Back at it...

Sara and I step into our barrio again after 3 weeks of being gone. The smell of exhaust and human excrement we have grown so accustomed to over the last year are somehow new. The sounds of people tinkering on the brink of laughter and misery, the not so quiet quietness of impoverished buildings that look abandoned but house hundreds of people inside, we take it all in. We walk the broken sidewalks uneven beneath our feet, lob ourselves over the potholes, to our house, Torre Fuerte, on the edge of it all, a place we have grown to love. We are back.

This Christmas season we were blessed to spend in Germany. Mike Turner very graciously sent us to Berlin to lead a seminar on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together. He is involved in a project there among his friends (and ours). Mike Edwards (yes, different Mike, but arguably equally as cool) is leading it up, overseeing four interns: Gracie Reynolds, Caroline Harlow, Luke Lanzoni and Kevin Underwood. The project is an internship with community on the brain, for young people to live in Berlin and be a presence of church among a culture that is post-church. "Brilliant," I think, in a world where church is so misunderstood, where the question, "Are you a Christian?" begs another, "What kind of Christian are you?" which brings up an endless debate on the merits of being Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Baptist, Southern Baptist, American Baptist, Primitive Baptist, First Pres, Second Pres, Pres USA, Pres of America, Methodist, Pentecostal, Church of God, Church of Christ, Church of the Good Samaritan, etc. etc. So yes, in a run-on-sentence kind of religious climate, it's kind of nice to have conversations that start at zero, like, "What do you think about Jesus?" and not so much, "What is your theological stance on women in the pulpit?"

There and back again, we gotta say Germany is a beautiful place. Berlin is fantastically clean (perhaps this is why we smelled the poop again so pointedly upon our return). The history is rich, full of vibrant upheaval and rebuilding. We are thankful for Mike Edwards who led us around town in the frigid temperatures and pointed out small details like the bricks in the middle of the street that signified where the Berlin wall used to be, and the apartment complex parking lot covering the bunker of Hitler's last stand with nothing to show but a very small sign at the edge of it, a telling reminder of what Germany wants to not remember. They have more than moved on from that. The art in the city, for one, is top notch, from the graffiti to the architecture. Berliners are known for their symbolism, such as, the site of the Nazi book burning is marked with a window in a path, and upon looking down into it you find a library with one bookshelf in it, always lit and always empty. And such as, on the parliament building, you find a glass dome with a circular staircase that ascends over the assembly, a symbol to the people that the decisions being made down below are from them. The list goes on.

For our fourth anniversary, Sara and I venture out into the German countryside. Here, we are reminded of how much we love the natural world in comparison to the man-made. Although we will always be suckers for the kind of culture and art one only finds in cities (e.g. we spent 3 hours, wide-eyed with Luke and Kevin in a modern art exhibit in Berlin, complete with Warhol pieces), the allure of the growing, natural creation creates a no-contest situation with what we recreate with it. Such as, when Sara and I visit a castle in the south on our anniversary, it began to snow, and within two hours the ground was covered with a listless white blanket. The mysterious allure is enough to whisk you away to all kinds of fairy tales and stories of past, present and future. Yes, what we make is incomparable to what God has made. The origin of art itself.  

All in all, Sara and I say thanks, Germany. Your land is rich and wonderful. Your people are frank, forthright and honest (an awesome quality, having grown up in the southeast). And your Schnitzel is good.

And thanks to Mike Turner for making it possible, to Mike Edwards, for the work you do, to Luke, for traveling with a pair of nervous, pre-birth newbie parents, and to Kevin, Gracie and Caroline, for being the best makeshift Christmas family one could ask for. Choos for now.