many beach tourists crammed into a tiny  parish in the middle of a beach-town strip.  I didn’t get any pictures of that, but it was cute…and a little warm.  Easter in Germany: Success!

Week 3: Leipzig!

So for Easter weekend, it was a four hour drive North to the sea.  The weekend after was a six hour drive east to–very nearly–the eastern edge of the country to a city called Leipzig.

The point of the weekend was two fold:

#1) To see these two, Anke and Manu, some of our best friends in Germany.  We studied at the seminary together last semester, but now they’ve moved on to Leipzig.  In Germany, it is the custom (apparently) to change universities several times throughout your education.  They invited us out to see their new city, and we saw…

…A statue of Johann Sebastian Bach…he was from here…

…we saw the Auerbachs Keller, which is a bar that is primarily famous because it is the setting for a scene in Goethe’s famous play “Faust!”  Inside there are awesome statues of Mephisto coming to make a deal for Faust’s soul.  I’m reading it right now in German.  This was an exciting site for a theater nerd such as myself.   We did not stop to have a drink.  Because we also saw….

…these people.  Not sure what they’re up to. I’m just assuming that’s a typical Saturday for them.

Anyway, the big #2 reason why we went to Leipzig to hang out with Anke and Manu on this particular weekend…

Germany has this tradition on the first of May: Everyone goes for a walk with a special drink–which is called Mai, just like the month of May in German (Mai)–and you just walk around and drink.  It is the equivalent of Labor Day, meant to honor the common, hard-working people of the country.  So, actually walking and drinking is NOT all that happens.  There were several demonstrations around the country that day, working people everywhere demanding better wages and better benefits to better support their families.  If I had known that bit at  the time, maybe I would have tried to go find one to check it out.  But…as you can see, it was a very sunny, warm, beautifully fun day anyway.

Week 4: Baptism in Offenburg!

   The next weekend…another big trip…this time, six-eight hours (depending on who’s counting) with Inka’s father and his family to the SOUTH of Germany, a small town outside Offenburg, in the heart of the fabled Black Forest(!), for the baptism of Inka’s newborn baby cousin.

The place was charming.  The town itself was everything you would want a tiny town in the Black Forest to be.  The hotel we stayed at was also the town Tavern…it seriously looked like something out of a movie, where our rooms were right above the bar.  Inka’s father (pictured here, with his partner, and Inka) was very generous and his family is completely warm and hilarious.

Lots of fun German traditions with this trip.  Including the father of the newborn, Inka’s uncle, giving a big speech introducing everyone at the baptism to everyone else, spelling out exactly how everyone there was connected.  Fun fact: I was not the only American there.  The Scherhans clan is my kind of people, they get excited about good conversation, warm hugs, and good drinks.

Sunday morning before we left, I got to participate in a German tradition that I have seen and heard about since arriving, but never have been a part of myself.  The traditional “Sonntagsspaziergang,” or Sunday Walk.  Everyone just goes for a walk on Sunday.  The Scherhans had breakfast together and then just started walking.  I followed them.  We went through fields and over a creek (I’m not making this up), through a cemetery and someone’s back yard (seriously, not making this up) all while dressed in Sunday best and pushing a baby stroller.  It was awesome.  South Germany knows how to party.

Meanwhile…I swear I’m in school

During the week, I’m back on the hill in Wuppertal.  We just wrapped up the second full week of school.  I’m taking a class on Philosophy in the Middle Ages, Christianity in the “New Time” (which means from the Reformation until the Enlightenment…roughly), and an Eschatology class called “Die Christliche Hoffnung,” the Christian Hope.  Good stuff.  Way interesting (especially the history classes…history is nowhere near as boring when you can visit and touch the places from 600 years ago that they talk about in class), and my German lessons are paying off big time as I can now understand about 75% of what’s happening in class…which is about 500% more than last semester.

Quick Sidebar:  German Shopping Malls

I was able to avoid shopping malls quite a lot in my first semester, but for some reason I have wound up there frequently in the last few weeks.  Here’s the thing:  German malls are not necessarily different than American ones..but they are way better.  I give you, here to the left, Exhibit A: Anke hanging out in a department store…drinking champagne.  They just had champagne for sale by the escalator.  So we stopped and had a drink.  If American malls went this way…I might develop a different attitude towards consumerism.  Well..probably not, but it’s a nice treat if you have to be stuck there anyway.

Exhibit B:  When we went to the baby baptism, we almost breached protocol by not bringing a present.  Apparently this is just “not done.”  So we went to the mall and we bought a present.  Inka wanted to have it gift wrapped, but with the baptism only a few hours away and us stuck in a hotel, how will we possibly get that done?!  Well….

In Germany, you just purchase your item, then go past the toys and over by the elevator (or maybe some other place depending on what mall you’re in) and you just wrap the present yourself.  Free of charge.  Very pretty paper and ribbon available.  Again…if malls in America made it just THAT much easier…people would be getting more presents from me, that’s all I’m saying.

FINALLY, This weekend and we’re all caught up:

TONIGHT: We took Eugen out to play some pool to celebrate his birthday.  We were supposed to go to a concert, but it got cancelled.  So we played some pool.  It was Eugen and Monika against Inka and myself

It was brutal.

Eugen and Monika took us down in good order, but I’m pretty sure the reason for it–other than my terrible billiard skills–is that somehow, when Germany started learning the game of pool, they did away with almost every rule I’ve ever heard of among my hard core pool friends.  If you scratch the ball during the break or when shooting for the 8 ball, doesn’t matter, Game On.  But then…they added a rule.  Whichever pocket you sink your last ball in, then that is the pocket where you have to sink the 8 as well.  I am not a stickler for rules, so I always say house rules, or majority rule…either way, I don’t care. But this rule is frustrating.  And it results in games that last way longer than a typical game would.  That’s actually the only reason I think of as to why you would play this way.  To add some time to the clock.  It’s certainly not in order to make the game more accessible…or to keep your blood pressure down.

We had to take a break from the game, however briefly, to engage in yet ANOTHER German past time–nay, European past time–The Euro-Vision Song Contest.  I’m not going to get into this…it’s an annual competition among many European countries, to see who can provide the greatest song for everyone’s amusement.  We paused to respectfully watch the German competitor, Lena (last year’s winner!).  Everyone in the bowling alley just stopped what they were doing to watch.  It was fun.  I could go on about it–because I think it’s cool that this is an annual tradition, and I would like to know more about it–but it’s 1:00 in the morning and we’re home now and Germany didn’t win.  So…we’re done with that.

And THAT, my friends (and what dear friends you are if you are, for any reason, still reading this) is how you spend a month in Germany…if you are extremely blessed with love and family and opportunities as I am.  Speaking of which, the lovely Jamie and Oscar are coming for a visit this week, and I’m completely thrilled to be playing host for a week and get to share in all this awesomeness with them.  For those of you who have not photo-documented the last month of your lives, I am absolutely positive that you are just as blessed, just as immersed in awesome experiences, centuries long tradition and pop-culture events.  If nothing else, we should all pause every once in awhile to really appreciate these things.  This is life.  It’s one still-frame at a time…and it doesn’t stop ticking by.  One final illustration:  This was Monika and Eugen’s Garden when I first got back:  And here’s what it looks like now, just a few short weeks later:

Life bursts on the scene, and in Germany, in the spring, it flourishes in a way that is so vivid and vibrant, it shakes your senses…reality is heightened…things are deeper and wider.  It’s a bit more than I can take.  And the nights get shorter and my smile grows wider.  I am blessed.  My heart bursts with thanks, I pray blessings are flowing your way just as freely as they are mine.  I’m going to force myself to sleep now so I don’t have to miss what tomorrow brings.

The System is Down!

So, I have an interesting opportunity to reflect on the need for structure and systems in order to embody concrete ideas and beliefs, thus bringing the ethereal world of thought and spirit into the our physical world.

I have this opportunity because the power cord for my laptop is no longer working.  I don’t understand why.  It was working just find yesterday.  But now it does not, and the computer is out of juice.  So I am unable to update the blog the way I had wanted to for today, including a huge array of pictures and updates of the awesome things I have seen and done over the last three weeks.  Instead, I am in the library in between classes, struggling to remember that the “y” button and “z” buttons are switched on the German kezboard.  Keyboard.  See…it is annozing.

But it’s an interesting coincidence because my brain was going in that direction anyway: how our lives are governed by a series of human-made structures, birthed and inforced by nothing more than our own imagination and will.  That is how it is looking to me, anyway.  The laptop is a great example of what I am talking about.  The cord that gets power from the wall and puts it in my computer has failed to serve that function.  There is nothing wrong with the computer itself (unless the actual problem is that the computer is refusing to take a charge?), and there is plenty of electricity around…but I am missing the connective piece, the part of the system that transforms electricity into power that my computer can consume.  And because of that one weak link, the entire world that is my computer–complete with iTunes and podcasts and internet and photos of the last several weeks and blog notes and all kind of projects at various stages of completion–is trapped in a little box, nothing more than plastic and wires, severed from the rest of reality.

I am currently reading The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson.  It is a historical work she put together, telling the story of The Great Migration, when millions of African American citizens fled the segregated southern states for the promise and possibility of a better life in other parts of America.  We learn about segregation all the time growing up, but I was in college before I ever heard about the devastating violent history that accompanied Jim Crow laws.  I was 20 before doing  research papers on folks like Ida B. Wells, an African American teacher who fought to put an end to mob violence and the lynching of African American citizens.  Wilkerson’s book, told through the eyes of four main characters–real people who, at various times from the 1920s through the 1950s–fled their homeland to run to freedom.  This book is essential reading, especially for those of us who are too young, too privileged, or just too white and ignorant to remember or properly understand what this period of American history was like.  Every page reveals a hidden travesty, an untold history, a forgotten and covered-up reality.

If I could upload a photo here from the last few weeks (and maybe i will find a way to do that in the next couple days), it would be an image I captured in Leipzig, a city in eastern Germany.  We went there a couple weeks ago and while we were walking around the city center, we stumbled on a giant platform that had row after row of chairs.  We couldn’t figure out what they were, if it was some kind of art exhibit, what was going on…until we found a plaque that explained this was a memorial site that was erected where a Jewish Synagogue was burned to the ground during the Nazi Zeit in 1930s Germany.  Each chair representing scores of people from their community who would be exhiled and annihalated, the entire platform laid out as a bare wound for all of Leipzig to see.  This last weekend, we were in the South of Germany, completely on the other side of the country, and while we were out for a walk, we saw a sign that identified a city park as the location of another synagogue, this one, however, was not violently destroyed but closed when the Jewish community of Duisburg–whom, as the sign said, lived for 200 years within the community as “friendly neighbors”–was ostrocized and forced to flee their homes under the threat of economic injustice and physical violence.

Wilkerson’s book expressly points out the similarities between the Jim Crow south and the lives of Jews in Nazi Germany…in both these times and places, entire peoples were stripped of rights and privileges which they had previously enjoyed.  African Americans in the south enjoyed an all too brief time of freedom, after the war had ended and the Constiution was ammended, and as soon as the Northern military left the south, leaving the southern people to their own devices, everything established to empower African Americans was rolled back, new laws were passed to restrict their access to the civilization enjoyed by white southerners, and African Americans were plunged into a socio-economic reality that was, in many ways, actually worse and more dangerous than the time of slavery had been.

That is an incredibly brief synopsis.  Read the book.

All of that is to say…our world is run by systems.  Some folks are the powerful, the electricity that fuels the machine.  Others are denied access to that power, and all the promise and hope and potential of their lives is left stuck in the confines of their own spirits and minds, with no way of escaping into the world.  Without some kind of translator…without some kind of mechanism that extracts power from the main source and funnels it into the power-less…then we have a world divided.  Without appropriate forms to help embody our bright hopes and brilliant ideals…we go from computer to paperweight.

When I say that I am on “a road to Wahnfried,” what I really mean is that I am not satisfied with my place of power and privilege in the systems that govern our world.  But the complete rejection of those systems leaves me ineffective and nonfunctional…all my promise and potential locked up in my own brain.  Rejection of old forms is not enough.  I am looking for something new.  I am looking for a mechanism that gets me plugged into those who have no power of their own, the ones who we are taught to reject and refuse, the ones demonized by the lies of the world and the illusions of my own heart.  I won’t be able to find peace, I won’t be liberated from the world’s illusions on my own, I need a way to connect to those outside of myself, and outside the places of power…and it is in those connections that we can all be liberated. In the words of Freddy Mercury, I want to break free.

Sing a Song, We’ll Make Heaven a Place on Earth

“Heaven is a harmony of diversity.” –Marjorie Suchocki, Professor Emerita of Theology, Claremont School of Theology

Here’s a big reason why I would fail as a journalist:  I don’t know where that quote comes from.  I can’t find it.  I know I didn’t make it up, and I know it was Marjorie Suchocki who wrote it, in one of her many books about Process Theology…but I can’t find it.  Grr….But it’s a thought that has, over the past couple years, shaped my view of Faith, and what the Life of Faith means.  Then a couple months ago, I found myself coming back to that image so much that I felt the need to explore it more in depth.  What does a “harmony of diversity” mean, and why does Professor Suchocki offer that as a Heavenly vision?  For help, I turned to Travis Meyers, Musical Genius.

Travis is a phenomenal musician, and I asked him to apply his knowledge of music theory to this theological one.  I sent him a message asking: “So…dicitonary.com defines harmony as “any simultaneous combination of tones.” But some tones sound better together than others, yeah? And the more I dive into what real “diversity” looks like, the more I wonder what Suchocki has in mind when she says “harmony of diversity.” She is talking about entities that don’t fit together at all being made harmonious in God, and it is the combination of those diverse entities that she calls Heaven. So…anyway, here’s my question.  What are two chords that would sound pretty terrible together? Like, you just sit down to the piano, you play one chord with your left hand and one with your right….and the result is a terrible, chaotic sound. Which chords would you reccomend? you let me know and then I will go listen to it.”

My thinking has become, essentially, that all our adolescent, or childhood concepts of faith–what God looks like, what Heaven looks like, what our concept of this life and the “After Life” may be–need to be reworked as we move on into adulthood.  If you hold on to exactly what you believed as a child, even as everything else in your life changes and matures and grows more complicated, then it becomes increasingly difficult to life a life of faith.  It would be akin to trying to live your life as a literate adult, but refusing to learn to read beyond the Sesame Street level.  And this is where a LOT of us end up.  We hold on to the hopes and happy thoughts of our childhood faith, without allowing our theological concepts to confront the more complex, more challenging, more stressful “Real World.”   And so we live two lives; one of faith, where all our hopes and dreams rest somewhere Out There…somewhere beyond our current lives, in the Dreaming somewhere, in whatever we hope awaits us when we live this world.  And we have our “Normal” lives, which we feel are too complicated and too imperfect for our faith to actually play a roll.  So we dream of a perfect, fluffy, happy Heaven that takes the place of our suffering, imperfect world.

Marjorie Suchocki’s metaphor for heaven pushes us a bit, challenges us to understand better the full greatness of God.  Heaven is where we come to rest in God, no longer separated by our finite, temporary existence.  And for there to be One God the Great Creator of all things, that means that EVERYTHING and EVERYONE in creation come to rest in God.  Which means to dream of Heaven is to dream of the time and place when all of creation come to rest in God, not in some fluffy, “perfect” harmony…but as a Harmony of Diversity.

So my question for Travis was an attempt to hear an example of what this might be like; disparate sounds that may not be pleasing to our ear, and understanding that God transforms that noise into a beautiful harmony.  I wanted to know what this might sound like.  So I asked Travis, and, as usual, Travis schooled me. Here’s his response:

I love that.  I asked him to do something that I thought would help illustrate a complex idea, and then he points out that there are layers to this–like aesthetic, style, “tonal space”–that I hadn’t even considered.  And Travis’ response pushed this image of Harmony of Diversity to a new place for me, beginning with:  What does it mean to be “Diverse?”  The post-Civil Rights Act rhetoric in America seems to suggest that diversity means treating everyone the same, trying to treat everyone equally, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, skin color, etc.  This attitude is, I think, a lie.  An illusion.  As the Rev. Sam Mann pointed out at a retreat a couple years ago, we have never truly had an “integrated society,” we have just made it slightly easier for people who are not strait, white men to enter into that world.  I remember Rev. Mann pointing out that an integrated society would be a society that embraces, adopts, and is informed by many cultures and lifestyles.  We haven’t done that as much.  We all agree that discrimination is wrong, we all agree that no one should be left out because of factors that are beyond their control…but that doesn’t mean that those of us on the inside, in the places of power, are going to change.  Just because a young black man from an inner-city school gets a better chance at higher education, doesn’t mean that I am expected in any way to know about, understand, or be changed by that young man’s experience.  An integrated society wouldn’t have ghettos on one side of the street and gated communities on the other.  There would not be a disproportionate number of black men in prison for crimes that white people commit more frequently.  It seems that the more we talk about how important it is for everyone to be treated equally, the less equality actually exists.  In a recent conversation on the radio program Smiley and West, the founder of Teach for America,  Wendy Kopp, ,talking about what it takes to improve education in inner city schools said, “It doesn’t even take equal resources, it takes a very activist approach, it takes more time, more resources, more hours because, of course, the kids we’re working with …face so many extra challenges.”  We can not pretend like we have a level playing field, because then it covers up the truth about how much MORE it takes to bring the lower part of the field up enough to decrease the slope a bit.

ANYWAY…the point being, we are all created equal, but once we’re here there is a whole network of economic, political, historical, racial, sociological and psychological and all manner of other systems that create quite a lot of inequality from birth on out.  Diversity does not mean being the same, it means being diverse, being different.  The question for us, really, in light of Suchocki’s conception of heaven is: Can we live harmoniously with The Other?  Can we fit ourselves into God’s great plan of harmonious diversity, or can we only get along with people who are the same as us….even if they’re not?  To the great point that Travis made musically, as difficult as it is to imagine living in harmony with those who are truly different than us, it only becomes more difficult when we live in close proximity to one another.

I went to my first political demonstration in Germany yesterday, and it was, stay with me here, an anti-anti-anti-protest.  It took us about 30 minutes and 2\3 of a beer on Friday to figure that out.  Essentially, it began with a group wanting to do a protest.  They were protesting groups who are “anti-fascism” (which is to say, 99.9% of Germany).  See, to this day, Germany wrestles with the legacy of Nazi political thought.  A tiny portion of the country alligns itself with the political leanings of the Nazi regime, and the rest of Germany struggles to silence and educate these small extremist groups.  Terms and symbols from the Nazi Time are, understandably, outlawed, so these extremist groups have re-worked their platform.  Instead of being “pro-facism” they envision themselves as an oppressed political minority and they defend their right to be “anti-those who are anti-facism.”  Still with me?  So when these groups decide to make a public demonstration, large groups of German citizens get together to go out and counter their protest, thus being anti-anti-anti-facism.

The Anti-cubed Group, however, simplifies matters by just calling it an anti-Nazi protest.  Even though the group has changed its words, discarded its symbols, and generally given itself a 21st Century makeover, the rest of Germany has no qualms about calling a duck a duck; especially when that duck promotes policies and spews rhetoric that harken back to the country’s darkest hour and greatest shame.  So we were told the Nazis, or Neo-Nazis, were coming to town, and we needed to go tell them to go away.  It was a rather historically interesting day as well, the Nazis were coming to protest in Wuppertal, where they had not bothered to go for about 42 years because of the city’s diverse, liberal-leaning population.  And they chose to come back on the weekend that marks, almost to the day, 78 years since the Third Reich came to power.

It was an impressive show of German citizens; children barely old enough to walk, older folks barely able to hold themselves up.  Citizens whose grandparents and great-grandparents survived the regime and the war, and recent immigrants standing up for their right to live peaceful lives in their adopted homeland.  If there was one way to describe the difference between this march and the many I have attended in America, it was the energy in the air.  In America, we primarily march to raise awareness of injustices, in hopes that someday we might have the kind of support needed to end these injustices.  As I marched with friends yesterday, it was clear that we weren’t making a slow hike towards a hoped for goal.  We were running to put out a fire, lest the country find itself engulfed once more in a blaze of dictatorial hatred.

The energy and immediacy of the anti-Nazi demonstrators was enhanced by the presence of approximately 1500 police.  They were set up throughout the city, attempting to keep people from gathering in large groups, and barricading entire neighborhoods in hopes of stamping out any violence before it errupted.  Because even though the intention was to have a peaceful protest, there was no denying the palpable anger that wafted through the air.  Even though peaceful resistance was the word of the day, the last thing someone said to me before we left the house was, “Make sure you have your passport with you.  In case you get arrested.  You know, for fighting with a Nazi.”  Obviously part of the heightened tension comes from the collective memory of fairly-recent events.  These are the people–or at least, the ideological descendants of the people–who nearly destroyed Germany, committed horrific acts of violence, and tainted the country’s image around the world.  But, I think another part of that tension lies in the simple fact that in Germany–as opposed to America–you live in close quarters with everyone else.  I have mentioned before, the population of Germany is like taking the population of 3 Californias and putting it inside Arizona.  When you live that close together, and when so much of your daily life depends on everyone’s ability to work together, differences matter.  I have seen people leave their cars to go yell at the car in front of them for turning a corner too fast or darting too close in front of them.  So BIG differences, matter greatly, because in the end, they only have each other, and there is a great sense of civic duty to make sure that everyone gets the message.  That they’re all on board.  You can hear it in the rhetoric at the event; there was no demonizing of the Nazis (other than calling them Nazis), and no slogans that claimed crazy things or threatened crazy threats.  The most popular chant of the day was, “Wuppertal hat kein platz für Nazis,” or “Wuppertal has no place for Nazis.”  It was clear, simple, what you promote does not work, kindly leave our city, you do not represent what we are about.  It was very civil.  And then people started throwing bottles and the cops busted out the tear gas.  The police were, generally, quick to quell any hint of violence, doing what they could to ensure the Nazi’s safety.  And who can blame them?  There were 200 Nazis and 5,000 other citizens.  The police were very nervous.

There were walls of police, separating the counter protestors from the Nazis.  It was just enough space to minimize injuries, but not enough to disipate the anger, the rage, coming from both sides.  Now here’s the interesting thing:  There is a heaven where that space is occupied by God, and the tension between these groups rings out, in harmony, throughout eternity.