The beginnings of our Tucholsky journey

We began our Tucholsky journey some time ago. Perhaps even over a decade ago when our friend Karin gave Stephen a wonderful audio book of Schloss Gripsholm. To our shame, although both of us knew of Tucholsky's political satire, neither of us had read his fiction. On a subsequent visit to Berlin we travelled to Rheinsberg - delightful, well worth a visit and of course with a strong Voltaire connection too, I think we had coffee in the café Voltaire. We also visited the Tucholsky museum which is moving but also amusing. He knew how to make people laugh. Rheinsberg is the name and setting for another and much earlier love story by Tucholsky.
Last night in Berlin we sat and ate in Tucholsky's the Kneipe at the end of the Tucholsky strasse. we sat outside and I looked down the street to the now gleaming dome of the Synagogue in Oranienburgerstrasse. According to the papers I've seen at the Jewish cemetry in Weissensee this is the place where at least one set of my great grandparents celebrated their wedding, despite already being fairly secular Jews.
Kurt Tucholsky was born in the same year as my grandfather, 1890. Four days before Christmas in 1935 he took his life. Three years younger than I am now, he had achieved a great deal, yet he was facing middle age, finitude and also the terrible scourge of national socialism in his home country. He also suffered from chronic and desperately painful sinus problems. I can understand the desperation. In Berlin I picked up the writings on childhood of another brilliant Jewish author of the same generation, Walter Benjamin, who in 1940 also took his own life rather than fall into the hands of the German authorities. These fragments didn't even come to light until they were unearthed in the French national library in 1981 ... If I have the husband I have it is in some way thanks to Walter Benjamin, so this too seems like the right thing to be reading on our 20th Wedding anniversary journey.
Perhaps it seems a little strange to be going to Mariefred to visit Tucholsky's grave but I suppsoe what we are doing is viisting the place of the story and giving gentle thanks for all the joy and pleasure it has given to us over the years. Even tonight we read bits out to one another over supper - just a few lines about Copenhagen and they made us smile. It is beautifully paced and observed.
We only decided a few weeks ago that this was what we were going to do for this anniversary journey. I could sense we were heading rather helplessly to a proposal neither of us wanted but neither of us could say no to either, then one evening Stephen said but what if we took the train to Gripsholm ... and everything fell into place and into smiles.
Quite funny really, Tucholsky's novella is certainly not bourgeois, yet it will help us over the bourgeois hurdle of "what to do for our 20th".
So here we are simply enjoying the journey those two in the book made and adding on some bits of our own as well. It's been a really fun thing to do. The trains, the ferry, the light in the wide open northern landscapes and the beauty tonight of Copenhagen. Wonderful.

Of thin places, remembrance and discipleship

We had an Old Catholic Eucharist for all souls' day in the chapel this morning - presided by Jean Claude Mokry the priest of the Old Catholic congregation in Geneva and the liturgy was mainly in French. We lit candles around the icon of the resurrection in remembrance of loved ones, were treated to lots of incense and ended by singing A toi la gloire.
Colin Williams preached a shorter version of the sermon I've just posted to the docs sections. What I particularly liked was the way the sermon moved between the Celtic idea of a thin place and linked this to modern-day discipleship and the historic events we are currently marking from 20 years ago. Here's an extract but I really recommend you read all of it. A rich sermon for early in the morning.

All Saints Day is all about proclaiming that we are called to play our part in revealing the glory of heaven in the humdrum existence of our everyday world – the glory of heaven which admits of no division, the glory of heaven which admits no foes nor friends but one equal communion and identity, the glory of heaven where there is no sound of warfare but the harmony which comes from profound fellowship. In and through the Christian Gospel the boundary between earth and heaven is so thin that that glory bleeds into our world – and our calling as servants of the Gospel is to play our part in making that thinness even thinner.
The Christians of the city of Leipzig in the East of Germany knew that 20 years ago. 20 years ago Communist rule in the east of Germany was in its death throes. We know that now with the benefit of hindsight. The Christians of Leipzig don’t know that then. They had no reason to know that within a very few weeks the Berlin Wall would fall and oppression would be at an end.
...
Our calling is no less clear than it was for those followers of Jesus Christ twenty years ago in Leipzig. To make our community, our city, our world, the whole of the earth a thin place.

To bear witness does not always mean to be a martyr or a saint ...

Through the Ecumenical Prayer Cycle Christians are encouraged this week to pray for Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. In the Ecumenical Centre chapel this morning Carla Khijoyan and Tamara Grdzelidze led prayers with a simple Orthodox form and some glorious Armenian chanting. They each shared a story from their own culture about what it is to bear witness to faith. Carla, who works with the WCC's migration programme, spoke powerfully of the Armenian genocide, how to be Armenian is intrinsically to be Christian but also to be part of a people driven into the desert, persecuted and today scattered across the nations of the world, but with a strong identity which still seeks to bear witness to essential truths in the present.
Tamara, who works in Faith and Order - among other things on the Cloud of Witnesses project - spoke about the witness of a Georgian Orthodox priest and theologian who lost his life in 1943 in the gas chambers. Not technically a martyr to the faith but someone whose life story speaks volumes of where it is that faith may lead some of us in extreme circumstances.
Each of our cultures has stories of the lives of witnesses: individuals and sometimes groups of people whose tenacity, goodness, powerful words, faith, standing up for what was right, prayerfulness, generosity and much more, speak to others across borders of time and place. We need someone else's story to make sense of our own sometimes. For those stories to speak to us the people do not need to be saints or martyrs to faith, their story has in some way to touch our own. We need to be open to receive from the past and to recover sometimes forgotten stories from the past.
Early in November All Saints and All Souls' days approach and in my Protestant, feminist and certainly not very saintly way I'm beginning to think about how I might meaningfully remember stories that touch my own. Perhaps I need to begin gently making lists of those - both dead and alive - whose witness to the gospel and whose life-stories have touched mine. From year to year if I made such a list it would also chart my personal and spiritual changes perhaps, some parts of the list would remain the same, it would change or be added to in other areas. Theologically this idea speaks to me not of fixed immoveable tradition but of open and evolving tradition.
So who would be the first five women, the first five men and the first five groups of people whose witness have touched your story and spoken to you deeply of gospel faith?