— Midweek Meditations:
thoughts, inspiration and encouragement
from ACF community members —
November, with the appropriate mixture of rain, cold, grouch, and people in the streets wheezing and coughing. Also the month that starts with All Saints (Allerheiligen) and All Souls Day (Allerseelen), followed, at least in my home region in the Lower Rhine, by “Allerhubert” on Nov. 3. Saint Hubert, the patron saint of the hunters’, was also my father’s patron saint. Strange idea: patron saint. But for centuries, because of the unreliability of civic administrations and sometimes even church records, people celebrated their anniversaries on their patron saint’s days rather than on their birthdays – if they even knew when they had been born. As recently as the 1930s, people in the Lower Rhine celebrated their patron saint’s day rather than their actual birthday, even though they knew that date, obviously. It was yet another way of strengthening the ties between the individual and the church. The Lower Rhine was known for its stubborn, Christian-inspired resilience even in the decade that followed.
My father had not been named Hubert for religious reasons. He was named after his maternal grandfather, whom he never got to know. Landsturmmann Hubert Klein died of dysentery in a hospital in the Warsaw suburb of Praha in 1916, leaving behind a widow and ten children. The obituary mentions that he was a devout Christian, but his is one of those stories that did not end well, with the supplicant’s prayers and the prayers of his wife and children being answered, and the father returning to the family.
I find myself thinking of Hubert Klein, and of my father, on Memorial Day (Volkstrauertag) as we commemorate the dead of two World Wars. We are standing in rank, a dozen or so men in uniform. Most of us are older, veterans of the Cold War in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. And as the awkward ceremony carries on, I can see in their faces, and in the faces of the crowd, that many are praying silently that we may not be standing on the brink of yet another war.
The rhetorical drums of war are beating louder and louder, and all we can do to counter this awful concert is our more or less silent prayer. But even if this is all we can do, we can still do this – and support each other in Christian-inspired resilience. And maybe this time, and if there are enough of us, prayers will help, patrons saints or none.
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 