Before traveling I find myself realizing that the area I live in, Bavaria in Germany, is actually really beautiful. I took my camera along with me on this ride of about 50 kilometers through a sunny August morning. With a comedic twist.
Bevor ich auf Reisen gehe, stelle ich fest, dass die Gegend in der ich lebe, Bayern, echt richtig schön ist. Also hab ich mal meine Kamera auf eine 50 Kilometer lange Fahrt durch einen sonnigen Augustmorgen mitgenommen. Mit Augenzwinkern.
Sometimes it’s important to make a cut, to change and see things, people and the world in general with different eyes. I made a rather literal cut when my mother passed away. But now, as I watch my hair growing back I can see every day by its length that yes, I live on. And she in me.
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Now, preparing for an at least one year long trip around the globe I find myself asking questions again that I have always pushed away because they seemed to be so difficult, maybe even impossible to answer. Yet, sometimes answers just appear and with them a deep feeling of trust and safety:
The Lord is closer to us than we are to ourselves. Although he is incredibly different this difference doesn’t manifest itself in distance. It is because he is so different that he can be so close to us. Closer than we can be to ourselves.
And the invisible glory, greatness and difference of God become visible in the limitations, the vulnerability, the familiarity of Jesus, one of us. God must have seen potential in the human weaknesses like anger, despair, weakness of will, suffering, vulnerability, fear, and so on. Why?
Because that is what he “forced” himself to experience in Jesus. So the things we are afraid of, the emotions we call weaknesses are what make us human and are therefore what in God’s eyes is so precious about us.
All there is, is therefore:
Do it like God.
Become human!
A few days ago Anne Rice spoke about how a possible wedding of Lestat and Louis would look like. Although this was mainly goofing around and entertaining a new idea for a few moments, it caused quite an uproar among fans.
My favourite was someone who said that a marriage to Louis would make Lestat gay and that is clearly not the case in the books because he also fancies women.
Anyway. The idea of this wedding, the idea of the blood spouse as already introduced in Prince Lestat is interesting and all we can do is trust our Lady Anne to make something beautiful out of it. Just as she has always done.
I wrote this a while ago when I was high. Yes, I admit it. But there is a truth to it. A very deep and meaningful truth.
People have always searched for higher beings. Something or someone who guides the fate of us and the world. Some call them angels, gods, spirits, or as in the monotheistic religions, just God.
I call that power the Other. And I think that Other has two sides. There is that spark of something more than simple matter in all of us, in all that is. That is actually measurable. One might call it the energy that keeps the matter together and that probably communicates with itself beyond the boundaries of matter. Also that is measurable. It’s basically the relationship between humans, humans and animals, humans and the world etc.
And then there is the other Other so to speak. A counterpart. Something, someone as they say, that is so completely different from us that that difference allows an incredible closeness. A force or maybe a being that is so powerful that it is eternal and therefore doesn’t need anything from us, doesn’t want anything from us. The Other in his /her/their otherness doesn’t need prayers or money, doesn’t need rules or laws, doesn’t even need religion. And that allows it to love freely.
Let call the Other God, okay? Some say that God needs us, needs the relationship with us to understand that he is good. Poor thing. I didn’t know he was so small. I didn’t know we were so important. What about this: God knows he is eternal by watching galaxies being born and die. He knows about his omnipresence because his energy that is beyond matter lives in everything and so he knows and feels everything. As if everything there is, is God. But God is even more than what is.
You know that stupid little challenge? Can God create a stone that is so heavy that he can’t lift it? Whatever you reply, you always seem to admit that he isn’t omnipotent. But people make God small by saying such things. Yes, he can create such a stone and yes, he can still lift it. We don’t have to understand that.
God didn’t create us to be how we are. We are awesome the way we are because we are a part of God but we are not exactly planned. Evolution could have turned out in many other ways. Yet God loves what happens. It’s a continuous creation, the evolution. And the part of God that is not in everything starts creating relationships. Just imagine. A being that feels the heat of a black hole and the icy emptiness of intergalactic space forever. That being doesn’t NEED anything. Yet… it starts relationships with us. And wants to love us. How good must we be, how beautiful, if that being wants to be in a relationship with us? Well, who says we are the only ones? Who says he was lonely before us? Who says that he in his utter Otherness cannot be in very intimate and loving relationships with stars or black holes? Or trees? Or whatever? We can’t grasp God and therefore have to make him small.
Oh but maybe we can. Tonight, when it’s dark look up into the stars and realize that you are not a tiny thing on a tiny planet in a meaningless galaxy. Realize that you are related to every star out there and that all there is Him, is One. And you are a part of that. And forever will be. And within and beyond that Oneness someone loves you. That is God.
All I wanted on my first hitchhiking trip was to see how far I can go. There was the crazy idea to reach the North Sea from Bavaria which is about an 8 hours drive. What happened then amazed me…
These letters speak of the pain, the fear and the grief but also the hope, the love and the tenderness that come with a terminal illness. Two women have to find new places in life and in each other’s hearts. The circle of life goes on and on and it is equally painful and beautiful.The book is sold for just over a dollar. That tells me that the author wants to focus on telling her story and not making money. I support that!
It is May 12th, 2005 in Taizé. A joyful anticipation lies over the small hill in southern France. Someone put up a table next to the long food distribution lines. On it a big white poster, saying ‘Joyeux Anniversaire’ (happy birthday). Young and not so young people from all over the world sign it. Dozens, hundreds. Tiny signatures, so many you can barely see the paper underneath. Laughter and stories about the man whose 90th birthday is … actually not celebrated today.
Yes, Brother Roger never cared much about his own person. What mattered to him was the reconciliation among the Christians and, maybe most of all, to find in himself a childlike trust that allowed him to go down a path no one before him dared to explore. An ecumenical Christian community, not built on a certain church, not built in order to grow or with a firmly set purpose and certainly not numbed by too many regulations and routines. No. What Brother Roger, the Swiss Protestant, built in Taizé was and still is one great adventure. An adventure of one, of many poor men for whom the goodness of the heart and the simplicity of life and prayer stand above everything.
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It’s getting darker. Slowly. In the beginning no one even realizes it. Until one student asks me to switch the light on. That’s the moment I was waiting for. The moment I can say: “Imagine we had no light.” The class falls silent.
The principal makes an announcement: “We have almost reached the peak of the solar eclipse. Please take your glasses and meet in the schoolyard.”
How excited they are. It’s their first solar eclipse. I explained them how it works with three students as the Earth, the moon and the sun. It was great fun. Until now. I can see it on their faces. It’s beginning to dawn to them that this is real. This is not a special effect.
Another Rhythm 