down day

It's up and down, here.

I get to thinking yeah, I can do this. I'm patient and helpful and smart and flexible and a good team player and sure my CV might look like a dog's dinner, but I've jumped into the deep end lots of times now and always come up swimming. All right, not always. Most of the time, though. And now for possibly the first time in my life I have a mission, of sorts, so on top of all those great qualities I've got passion to offer. And I know I likely won't find a job through a job posting but most people don't, right? I just have to get out there and get to know people and at some point it's going to click and someone will hire me and I can start working and fill in the gaps in my qualifications as I go. I just have to be less shy about the things I'm passionate about so that the right people can find me.

Except being less shy means being more likely to stick my foot in it, or offend people, or overwhelm them, or generally show that version of me who(m) I've kept under wraps precisely because I'm afraid that she is too critical, too awkward, too uninformed, too likely to get the dreaded Blank Stare, too unlikely to get anything remotely like the positive reinforcement she so desperately craves.

And possibly because I expect things to go badly when I stick my neck out, they usually do. Or, I imagine that they do. And then all I want to do crawl back into my shell and sit in bed and eat chocolate. 

But my people. They're out there somewhere. Right??

issues

If I were Pope...

This list isn't pretty or done, but I need to write it down so that I can think it through.

Issue #1: Seating
Some of most pious people at our church sit waaaay in the back, as if to generously make room for the teeming throngs who are going to show up after them. But as long as it's not First Communion day, there simply are no teeming throngs. So we end up with no one in front and lots of people scattered towards the back - like a lecture hall during the class of a boring professor.
A step in the right direction: Let's at least pretend we're all participants in the liturgy. Fake it 'till we make it. Before the service starts, invite people to move their shy butts and fill up the rows from the front. Take the rows at the back away if they are superfluous.
Even better: Rearrange the chairs in a horseshoe shape so as many people as possible have a front row seat.
Best: Sit in a circle of [size = however many people showed up today].

Issue #2: Voices
How are we honoring the Holy Spirit among us if everything is scripted and only the presider ever speaks?
A step in the right direction: Draw readers for any Bible passages and intercessions from the assembled congregation. Allow space and time for private intentions during the prayers of the faithful.
Even better: Turn the homily into a short reflection on the readings and invitation to think about a specific aspect/question related to them, and then offer a period of silence so people can have their own thoughts. Invite people to say their personal intentions out loud so we can pray for them together.
Best: After the period of silence, invite people to share their own thoughts and stories on the day's topic.

Issue #3: Dubious theology
In liturgical language. In the creed. In the old songs we love to sing. In the edicts from above...
A step in the right direction: Model critical thinking. Speak plainly about where the issues are, and acknowledge the different opinions and theologies that already coexist under the big tent we call "catholic."
Even better: Acknowledge and apologize for the hurtful theologies the Church has propagated and continues to profess. Make space for the victims to speak.
Best: Imagine a new Church - one that is inclusive, participatory, unpretentious, self-critical - and start experimenting with forms of liturgy that reflect it.

I think "dubious theology" could be its own list, actually. Goals...

lost in

This afternoon I gave up on work and came home to write, and then couldn't get anything out.

Tonight I occupied my writing time replying to posts in the "Karl Barth Translation Group" on Facebook. Some guy in Australia is occupying himself translating [Swiss protestant theologian] Barth into English, and is crowd-sourcing his efforts? It was remarkably fun. Maybe translation is a thing I could do? And/or maybe I need to give up Facebook for Lent again...

p.s.

In defense of anxiety brain, Christopher did wake up with a stomach cramp today. It was either gas, or "thinking about Daddy" (anxiety brain is genetic, sigh), or a combination of both - in any case he went to school and did fine. One more day down.

hysteria

Daniel left this morning on a short trip to California. I thought that accompanying him to the airport might be fun (to waste part of the day and also because I have a thing for airports), but kid #1 refused to come along, and kid #2 was already in tears by the time we got to the bus-train transfer point. It was clear that another hour of separation drama was going to be fun for no one, so we cut our losses and took the bus right back home. Then we watched some bad TV together (the Nailed It! German edition is kinda hilarious, in case you were wondering) and frittered away the afternoon.

I was determined to go to the English-language church service in Winterthur tonight, which required bribing the kids with the prospect of avocado rolls from the takeaway sushi place at the train station. But I was convinced that the certain outcome of this mission would be that the aforementioned kid #2, due to a combination of nerves from Daddy being gone and his sister's stomach bug from last week, would at some point vomit avocado rolls all over the train and it would be a mess and I would feel like a horrible mother for dragging my children out late on a school night just for the privilege of singing "Abide with Me" in good company. But guess what? That didn't happen. Instead we had a relatively pleasant evening and the kids got to bed more or less on time. And I got one of those yummy mochi-wrapped coconut ice creams out of the deal. So there, anxiety brain.

motherhood, animal-style

Caroline is desperate for a pet, and after much discussion we decided we could try having rabbits on the balcony. patio? terrace? whatever the outside part of our apartment is supposed to be called. Moving on. So during our stay in Urnäsch we visited a woman who breeds rabbits. 

She had a lot of rabbits. They were exceedingly cute, and endearingly soft, and the rabbit lady was clearly very into them and I learned many things about rabbits and rabbit husbandry that it had never occurred to me that I wanted to know. Though to be fair, I knew next to nothing. Carrots aren't good for them, it turns out.

There was one breeding rabbit in her own cage, and the rabbit lady told us how she had recently become a mom for the first time, and it didn't work out, and her babies died. Probably sensing that this could be upsetting to the high-strung 9-year-old present, the rabbit lady didn't say how they died, but clearly the mom rejected them. "But it's okay," she said, "It happens sometimes. She's doing fine. The next day, she was out in the garden and took a giant leap of joy!"

I mean...obviously we don't want to take the bunny anthropomorphism too far. But this just made my heart sink. And not because the baby bunnies had died, but because the bunny mommy had the option of rejecting her kids and then hopping off as if nothing had happened. Nothing had happened. It's normal. For a bunny, not bonding with your kid is not, like, something you have to overcome with sheer will power (while also experiencing anxiety and sleep deprivation) because what kind of a horrible person and fucked up mother would you be if that happened...ya know?

Apparently I still have some issues to work through here. Meanwhile, we ordered a bunny cage and are going to pick it up tomorrow, and as soon as I figure out what to lay out on the balcony to keep rabbit feet at a comfortable temperature, I'll be emailing the rabbit lady again about acquiring a couple of (definitely non-breeding) bunnies. 

mirror, mirror

Compare and contrast:

"Spiegel Krippe" (mirrored nativity scene), Fiona Knecht

"Decorative Banana," Christopher Dulay

out with a light

I've been meaning to write about the church service I went to on New Year's Eve. Fun fact about Silvesterclausen in Urnäsch: it starts at 5 am, and everyone is so tired by the end of the day that there are hardly any fireworks at midnight, only church bells. But well before midnight arrived, I decided to ditch the rest of the family and take one of those cute red trains towards St. Gallen, where there was a "meditative service of thanksgiving" for the end of the year.

I'm not a huge fan of the St. Gallen Cathedral. It's sort of...gaudy. But it turns out that at night, when the lights are dimmed, it's gorgeous and serene. It occurred to me for the first time that maybe all that crazy baroqueness was less overstimulating before electric lighting was invented?

The main part of the service went as follows: Bible reading. A prompt about the reading with a question or topic to ponder. A couple of minutes of silence. Song. Repeat. It felt like there were a lot of readings, but in a good way! And things were moving along at such a refreshingly non-boring pace that I lost count. Maybe in the end there were only four: Klage und Lob, Bitte und Dank, which is...um...lamentation, praise, petition, thanksgiving? The prompts were blessedly short and straightforward and had just the right amount of gentle humor. One that stuck with me was for praise: the reading was Luke 2, about angels coming to the shepherds in the field. Shepherds, the pastor said, are a weather-hardy, stoic lot, certainly not given to saying much, and yet this experience left them "glorifying and praising God"? What amazing things did you witness this past year that broke through the fog of everyday life? And so on. After the last reading-prompt-silence-song cycle, everyone was invited to light a votive candle and place it in front of the altar, so there was a pool of light right there in front for the rest of the service, which continued with the Eucharistic Prayer and communion - which felt extra communal, somehow, maybe because there were all our hopes and dreams and successes and failures right up front with the priest.

It was...I don't know, maybe my expectations were low. Maybe a service in a cathedral is always a cut above the rest. But it felt special. And I think it was because instead of a sermon, there were those strategic minutes of silence. We were allowed - trusted - to have our own thoughts about our own lives over the past year. Seems straightforward enough. And yet...when do we otherwise do this at (Catholic) church? I've been paying more attention lately: it hasn't happened since.

The cathedral and its Christmas tree, after dark but well before the fireworks started. A nice calm end to the year.

Bonus picture, taken out the train window on my way in. Because stunning-landscape-shots is how we roll here in Switzerland.

from

Sorry I've been spotty about posting. I want to write every day - I like writing every day - but I've gotta face up to the fact that the resulting sleep deprivation does not help me manage the things in my life that I do not particularly like doing, but nevertheless have to get done. It would maybe help if this blog had some sort of point or goal, other than to be a kind of online repository for my deep and not-so-deep thoughts? Suggestions welcome...

So, 2020. Coming up on nine years since we moved to Zürich - in fact we came the last week of January 2011 to look for apartments, Dan started at Google on February 1st, and the kids and I moved here in April. NINE years. We spent a month in temporary housing, so May it will be nine years in the VERY SAME APARTMENT. For comparison, here is the rest my life, as best I can reconstruct it right now:

Monterey, CA 1974 (6 months)
Oak Harbor, WA 1974-1975 (6 months)
Yokosuka, Japan 1975-1978 (3 years, 2 houses)
Newport, RI 1978-1979 (1 year, 2 houses)
Oak Harbor, WA 1979-1982 (4 years, 2 houses, 3 schools)
Yokosuka, Japan 1982-1984 (2 years, 2 houses)
Newport, RI 1984-1989 (4 years, 3 schools)
Monterey, CA 1989-1991 (2 years)
Claremont, CA 1991-1995 (4 years, college)
Woodinville / Bothell / Seattle, WA 1995-1998 (3 years, 3 apartments, 2 jobs)
Sutton / Epsom / Wimbledon, London, UK 1998 - 2001 (3.5 years, 3 apartments)
Davis, CA 2001-2004 (3 years)
South Seattle / Seattle, WA 2005-2011 (6 years, 2 houses, 2 jobs)

Longest I've otherwise ever lived in any one house: Seattle, 5 years
Longest I've otherwise ever lived anywhere (continuous): Seattle, 6 years
Longest I've otherwise ever lived anywhere (non-continuous): greater Seattle area, 9 years

So I usually say I'm from Seattle, but (1) it's not where I grew up and (2) soon it won't even be the place I've lived the longest. When and if we get to the 10-year mark here, I think my head might explode.

Because god knows I'll never be "from" Zurich, right?

And that's not even touching the dreaded question "what do you do for work?"

It is what it is, but it feels...kind of insane and pathetic.

another sort of cheesy

It's Friday afternoon and therefore I am accomplishing nothing. But just so you don't think I've forgotten about you, here is a picture of (9/10 of) the jokes we got out of the Christmas crackers from the St. Andrew's Christmas Bazaar. Ha, ha.

oh.

Churchy fact of the day:

A Stossgebet is an exclamatory or otherwise very short prayer, like "God help me" or "Jesus have mercy" or also the Jesus Prayer. How do you say this in English, I was asked? I didn't know. I looked it up. Apparently, Martin Luther coined the German word based on Augustine's description of the Desert Fathers, who prayed short prayers without ceasing - like arrows from a bow (quadammodo iaculatas). Not having our own Martin Luther, we in English have to settle for the unsatisfying "short prayer" or for the rather too evocative technical term taken from the Latin, ejaculation.

That is all.

repent!

Well, the big scary church service happened and there were no casualties.

...and I...can't actually remember if I described this thing already? It was a kids' service for the Baptism of Our Lord, with a special invitation extended to the parents of kids baptised in our parish in the past two years. And their grandparents and friends. We've done this for years and usually no one shows up, but this year we also needed to give the parents the glass panes with the baptisees' names on them that have been hanging in the parish all year, and apparently that was enough to get people to sign up in droves. So we had something like 65 adults and 35 kids, a decent number of whom may never set foot in a church again if this goes badly NO PRESSURE.

I went through all eight stages of grief writing the service, and in the end it probably wasn't nearly as flawless and inspired as I had hoped, but it went ok. It went ok! Some of the parents even said they liked it. Matthias the priest gave me his standard non-compliment, "I understood every word!" (which may or may not have been because he had the script ahead of time?). My partner, despite having the script in front of her, flubbed many of her lines, from which I take that she cannot read when she is nervous? Duly noted for future projects. Lunch and crafts afterwards would have been an unmitigated disaster without a LOT of help from our officemate Yvonne, but she was in fact there and highly competent and level-headed as usual.

I have less of a shame-hangover than I expected, and also surprised myself by caring much less than usual what other people thought of the service. I put a lot of work into it and I though it was pretty good, so there. I don't know if these things represent progress or resignation. Probably both.

The River Jordan. Finally, we know what the holes in our altar are for

Jesus and John the Baptist. I enlarged the figures from a book using an overhead projector and I'm really quite proud of myself. Daniel says that John's outfit looks more like cave man fur than camel hair, but, like, close enough?

In which we do a semi-incoherent thing with the blue swaddle blankets formerly known as the River Jordan. It was a little chaotic, but nobody had their phones out, which seems like a good sign.

Why yes, my children are manning the buffet line. Because child labor is ok as long as it's for a good cause...right??

Aaaand more child labor in the craft room (decorating the blankets, see how everything got tied in nicely there?). Speaking of people who are level-headed and competent. Though afterwards super clingy and only capable of speaking in grunts and growls, because 13.

podcast fix

I had to bake a bunch of cookies today for the big scary church service tomorrow, so I got my On Being fix, yay! My favorite parts, emphasis mine:

From Krista Tippet's interview with Fr. Greg Boyle in 2013, the unedited version, just after the 30 minute mark:

"The fear that drives us is that we have to have our sacred in a certain way, it has to be gold-plated and cost millions and cast of thousands and ... we've wrestled the cup out of Jesus's hand, and we've replaced it with a chalice. Because who doesn't know that a chalice is more sacred than a cup? Never mind that Jesus didn't use a chalice, because if it's gold-plated and jewel-encrusted it is [clearly] more sacred. ... [but] Jesus doesn't lose any sleep that we will forget that the Eucharist is sacred, he is anxious that we might forget that it's ordinary, that it's a meal shared among friends, because if we don't see that then, we'll be unable to recognize the sacred in the ordinary, and that's the Incarnation." 

And from this Brené Brown episode, around 53 minutes:

"We need moments of collective joy and we need moments of experiences of collective pain, we need to find ways to come together in those moments and in small towns...in big towns...we have to start having conversations. This is where - the only place I can think of in small towns where people can come together and actually have conversations, where people can make and hold space for that, are faith communities, and we're not doing it. ... He or she who chooses comfort over courage and facilitating real conversations - in towns and cities and synagogues and areas who need it - when you choose your own comfort over trying to bring people together, and you're a leader - either a civic leader or a faith leader - your days of relevance are numbered."

If you're somehow reading this before noon on January 12, Zurich time, say a prayer for me and the big scary church service. Will report on it tomorrow, unless it's actually killed me, which I have to admit is very unlikely.

trip report: Urnäsch

We're back in Zurich (I mean, we've been back since Saturday), AND we are already booked to go back to Reka-Feriendorf Urnäsch for the same week after Christmas next year.

This seems a little silly. Surely we could think of something else to do, like, go visit family? or, see Europe while we have the chance? What is even the appeal of this place?

Somehow, it just seems to work.

Caroline loooooves the stall, which is built right into the apartment complex (!) and has horses, ponies, goats, rabbits, and guinea pigs.

This year: baby guinea pigs. Also baby bunnies and a relatively new pony. Caroline was here at least twice a day, every day.

Christopher loves (at least the idea of) sledding, and while there was no snow to be found anywhere around Urnäsch this year, it's not even half an hour on the bus to the base of the Säntisbahn, and there you can sled or (even better, apparently?) pretend you're an intrepid mountain explorer. Also, the "alpine coaster" toboggan-on-tracks in Jakobsbad, one train station away, turns out to be super fun.

Can you spot him? Barely, because he's gone where no kid has ever gone before.

Daniel likes...let's say the cheese. Often in small towns like Urnäsch, one store is allowed to be open on Sundays and holidays, and usually it's the grocery store. But in Urnäsch, it's the cheese factory. As in, oh darn, it's New Year's Day and we're out of milk, we'll have to go to visit the cheese counter again... Also, the apartment always comes stocked with Appenzeller Biber, which are soft gingerbread cookies filled with marzipan that came in Christmas care packages from Switzerland when he was a kid.

Cheesy.

I love the adorable red trains at the station right next to the apartment complex that converge on Urnäsch with typical Swiss punctuality one minute apart, every half hour, all day long. And Silvesterchlausen, which is what brought us to Urnäsch in the first place, but more on that in another post I hope?

As you can tell by the snow, I'm cheating: this is a picture from last year. But isn't that train just adorable? The whole thing is like a storybook.

Meanwhile, my uncle in Australia may or may not still have a house, Trump is starting a war with Iran and...oh yeah maybe it's clear enough what the appeal of a vacation in Appenzell is...

Happy 2020!

Just popping up from the middle of our week in deepest Appenzell to say Happy New Year!! 2020 feels like a fortuitous number to me, and I pray that this is the year we individually and collectively start heading in a more sustainable direction.

Yesterday I climbed a hill and was so proud of myself (resolution: start getting more exercise) that I tried to take a selfie, which went about as well as it usually does, but somehow I like this one.

self-portrait: confused.

On a related note:

All the directions are that way. 

The break from Zurich and from writing is doing me some good...I hope? More when we get back...