Life, everywhere

Ever year my choir sings at the adorable Christmas market in Albisrieden. I took this picture in 2023, when we had snow for the occasion. 

It's the second week of the spiritual exercises and I'm already behind on the blog posts...hmph...but I truly did have a busy weekend of choir concerts and...well, not writing. 

This week I have another writing assignment, too: composing an ausführlicher Lebenslauf for my am-I-sane-enough-to-work-in-the-Church psychological assessment in Feburary (due December 12, because ?). A lebenslauf is a résumé / CV, and I had assumed that ausführlich meant something like "detailed" - as in, don't try to limit it to one page or anything, we want all the info...but *apparently* in this specific context it means "in prose," as in I have to describe my personal and professional life using complete sentences and coherent paragraphs. Please wish me luck! 

But first - and maybe not not because I'm procrastinating on that project - last week's deep thoughts:

Each day of these spiritual exercises starts with an intention, and the intention stays the same for a whole week. Week 1's was:

Ich bitte Gott um Zugang zu meinem tiefsten Kern. Ich bin geliebtes Kind.
I ask God for access to my deepest self. I am a beloved child.

I wondered why I had to ask God for access to something that is already, like by definition, mine? And why I have to be a child in this picture? And can I address God and not mean something essentially male? With some, um, let's call it "contemplative editing," my intention became:

Liebes Universum, ich bitte dich um Beistand und Begleitung beim Zugang zu meinem tiefsten Kern. Ich bin mit allem verbunden.
Dear universe, please support and accompany me as I journey towards my deepest self. I am connected to everything.

Week 2's was:

Ich bitte Gott, dass ich seine Gegenwart in der Natur oder durch Menschen erahne und erfahre.
I ask God that I may perceive and experience His presence in nature or in the people around me.

That "or" is strange. But that didn't bug me. What did was this: This one time in college, I tried taking a karate class. The workout room was on the second floor of a shiny new athletics complex. The instructor told us to "root our feet deep into the earth" and I cynically thought huh, my feet are at this moment nowhere near any earthy roots... Similarly, as I was trying to pray about finding God in nature I looked up and saw...my couch, and our bookshelves, and out the window the buildings across the way, and the construction site beyond those. My long-suffering houseplant is going to have to do a lot of work if he's the only thing around here that counts as "nature"... And yes I can go take a walk in the woods, and undoubtedly I should, but the carefully managed city forest is hardly untouched wilderness. I think if I'm going to get anywhere with this spirituality thing I'm going to have to perceive God even in the holy mess (sin?) of this very-much-human-built environment. So my prayer became simply:

Möge ich das Leben in allen Dingen finden.
May I find Life in all things.

So the Christmas market in Albisrieden is tiny - maybe 20 stalls - but has everything you could want, from handmade gifts to sweet treats to the obligatory bratwurst stand, and a surprising variety of glühwein options (the second concert is - at least for the choir - always better than the first). And it takes place under the watchful eye of the old reformed church, which is white with "ALLES WAS ODEM HAT LOBE DEN HERRN" (Psalm 150:6: Everything with the breath of life, praise the Lord!) in all-caps above the door. 

I love this. And: "praise the Lord!" evokes images of exactly what we do inside that church, which is sing cheesy Jesus songs, but if everything with the breath of life can do it, it must mean more than that, right?

Which brings me to something that keeps coming up, a quotation from Albert Schweizer that I first encountered as set to music by Helge Burggrabe.

Ich bin Leben, das leben will, inmitten von Leben, das leben will.
I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live.

Here's what I think: God is the universe, alive to its core, and to praise this aliveness is simply to live - as fully we can, which for me means without so much damn anxiety.

These meditations have indeed left me feeling a bit more enlightened and calm and hopeful and less anxious than usual. Though also, at random intervals, brittle and terrified. Like on Saturday night after the market when Daniel said he wasn't feeling well and wanted to go to bed early, and he did, which never happens, and I was convinced he was going to die. Good news: he didn't. Praise God?!