— Midweek Meditations:
thoughts, inspiration and encouragement
from ACF community members —
My great-grandfather, Beckers Wellem, occasionally parroted nationalist cant like “A true German does not like a Frog”, the English pejorative term here taking the place of the original ‘Franzen’ which readers with a more extensive knowledge of German culture will likely recognize as being traceable to Goethe’s Faust, where one of the revellers in Auerbach’s Keller utters the same xenophobiac sentiment. My great-grandfather probably did not know that. But he probably believed the sentiment which he parroted, because he did not know any better. Funnily enough, except for rhetorical blurbs like this one, Beckers Wellem did not even speak standard German, but a Dutch border dialect. So much for the ‘true German’ that he was.
Not 100 years later, my son served alongside French soldiers in the German-French brigade, training with them, cooperating with them on assignments, queuing with them for food, playing games in mixed teams. I guess Beckers Wellem would have been surprised, had somebody told him that this was going to happen. Would he have minded? Likely not. The Rhein-Maas region, like the Upper Rhine, switched possession back and forth for centuries. Occupant-oppressor and subaltern positions changed on an almost regular basis, to the point where they could eventually be persuaded to give up this stupid back-and-forth altogether. And whereas surely not every French likes every German now, thanks to visionaries like the poet René Schickele, and the politician Robert Schuman, there are friendships, and partnerships, and brotherhood in arms, and thanks to the late Martin Graff, even the French and German languages learned to mix and mingle. We are lucky to live in a region where something like this has been possible.
It is more difficult to achieve something like this where the oppression is largely one-sided. As a result, for example the Meso- and South American peoples that had been subjected by the Aztecs and Inkas sided with the alien invaders in the early 1500s rather than with their own ethnic group. A lot of good did that do them, in the long run.
It gets even worse where religious fanaticism is involved. Maybe we should not be surprised that the very idea of having Israelis and Arabs fight a common enemy so far seems to have occurred to Hollywood only. In one of the few memorable scenes from the movie Independence Day, the remnants of Arab and Israeli Air Forces eye each other warily before going into combat side by side to fight the aliens that want to exterminate humanity.
The aliens wanting to exterminate humans in the current conflict have strangely human faces. Will there ever be reconciliation, leave alone a peaceful side-by-side in the Israeli/Palestinian region? So far, all the forces involved are making a mess of it. Physical and emotional violence are passed down from generation to generation. Can the cycles of revenge and counter-revenge be broken? It does not particularly help that both sides believe in ideologies including vengeful Gods.
From our German-French side-lines, we can only try to help the wounded and the displaced, and to comfort the grieving and inconsolable. Help them to overcome nationalist cant and hatred. And help them to see they are not being attacked by aliens, but by each other, and in some ways even by themselves.
The ACF Midweek Meditations
are written by a diverse group of our church members with the intention to seek God’s fingerprints in our lives. They range from somber to humorous and are inspired by all facets of live and faith. Written by ordinary people from all walks of life, they reflect a wide range of Christian backgrounds and spiritualities.
Each week’s text portrays the individual viewpoint of its author. They might not always resonate with everyone, and are not meant to be understood as representing the Anglican Church Freiburg as a whole. Yet, as a church that is aiming to ‘Build a Community of Grace’ we seek to practice learning from and listening to one another.
We pray that these humble ponderings add a small spark of blessing to your week.
Freiburg Anglican Church 