Regensburg
It's been a good stretch to string a few thoughts down since arriving in Germany. We have almost been here a whole month, there are 17 of us; 6 ladies and 11 men. And I've never felt so close, so fast to a group of people in my life.
When my friend Bethany dropped me off at the airport in Chicago I hardly knew anyone, only the two Joe's baristas who recognized me as a frequent coffee addict, as poets really ought to be if they can. Just try erasing the romance from an Ethiopian V60 and you'll see what I mean.
But for the most part, this trip meant a bit of space for the relationships I had built over the last three years with my roommates and floormates, brother-floors, Nightcrew, and librarians. I stepped up to the ticket counter to check my neon green duffel bag and I felt lost. For a moment I wondered if they were going to forget me and move on with people who were there, physically present every day.
Will they remember me when I get back? Am I foolish to think that they will care two pence about any of it? When I go to JSB will I feel like a sore thumb, fresh off the boat and aching to get back to the little youth hostel on the little island instead of facing the work that it is to become part of a community again when you've been outside for a little while?
As I was thinking about this I was looking for Jessie, we knew each other a little bit, again from Joe's, and I was hoping that we might become good friends through this and lean on each other a bit, I had already confessed to her I was nervous. Why was I nervous? As anyone can tell you who knows me at Moody they will mention two things: first, that I am a poet, but more frequently that I am a Jew. what they might not know is that my family came from Bavaria, that they were put on the trains to Treblinka, a camp which at its liberation boasted of no more than 100 survivors. What you might not know is that my strong Jewish identity has a weakness, I am terrified of rejection.
I am not always afraid, sometimes I don't care much of what people think. But when I want to know and love a people who don't know me my insecurities wrap tight and stare me in the eye as if to say "Ha! who in the history of the world could ever, really, love a Jew?" I didn't bring my magen David necklace for fear of wearing it and being cold-shouldered by local Germans who might think that I have come to remember the dead at the expense of the living. That's when faith would snap back at Fear and answer, "G-d does, and those who love G-d can't help but love a Jew. They love Jesus."
We took a long trek from Munich to Regensburg, walking a quick steady pace until we reached the hostel. As icy as it was, no one slipped and we got sorted into our rooms exhausted but prepared to stay up to battle jetlag. In the morning we headed to Nuremberg to attend a church service in an old stone church, which also means a cold church. the people were very warm and welcoming, but the building could not be heated. After service, we joined the congregation for a nosh of pretzels and coffee. It was here that my first encounter took place. A kind elderly couple sat with us at the table and asked what we were studying. "Jewish Studies," I said with an ill-founded expectation that the conversation was about to end abruptly. Dorothea smiled, "Oh! are you Jewish!?" we then talked for some time and she told me about her love for Israel and the Jews. my fears melted in a great thaw of love and fellowship brightened the whole prospect of the next three months.
During the second week, my two roommates, Jessie and Catherine, and I set out for a roommate coffee date. We had grown so close and felt so blessed to be together that it was such a sweet time, we got it into our heads that we'd like to go inside the church in the town square and then to the cathedral. I hardly could take in the beauty of the cathedral, my head was stuck in the smaller church with the yellow trimming inside. It was there that I had become haunted by a little wrinkle in history. At the death of Emperor Maximillian, a friend to the Jews, the townspeople rose up and destroyed the synagogue and presumably the forty Jewish homes surrounding it, expelling the Jews from Regensburg although they had lived there peaceably for nearly 600 years.
I was in low spirits as I laughed over my cafe au lait and as we talked about how wonderful it is to be studying abroad and how sweet to embrace singleness with so much more freedom to open our Bibles and our ears to what tender things G-d had to say. I waited until the last few minutes in the coffee shop before I confessed my growing discomfort from what I had read in that little church. I had for a long time wondered what Shtetl life might have been like, how my Bavarian Jewish ancestors might have lived. Now I could only picture blood and fear and stones. I was ashamed that I was so affected, that I felt something so old so deeply. As soon as I spoke to Jessie and Catherine they looked on me with such gentle and understanding eyes. Not that they fully grasped what I felt, no one can ever truly understand the heart of another human being, it's hard enough to decipher our own, but they desired to understand and that meant more than anything possibly could to me in that moment.
As we walked back through the town square, they each took one of my arms. Because this is what Christianity looks like, we build each other up. They were building me up.
Over the next few weeks, I was befriended by a few German university students and the age-old Jewish terror tremored through my soul, "How can I tell them I love them, not in spite of everything, but because of everything?" and then the question do they even care? These guys proved to be very welcoming and I spent hours laughing with them about the different catch phrases they had heard from the new American president and as we grew to understand each other.
People are remarkably beautiful creatures, somehow our souls happen to open up and realize the beauty of the similar in one another. That is what it means to be created in the image of G-d, and when we love G-d we can't help loving His reflection. My fear? It was suspended, no longer having a place within me to reside. So what if I am misunderstood or if those around me are not keenly aware of what I am feeling? Am I as sensitive? am I as caring as I desire to be cared for? This fear that had been harbored in my mind as a Jewish fear is actually one belonging to all peoples. Rejection, the first moment it greets us we are agitated by the thought of renewed acquaintance with it. If I want to be Delightful, a refreshing source of light in the lives of others, than I must be more considerate of others than of myself. I must not be ruled by fear, or rejection, I should learn to greet both with an undaunted smile.
When my friend Bethany dropped me off at the airport in Chicago I hardly knew anyone, only the two Joe's baristas who recognized me as a frequent coffee addict, as poets really ought to be if they can. Just try erasing the romance from an Ethiopian V60 and you'll see what I mean.
But for the most part, this trip meant a bit of space for the relationships I had built over the last three years with my roommates and floormates, brother-floors, Nightcrew, and librarians. I stepped up to the ticket counter to check my neon green duffel bag and I felt lost. For a moment I wondered if they were going to forget me and move on with people who were there, physically present every day.
Will they remember me when I get back? Am I foolish to think that they will care two pence about any of it? When I go to JSB will I feel like a sore thumb, fresh off the boat and aching to get back to the little youth hostel on the little island instead of facing the work that it is to become part of a community again when you've been outside for a little while?
As I was thinking about this I was looking for Jessie, we knew each other a little bit, again from Joe's, and I was hoping that we might become good friends through this and lean on each other a bit, I had already confessed to her I was nervous. Why was I nervous? As anyone can tell you who knows me at Moody they will mention two things: first, that I am a poet, but more frequently that I am a Jew. what they might not know is that my family came from Bavaria, that they were put on the trains to Treblinka, a camp which at its liberation boasted of no more than 100 survivors. What you might not know is that my strong Jewish identity has a weakness, I am terrified of rejection.
I am not always afraid, sometimes I don't care much of what people think. But when I want to know and love a people who don't know me my insecurities wrap tight and stare me in the eye as if to say "Ha! who in the history of the world could ever, really, love a Jew?" I didn't bring my magen David necklace for fear of wearing it and being cold-shouldered by local Germans who might think that I have come to remember the dead at the expense of the living. That's when faith would snap back at Fear and answer, "G-d does, and those who love G-d can't help but love a Jew. They love Jesus."
We took a long trek from Munich to Regensburg, walking a quick steady pace until we reached the hostel. As icy as it was, no one slipped and we got sorted into our rooms exhausted but prepared to stay up to battle jetlag. In the morning we headed to Nuremberg to attend a church service in an old stone church, which also means a cold church. the people were very warm and welcoming, but the building could not be heated. After service, we joined the congregation for a nosh of pretzels and coffee. It was here that my first encounter took place. A kind elderly couple sat with us at the table and asked what we were studying. "Jewish Studies," I said with an ill-founded expectation that the conversation was about to end abruptly. Dorothea smiled, "Oh! are you Jewish!?" we then talked for some time and she told me about her love for Israel and the Jews. my fears melted in a great thaw of love and fellowship brightened the whole prospect of the next three months.
During the second week, my two roommates, Jessie and Catherine, and I set out for a roommate coffee date. We had grown so close and felt so blessed to be together that it was such a sweet time, we got it into our heads that we'd like to go inside the church in the town square and then to the cathedral. I hardly could take in the beauty of the cathedral, my head was stuck in the smaller church with the yellow trimming inside. It was there that I had become haunted by a little wrinkle in history. At the death of Emperor Maximillian, a friend to the Jews, the townspeople rose up and destroyed the synagogue and presumably the forty Jewish homes surrounding it, expelling the Jews from Regensburg although they had lived there peaceably for nearly 600 years.
I was in low spirits as I laughed over my cafe au lait and as we talked about how wonderful it is to be studying abroad and how sweet to embrace singleness with so much more freedom to open our Bibles and our ears to what tender things G-d had to say. I waited until the last few minutes in the coffee shop before I confessed my growing discomfort from what I had read in that little church. I had for a long time wondered what Shtetl life might have been like, how my Bavarian Jewish ancestors might have lived. Now I could only picture blood and fear and stones. I was ashamed that I was so affected, that I felt something so old so deeply. As soon as I spoke to Jessie and Catherine they looked on me with such gentle and understanding eyes. Not that they fully grasped what I felt, no one can ever truly understand the heart of another human being, it's hard enough to decipher our own, but they desired to understand and that meant more than anything possibly could to me in that moment.
As we walked back through the town square, they each took one of my arms. Because this is what Christianity looks like, we build each other up. They were building me up.
Over the next few weeks, I was befriended by a few German university students and the age-old Jewish terror tremored through my soul, "How can I tell them I love them, not in spite of everything, but because of everything?" and then the question do they even care? These guys proved to be very welcoming and I spent hours laughing with them about the different catch phrases they had heard from the new American president and as we grew to understand each other.
People are remarkably beautiful creatures, somehow our souls happen to open up and realize the beauty of the similar in one another. That is what it means to be created in the image of G-d, and when we love G-d we can't help loving His reflection. My fear? It was suspended, no longer having a place within me to reside. So what if I am misunderstood or if those around me are not keenly aware of what I am feeling? Am I as sensitive? am I as caring as I desire to be cared for? This fear that had been harbored in my mind as a Jewish fear is actually one belonging to all peoples. Rejection, the first moment it greets us we are agitated by the thought of renewed acquaintance with it. If I want to be Delightful, a refreshing source of light in the lives of others, than I must be more considerate of others than of myself. I must not be ruled by fear, or rejection, I should learn to greet both with an undaunted smile.
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