Longing for a spirit moment.
Visiting a small country church in the Bavarian Alps on Pentecost got me longing for the spirit who blows where she wants and refreshes my dried out heart (and perhaps yours).
Dear fellow pilgrim,
This Pentecost Sunday we found ourselves in a small Lutheran country church in Catholic Bavaria. We stumbled into a small flock of rather elderly folks looking earnestly at our five year old who was giggling upon arrival.
Will there be children’s church?!, our daughter asked in her sweetest German into the quiet after the first hymn. We immediately were met with disapproving eyes from the bench across from us.
I am not sure, dear, I whispered back, you are the only child here. She made a face like she would start crying any minute or come up with some other noise not fitting the earnest flock into which we had ventured.
I sighed. My child sighed a little louder. We gave her crayons and paper. Papa will go out with you to play when the sermon starts, I promised.
What had we gotten ourselves into? My thoughts started spinning. Why did we end up in a Lutheran diaspora service when the Catholic Church is just down the hill? Surely they would have a full choir singing and some children’s activity, particularly on a feast day like this! We could have even skipped church all together, another voice entered my mind, and just gone directly to the Bavarian Weiss Wurst and beer breakfast that is a famous after-church activity!
Instead, when we arrived on the Eve of Pentecost at this sleeping but picturesque Bavarian town at an even more picturesque mountain lake in what they call “das blaue Land” (the blue land) because of the mesmerizing bluish green color of the waters mirroring the trees I was pleasantly surprised to find a Lutheran church in walking distance.
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But now that we were there, it reminded me somewhat of our little flock back in Cold War times in rural East Germany. We gathered in a meeting room below our kids’ sleeping room. The house was quickly built after the war to hold the new pastor’s home and parsonage, after the Russian front which came through on its way to Berlin left the old church, and pretty much the whole village, destroyed.
Was I longing for a coming home moment? At home I had often wished the eternal spirit would break through the roof, like a storm blowing away the dryness of the church and its people - and also my own dried out heart.
Come spirit blow, blow right here.
The lady across from us looked again. My daughter had crawled under the bench to find her lost crayon. “Sch…,” Hannah said again in her best German from under there. The lady’s eyes and mine locked. I tried to smile. She did not.
Not a very welcoming place, I thought. The lady looks like the one of those church goers who expects all tolerance for herself, without giving much tolerance in turn. I was sure we would not become friends if by an accident some one would lock the church door with us still inside.
Little one found her crayon: yes!, she blurted out before sitting down again and continuing to draw. I felt torn.
Bringing our COVID generation child to church is hard. She missed out on at least two years of church socialization. Trying to bring a toddler to church after the pandemic years, a child with no practice in what people call church, was so stressful that we tried it several times and then just gave up on it entirely.
Then we found this nice church back home in Minnesota, where the kids can show up as they are. Where they can dance in the aisles when there is music, walk to the front when there is the children’s sermon - oh I love those - they are short, easy to understand, and often offer the best theology.
Now where were we? Ah yes, at that little church in the Bavarian Alps. Our five year old was still doodling along. I was pleased. For not having a children’s time, for not having any other children at church, for not having a bag at the entrance with children’s activities (we stole one from our church back home for emergencies like the one today in that little Bavarian church), she was mainly quietly enjoying herself.
Still we were met with disapproving eyes whenever our child was breathing.
Come holy spirit blow, blow right here.
I started to wonder about the drunken part in the Pentecost story. A drunken party might be a much more accepting place to be in right now than the chilly Lederhosen Lutheran earnestness I had gotten ourselves into. May be therefore they drink beer after church in Bavaria?
I looked at the icon above the altar. An almost naked Jesus nailed to the cross with a golden scarf around his thighs. Please, let her not see this crucifix and start asking questions, I started praying.
Thank God! Now the pastor is climbing the stairs to the elevated Bavarian Baroque pulpit. Our daughter looked astounded by that little trick.
How did she get up there? she squeaked excited.
It was finally Papa time. A grateful Papa took the grateful child out to play. Children’s church in the front meadow of the church. Looking for four leaf clovers, playing tag, playing the Good Samaritan.
The door made a squeaky noise upon their exit, as did little one, too. Then they were gone.
The lady across from us nodded to the lady beside her as if she would say: finally that brat is gone. I felt an uproar of unchristian thoughts overtaking me.
The pastor’s dialect surely was not from Bavaria. She probably just came from Berlin, perhaps almost losing her faith over where she was placed, another voice entered my internal choir of distractions.
The pastor tried. Tried hard. Tried to speak about the spirit who wants to renew us. The promise that where two or three are gathered, the spirit is there.
But maybe that spirit was long ago out there on the church meadow, looking at the wondrous mountains, and playing tag with my child?
Come holy spirit blow, blow right here.
I know, it is easy to caricature churches, they are very human places. It is also very easy to judge church people for their ruralness or urbanness or wokeness or stiffness or what-ever-ness before having talked to a single soul (we tried after church but though they smiled, they were not that talkative either.)
It is also easy to miss the Divine spark at work (or play) in a church. It might be because the flame shows up elsewhere or simply because it is just hardest at church of all places.
Kierkegaard used his great literary talent to pour all his irony and contempt on his Christian brethren. A “Christendom” that takes the forms and the decorum so serious that it becomes a Pharisaic self-parody. But the irony only works if we can see ourselves in this mirror, too.
What does it mean, that the spirit blows where she wills? When has my heart last been taken over by that spirit who breathes new life in all things?
Where can I find the sacred well my soul can drink from?
And while my husband and child were enjoying mountain views I sat through the end of the service. Surely I could not leave before communion or could I?
When the pastor called her little flock to the front to build a circle around the altar I immediately knew what was going to happen. The Holy Spirit would play some trick on us.
Don’t do it, I whispered, but sure enough I ended up beside that lady from across the isle with her killer eyes.
We were served bread and wine. We were asked to hold hands to receive the blessing.
We smiled and finally saw each other for the first time.
Come holy spirit blow, blow right here.
A blessing
come verdant spirit
blow
into my dryness
breathe into my wearyness
Come holy spirit
pour your sweetness into my bitterness
your love into my cynicism
Come sweet spirit, come.
AF
Peace and blessings, Almut
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I served a German Lutheran Church in New York for three years (who still had two services in German at Christmas and Good Friday), and was struck by how different they were during worship and in real life. They insisted on plodding through the same liturgy week after week in very somber style, but had the best Octoberfest, and a comedy team called "The Sisters of Perpetual Motion." (They had a holy relic of Martin Luther's wife's snozz.). It always intrigued me how they could be such different people in different contexts. I wonder if, in part, it is because Luther was so insistent that God is completely transcendent and Other. Soberly performing the rituals of sacred mystery is a way of participation in transcendence, and interruptions break the flow. I tend to have a more immanent theology of God's Spirit, which finds God's Spirit in the interactions we have with each other, which is what you found at the Table. An immanent theology hears the Spirit in a child's laughter and joy. A transcendent theology finds this an irritation. I wonder how we make room for both experiences in the gathered community in worship.
Thank you for this story. I'm sure the little German flock was so surprised by a visitor that they did not know what to do. Maybe it's been years since someone they did not know had crossed the threshold. Either way, they should have been dancing in the aisles to have someone young, fresh, and curious in their midst. May you find a warm welcome on your next liturgical adventure.