On this day—my birthday—in 1512...

In the 21st of October, 1512, young monk Martin Luther joined the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg!

It was to be a bit of a tumultuous tenure, as he began teaching through the Bible, and discovering that some of what he had been taught, and some of what was being peddled (literally) by the church of his day was not exactly faithful to the biblical or theological tradition.

Luther taught theology...it was when he was teaching the book of Romans a few years later that he had a significant breakthrough that eventually led him to the actions that we now commemorate as the beginning of the Protestant reformation. (Those actions took place on the 31st of October 1517...just five years and ten days after he took up the post in the theology faculty....and then a mere 489 years after that, I was ordained! Yay reformation!)

I have visited Wittenberg a few times. Aside from the kartoffelhaus—a restaurant where every single one of the hundred + menu items features potatoes!!—the main attractions of the town are the two churches and the Luther house. It’s a fascinating place to visit and I highly recommend it. Not least because Luther moved there on my birthday! Or what would become my birthday, anyway!

(This is the last of this year’s addition to the birthday buddies series!)

On my birthday...in 1797!

I am a mere 183 years younger than the USS Constitution, often known as “Old Ironsides”!
On the 21st of October, 1797, the third attempt to float the massive warship finally succeeded, and a bottle of Madeira was broken over her bow, and she began the first day of multiple centuries of service in a time when the average lifespan of a warship was 10-15 years.

The design of the frigate was slightly different than those typical of the time, being intentionally thicker and heavier—built to last. And last she has, through multiple wars, training hundreds of navy officers, traveling around the world repeatedly, and now serving as a museum to educate visitors—still with an active duty crew!

I visited the USS Constitution during my family’s trip to New England in 2006, just before I took my first call as a Presbyterian pastor. During that trip, in fact, I was going to the UPS store every day to fax documents about buying a house. But despite how crazy that was, I still remember many of the cool places we saw on that trip—from lighthouses to Paul Revere’s house to witch’s houses. We sailed in Boston Harbour and I dumped some tea overboard. LOL. And, of course, because dad was with us, we naturally visited the ship. Because no vacation with dad is complete without at least one ship.

Anyway...I love that this ship was launched on my birthday (well, okay, 183 years before my birthday) and that she has so surpassed every expectation. Not least because when I was ordained, the average pastor lasted less than five years in ministry....and I am currently joking-not-joking about serving until my 50th ordination anniversary. There’s something to be said for outliving the average—as long as you can adapt to the changing needs of your context, which Old Ironsides has done very well. Keep up the good work!



(The latest in my new section of the birthday buddies series, leading up to my birthday, just two days away now!)

moving...

A few weeks ago, I announced to my church that I am moving away this spring. My last day at church will be at the end of April, and then at the end of May I'm taking a one-way flight to Scotland! I'm transferring to the Church of Scotland, which of course could also be called The Original Presbyterians (tm).

from my first time living on Iona...almost half my life ago!

I've loved Scotland from the first minute I set foot there in June of 2000. This is not the first time I've nearly moved, nor the first time I've considered it. I have friends in Scotland who began asking me in 2012 if I was ever going to actually move, or just talk about wanting to. The timing has never been right before, but this time I think the Spirit has finally lined things up. :-)

I've had this porcelain doll probably 30 years
and I only just noticed that it's a little creepy.
I apologize to everyone who has slept under
its gaze in my guest room.

So...this weekend, I held a living estate sale, and sold a large chunk of my belongings. I still have a bunch left to sell, of course, because it turns out that living in the same place for 10 years means I have somehow managed to accumulate All The Things. I've dropped off a car load of clothes at the thrift shop that supports the women's shelter, and I'll drop off a carload of housewares tomorrow. My condo went on the market today. Things are in motion.

how many picture frames can one person accumulate? a lot. with no pictures in them, of course, because why would I do that?

Lots of people have asked how I decided to do this, and where I'll be going, and if I can take the kitties, and what my dad thinks of my moving so far away, etc. I'm planning to put up a page with answers to all this and more, I promise. Then it'll just be there, in a tab at the top of the page, so it's easy to find.

In the meantime:
*The process for transferring my credentials to the CoS is long, and I've been considering it for a while. I declined the first time I was invited to an interview weekend, but went last year. It feels right and I've loved Scotland and the model of the CoS (geographic parishes) for a long time.
*Yes, I'll take the kitties, and no, they don't have to be quarantined, as long as everything is in order before we go. It will be very expensive to take them, though, so I've set up a GoFundMe page because I'd prefer not to be anxious about going into debt to bring them. They pick up anxiety and I don't want them to be unhappy either!
*My dad seems excited for me, and I've lived at least 2000 miles away for my entire adult life (and some of those years were a lot more than 2000 miles) so I don't get the sense it's a big change, other than in the number of time zones.
*No, I'm not taking my car, because it'll be backwards. Yes, I am taking a few things from my house, but not many. I even managed to cull about half my library, which was like cutting off an arm. I definitely put more than half of my panda collection into the "keep" box though.

Now that the news is out, I'll hopefully be able to blog more. It's hard to write when there's something big brewing that isn't public knowledge yet, so my blog has been neglected. Sorry about that! More to come, I promise.

before Tiny Houses were cool...

Almost every week it seems there is another article or video about Tiny Houses. Google brings up 22.4 million hits just from that phrase. People are making living spaces in freight containers and on trailers, and living in their ingeniously designed 250 square foot space in the woods somewhere. Or in an alley. Or wherever they want, because their house is on a trailer.

If there isn't a Tiny House article, there is a minimalism/get-rid-of-your-stuff article. The latest compiles some startling statistics, including things like "most Americans have 300,000 objects in their home" and "nearly half of Americans can't park cars in their garage." We have more offsite storage than we do people, which means that we are (bizarrely, I think) paying to store things we never see. Are the things in our storage units useful? Do they bring happiness to our lives? If so, why are they stacked in a locked room in a climate controlled building miles away from the house, opened only to put more things in?

I've never been a big accumulator of stuff (besides books...), so I don't really get it. I'm kind of trying to pare down even what I do have, as I seem to have gathered more things than I need or want over the past 9 years of living in one place. (though that article says the average woman has 30 outfits, whereas in 1930 she had 9. I'm super retro, apparently...I have about 10-12, max.) I know people say that stuff will fill the space, and that living in the same home for a long time means you accumulate things more so than if you move frequently (because who wants to pack all that stuff?). But still.

While in Europe this spring, we noticed a large number of little communities that at first appeared to be like community gardens, with garden plots and sheds. Look closer, though, and discover they are neighborhoods. There are garden plots, and swing sets, and lawn furniture, and clothes lines...and those sheds are homes. They have lace curtains and everything. Many of them are smaller than a shed I could go buy at Home Depot and assemble this afternoon in my backyard (if I had a backyard).

Usually these little communities were on the outskirts of a larger town, and often near the train tracks, although in Wittenberg it was just a couple of blocks off the main medieval streets (and would have been just outside the old city walls).

I suspect that little enclaves of tiny houses have been here, at the edge of town, for centuries. It's like the 21st century version of the villages surrounding a castle, where everyone grows a little food and lives in two rooms and maybe comes through the city gates a couple of times a year for a market or festival. Except now people have cars that they park at the edge of the village.

It's strange to think of people living in such small spaces, in what appears from the outside to be hovel-esque conditions, in the Western world in 2015. Even though we primarily saw these communities in former East Germany, it's still jarring to those of us who are used to spacious homes and large yards and storage units. Of course, to people from other parts of the developed world, it's jarring to see how many people here are homeless--a situation which could potentially be remedied with something like tiny house communities, or at least slightly ameliorated, if only we would decide they were legal.

And yet we have this fascination with Tiny Houses.

I wonder if the people who live in these before-they-were-cool Tiny Houses have a fascination with 1500 square foot houses? Or if they enjoy living their Tiny House lifestyle as much as we imagine we would?

Getting ready....

I arrived a day early in Wittenberg for the reformation pilgrimage, to reacquaint myself with the town, to be in-country while finalizing some things, and to hopefully be less jet-lagged when it came time to be a leader.

Two out of three isn't bad.

Or, well, one and a half. Lol.

I did reacquaint myself with the lovely Wittenberg. I even discovered it has the smallest zoo ever...which was sad and disturbing, though when I finally went in I found it was all small animals, so at least they did have *some* room to run around. And run they did--I'm not sure I've seen so many active animals at a zoo in a long time. (The biggest things there were a peacock and some small primates.)

While traipsing about I also discovered that the castle church is closed...because of illness, the sign says. I mean, I knew they were still doing restoration in preparation for 2017, and that we wouldn't be able to see as much as we might hope, but it is a bummer not to get to go in at all. Luckily The Door is still visible. :-)

As for jet lag...well, maybe I'll be over it by the end of the trip. I went to bed at about 10 the first night, and then was awake from 2:30-4:30, then up at 8. But then last night I couldn't sleep (wasn't even a little tired!) until about 2. That makes a 7am alarm a little hard to take. Thank goodness for European coffee...

And those last details? Turns out there are a few more than I anticipated. My new credit card has a chip--yay!-- but it also turns out that American companies are using chip-and-signature instead of chip-and-pin like the rest of the world, so my card is difficult to use. To avoid remembering a pin, we are getting the illusion of more security without the actual more security, and card companies are saving money on the conversion by not going all the way. Thanks America. ;-) trying to get that worked out involves multiple people on different continents, in 3 time zones 7 hours apart. Not awesome. Bright side: I got a seriously good deal set up to use my phone from here in the process.

Today we begin in earnest--we'll be talking about the atmosphere that made the world ready for reformation, visiting the homes of Luther and Melanchthon and Lucas Cranach, seeing amazing art in beautiful churches, and eating more delicious food. (Last night I had käsespaetzle, which is essentially German grown up Mac and cheese. Mmmmm.....you know it's grown up because there were roasted tomatoes and arugula on it, haha)

Hopefully the group will be tolerant of my quirks (like talking so much I missed our turn last night and got a bit turned around in the dark, in spite of my orientation!) and we'll all learn and have fun along the way.

Off to breakfast so we can Luther-it-up!

Erfurt

I took a morning train, and spent the ride alternately loving the views of quaint villages against the backdrop of rolling hills and willing myself not to throw things at the two children screaming at their mother a few seats away. I am generally very easy going and understanding when it comes to kid-meltdowns, but something about this one (and the intermittent-3-hour nature of it) set my nerves on edge. Good thing I had snacks, because reading was out. Plus I was in a seat facing backwards, so reading was out anyway…

Once here, I walked around the town stopping in at various places, including a church ruin, a bridge much like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence where the bridge is lined with shops and houses and whatnot, and a church tower (Methodist!) which I climbed to get a good overview of the town and to take some nice photos. (See, I learned from Heidelberg, where I got up on the philosophenweg and thought “oh, I should have come up here first so I could get a sense of the layout.” duh.) Then I wound my way to the Augustinerklocher (the Augustinian monastery). And when I say “wound my way to,” I mean “walked a few minutes.” This town is not very big. Maybe 15 minutes from the train station to the monastery, if you walk more directly than I did. As it is, I did all that other random stuff and made it in less than an hour.

At the monastery I discovered that the tours are only in German, but they’re also the only way to get access to the Luther exhibit. So I went on a tour of which I understood zero words. Thankfully, they gave me a little handout that talks about a few of the major features of the building, so at least when I looked around while the guide was talking, I kind of knew what I was looking at. Of course, most monasteries are laid out similarly, so having lived in one before I knew what was going on. Church, chapterhouse, cloister, refectory, cells, library, guesthouse, etc. It was pretty cool to be in the place where Luther became a monk, to see the spaces he lived and worked, and to get a sense of the town and atmosphere in which he laid the foundations for a radical shift.

Particularly ironic, I think, is that right in front of the altar in the monastery church is the tomb of a previous prior, Johann Zacharias. He’s famous for being the judge that condemned Jan Hus, one of the first reformers, who had tried to translate the Bible into a common language (among other things). It amuses me to think of Luther, remembering his consecration as a monk laying in front of that tomb as he sat a few miles away translating the Bible less than 100 years after Hus was condemned…

I also visited the Cathedral, where Luther was ordained as a priest, and the neighboring (literally, less than one minute walk from one door to the next) St. Severus church. The ornate altar pieces in both churches were simultaneously beautiful and cringe-worthy. The raised pulpit in the Severikirch has no stairs, which led me to think uncharitable thoughts about the Roman church. (It didn’t help that in the Cathedral a few moments before, one of the last things I saw was a reliquary containing some remnant of St. Martin of Tours, patron saint of Erfurt. Martin is known for seeing a poor man freezing and so cutting his big military cloak in half to give to him…and this reliquary was one of the most ostentatious tacky reliquaries I’ve seen—which is saying something because a week ago I was at the Museum of the Middle Ages in Paris! So I was already in the give-me-a-reformation-now mindset…) But while I was there, I discovered (by accident!) that tonight there would be a concert—chamber music, mostly brass, as a benefit for something. I have no idea what the fundraiser was for, but I do know that classical brass in a gothic cathedral sounds fabulous. Naturally I went to find dinner and came immediately back to the church…and the concert was so fabulous! There’s nothing quite like hearing brass choir and wind quintet arrangements of Bach, Mozart, Ibert, and even Paul McCartney. I’m pretty sure they were a military band of some kind, and the benefit seemed to involve some church organization that goes camping. So…great. I had a wonderful 90 minutes listening there. The acoustics of that space are indescribably amazing. The concert was so gorgeous that for a moment I was sad I had sold my clarinets to come on this trip. And then I remembered that even if I hadn’t sold them (and was therefore not hearing this concert, because I’d be stay-cationing instead!), I wouldn’t be playing music like that in spaces like this. I’d be looking at the case and feeling guilty. So I’m glad that someone else is making music with those instruments, and I am listening to incredible music made by people who love to practice. :-)

though again, I wish I spoke German! Instead of a printed program, one of the guys (yes, all guys, in uniforms) announced each piece of music and talked about it a bit. Most of the time (not every time) I could catch the composer’s name, and several times I recognized the piece when it began. But I’d love to know what he said, and what some of the ones where I couldn’t pick out the name or title might be.

450 years of our only comfort....

On the train on the way to Heidelberg on Sunday afternoon, I tried to remember more than just the first question of the 450-year old Heidelberg Catechism. At one point I knew lots of things, I really did. But the only thing I could pull up in mid-train-trip was question one: “what is your only comfort in life and in death? That I belong, body and soul, not to myself but to my faithful Savior...”

Anyway, Heidelberg is charming. Super charming. It has a long pedestrian zone, two—TWO—cafes that serve 60-75 flavors of hot chocolate, and an amazing set of trails to hike up for great views. PLUS a castle ruin! And churches! and the oldest university! (Unless you ask Erfurt, which also claims to have the oldest university, so that’s confusing.) I decided to rent an audio guide for the old town, and it was adorable. The tour is supposedly guided by a 17th century princess. Yeah. It was cute. But I did learn many things! Of course, I did the tour out of order (because I could, obv), so parts were a touch confusing, but I caught it all up in the end. So I got to sit in the Heiliggeist church (the Holy Ghost Church), formerly the University Church, where the professors who wrote the Catechism went. I walked much of the Philosophenweg, the terraced trails where theologians, philosophers, and poets walked and talked and got inspired. I did a wine-and-cheese tasting in the wine cellar of the castle, sitting next to the largest wine barrel ever to hold wine. I rode a funicular railway! I drank hot chocolate, ate at a vegetarian buffet, and peeked around the Jesuits’ museum of liturgical stuff. And I discovered that Monday may not be the best day to visit Heidelberg, because a few of the things I wished to do (2 museums, and a restaurant) were closed. Though if I’d actually gone to those, I wouldn’t have had time anyway—as it was I ran out of time, and I got a relatively early start on the day! Note to self: 2 days for Heidelberg next time.

The big question is: having walked where some amazingly brilliant people (Goethe, Twain, major theologians, Luther, etc) have walked, will I be any more inspired? does brilliance rub off from a chronological distance? Don’t know. I do know that the town is lovely and I look forward to spending more time there next time around.

I also know that I’m going to need to learn German. While most of the people I’ve encountered speak English and are very gracious about it, the reading is killing me. I could get by in France at museums and other sites, and at restaurants, because my reading comprehension is much higher than my auditory comprehension or my speaking ability (though both of those improved as the week went on! just need to practice…). But in Germany I got nothin’. I would like to be able to read the exhibit on the 450th anniversary of the Heidelberg Catechism, but it’s all in German. I’d like to be able to read the signs on churches or at museums, to understand menus, to follow guide-cards…but reading German gets me nowhere. sigh. Time to ponder: Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur? And can I learn German in 8 months? Surely enough to get by, if I practice, right?

every street is cute like this. I have a dozen photos that look like this, lol.

"the old bridge"

that middle section is real live medieval city gate.

this isn't even the biggest one.

wine and cheese tasting in the castle wine cellar, looking over at the biggest wine barrel ever.

the eternal question: up? or down?

hot chocolate spoons! genius.

these aren't what I expected, but they are delicious.