The beginning is as good a place to start as any. I snuck out of class during break on Thursday, December 22. With all the excitement (and lack of planning) of the next weeks, I was not paying an ounce of attention in class anyway. I grabbed my backpack and small suitcase, inadequately packed, and took off in the rain to the station. A few hours later, I arrived in München. Hmmm...where will I sleep tonight? I had researched hotels and hostels and found only one option anywhere near the airport where I was to check in between 4:30 and 5:00 the following morning. It cost two arms and a leg. Not an option. Luggage, borrowed winter coat, rain hat and I started wandering the already dark streets of München in search of a hostel. As luck would have it, one showed up a couple blocks from the train station. After checking in, I headed back out into the pouring rain to find the München Weihnactsmarkt (Christmas Market). Rain and all, it was beautiful, though I can only imagine how majestic a blanket of snow would have been. So, I wandered the Weihnactsmarkt for a couple hours, taking in the lights, the smells of food and Glühwein, and getting clobbered by people's umbrellas.
By the time I'd covered the market, I was soaked all the way through and cold. As I made my way back toward the hostel, I had a vision of a steaming hot cordon bleu and a dark beer. Ended the night with those very things in a little restaurant near the hostel--plus a good conversation with an Australian man who rather awkwardly passed me a note while we were eating that said, "Would you like to meet for a drink after dinner?" This was quite funny, especially when the waiter found the note that I'd left stuck under the side of my plate. He read it and proceeded to bring us free shots. Anyway, I learned a lot from this man, I think his name was Patrick.
Two things struck me. The first has to do with people I meet. Not the people or conversations themselves, but the fact that we have such conversations upon meeting and then we bid farewell and go our separate ways. A lesson in letting go. Normally, my tendency is to make an attempt at keeping in touch with people I meet, you know, trading emails...or even names enough to find on facebook. Yet, this is not the first time I have engaged in conversation for an hour or two and then leave, most likely never to see or hear of the other person again. In my reflecting on meeting people and then letting go, I first saw this as a dismissal of a relationship. However, going a little deeper, I realized that this is indeed not dismissing a relationship. It is not dismissing anything at all, but a freedom in allowing others to walk into my life, and I into theirs, that brings a whole new appreciation for the short time that two people can spend together. There won't be a next time. The conversation will not continue, yet there is such potential to enter deeply into each other's lives for that short time. This is a gift. Two complete strangers come together for a brief time and both leave changed by the other. There is no holding on, grasping for more, but an awareness of the other and a letting go with a farewell blessing, if I might call it that.
The other thing that I learned from Patrick comes from his asking questions about my faith and what kind of God my God is. We had a fun and respectful conversation, thorough enough to find the very point where our views split. As an athiest, Patrick has complete hope in the world's goodness on its own. In my very Lutheran socks, I stand in a dark and broken world that finds hope only in the God who enters the world in the person of Jesus Christ. Glimmers of hope in the "breaking in" of God's kingdom. As I lay in my 14-bed hostel room not sleeping that night, it occurred to me that it is in acknowledging hopelessness that God comes to us. My questions don't end here, of course, but as I ask and doubt and wrestle, the more I believe that one does not fully encounter God outside of suffering, despair, and death. Theology of the cross.
Pax.
Goodness and all that
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