SO...back in Berlin. And back, really, to blogging. Something that ought to have been started a while back seeing as I’ve been out here for over a week now.
Explaining what I’m doing here and how I’ve come to be here is another story that will be told at another time.
But here are some thoughts from today:
I walked around Unter den Linden with Vanessa earlier. It was interesting because quite a lot of the buildings there have changed significantly since I last walked around. The city seems a bit more established, there isn’t so much scaffolding, the buildings that were on their way to being majestic are now standing in regal splendour, framing squares and enclosing roads with a presence that wasn’t quite as tangible before. It feels like more aloof, though, weirdly: as if the financial injections that are now visible in new buildings and new infrastructure somehow weakens the sense of life of the city...as if what Berlin was so proud of: its capacity to rebuild itself and rise out of the ashes of destructive regimes has now been smoothed over by the silence of peace and prosperity. Quite possibly this is far from the case. It just struck me as I was walking over Bebelplatz. What used to be “on its way” is now complete, the markers of historical turmoil are now just marked by memorials, not living building sites which seem to commemorate more the upheaval the city is still going through to get over its past. As Germany celebrated reunification on Sunday, it made me think how easy it will be to inoculate future generations against the present reality of the past by building nice buildings and polishing nice memorials. No longer will you even be able to connect with black and white films of areas you know well. They have been razed and new history is wiping that slate clean. I don’t know how healthy that is.
Today I led a Bible study on Luke 5v12-27, about Jesus healing a man with leprosy and then the paralysed men whose friends lower him through the roof to get front row seats, so zu sagen. I shamelessly nicked the theme from a sermon I’d been recommended by Vaughan Roberts [http://tinyurl.com/luke5v12-27] which was a very good sermon indeed. The theme was power: what is power in general and how do we define it, and then in the Bible study I tried to concentrate on the different exercises of power, from the leper’s question “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean” to Jesus’ power over sin and sickness. It led to a good, if slightly rambling discussion, where even the mavericks in the group didn’t take a huge U-turn from the theme, and also led to my flatmate telling me on the way home that simple “English style” Bible studies were much better than rambling philosophical German meditations. Put like that, I suppose they do sound better.
But it was nevertheless a rather tricky thing to do. First of all, we ate Abendbrot and as we ate, more and more people came, and they turned out to be old hands, ones who knew me well, and weirdly in front of them I have more Angst speaking German. They all are older than me, aside a couple of newbies, and there were 13 of them in total. Quite a big audience.
But the trickiest thing was that what I was doing was more than just a Bible study, it was an experiment in cultural mediation because Germans think differently to Brits and their expectations from a Bible study are different to mine. Different, not less worthy. I don’t have it sorted. But I knew that I tended to learn more from a directed discussion than random thoughts. So I was pleased with the feedback but aware that I did tread a little like a rhinoceros as I went about it.
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We are also having a housewarming party tomorrow. Pictures of that will come, as will reports. I am slightly apprehensive, not because I will want to go to bed earlier than dawn, but because I know it is a key time to get to know people. And that always makes me awkward at the start, which then makes me really self-aware and uncomfortable. I don’t know if others notice it (it probably barely translates) but I will defs notice it tomorrow night.
It’s a funny old thing, getting used to being back. It almost feels like I never left. But things are different, history is now two years further in the past from last time I was here...
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