— Midweek Meditations:
thoughts, inspiration and encouragement
from ACF community members —
One of my favourite poems is Percy Shelley’s “Ozymandias” (1819):
Ozymandias
Percy Shelley’
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart.[d] Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
It is a good one to teach, too — the modifications of the traditional sonnet form, ryme schemes reaching forward to the modern period, and of course the concept of irony.
However, one does not have to travel as far as Egypt to find similar works of mighty rulers – or rather: not to find them, because woods and grass have since grown over their ruins. 40 m from here, two buildings that looked like traditional Black Forest farm houses were erected in the late 1930s on the Meisenbühl between Oberkirch and Nussbach. Only that rather than the usual wooden beams, 4.500 t of concrete for each of these constructions were ferried up the hill to create the biggest artillery position on the so-called ‘Westwall’ (yes, that means ‘West side wall’) against France. It was later armed with two originally Russians eight-inch Navy guns, and both in 1940 and again in 1944-5, the guns of the battery fired deadly projectiles into France.
Of that mighty battery that was so elaborately camouflaged so as to look like an innocent farmhouse, nothing remains. Where it stood, 70+ year old trees, grass and undergrowth create an impression of typical Black Forest tranquillity.
And so worldly powers and whole empires fall, and disappear from the surface of the earth – maybe not as drastically as in Revelations 18, but they do. This may serve as a consolation for those who are close to despair looking at the conditions around them, with present-day Ozymandiases at large in a variety of countries including some that had been believed safely democratic. And as we can see from the Black Forest example vs. the case of Ozymandias, it took less time for that reign of evil to fall. With God’s help, who knows how long the present empires will last.
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 