Letters home: June 2003

Dear friends and loved ones,

Once again it's been a long time since I've shared my thoughts with you in this way. However, rest assured, you are not forgotten. In the past couple of months I thought a lot about writing another of these 'mass emails' to all of you whom I hold dear... but to be honest, it's been a pretty awful few weeks and I was at least clear-headed enough to realize that I needed to wait until I was out of the eye of the storm, until I could gain a little perspective, to tell you all how it is. So... now I am ready to try.

Since the last time I wrote, my second semester in Germany began (and is now actually halfway over!). From a purely academic point of view, things are great. My schedule is not as full as normal-- I am concentrating on two classes in particular, Homiletics and Reformation History, and really giving it my all-- reading, typing up my notes, audiotaping the lectures and going over my notes again, etc. I am not used to feeling so thoroughly dumb, but all this reading is truly good practice and I notice it is much easier than it was at the beginning. It's good to know I have made progress and continue to do so.

At the beginning of July I will take a 20-minnute oral exam in each of these subjects (the whole grade rests on these all-important 20 minutes!). I don't normally worry too much about tests, but then again I have never taken any test in German and have very little experience with oral exams. The German school system puts a lot of emphasis on oral proficiency, and while I can *learn* languages really fast, I have never been so graceful when it comes to expressing my thoughts clearly and eloquently *out loud*, even in English. So, I am a bit nervous. But all I have to do is pass (which is new goal for me :-), and I have plenty of time to practice.

So, school is fine. But I have learned a very big, important lesson in the last couple of weeks, and namely: Don't put all your eggs in one basket! I have really poured myself into the life here at the Collegium, and this semster I am one of two student representatives to the leadership. I have really given lots of time and energy to the Collegium, and have recently realized that practically my whole life in Munich revolves around this place and its 50 inhabitants. This can make for a very satisfying and rich experience, or it can backfire on you, which is what I have experienced lately.

Literally ten minutes after Johannes and I were elected the student representatives for this quarter, our leader (whom I was looking forward to working with) resigned effective immediately, and the half-time tutor then took his place as leader (in a strange and to some questionable manner). The librarian left at the same time. Of the four leadership positions, only one, the beloved secretary, has remained constant from last semester to this one. The new leader has a significantly different style than the last one: the former leader spent six years soaking up liberation theology and South American easy-going-ness in Brazil and led very intentionally from under and among us. (Too far under: we had to encourage him often to make decisions, to take a stand, to call himself the leader. But he was a truly lovely person and tried really hard.) The new leader is of the opinion that heirarchy, well executed, works for the people, and that if he sets the goals for us (and for the beloved secretary) in a clear and direct and strict enough way, we will all enthusiastically and obediently follow. Needless to say, his style has met some resistance among the fifty university and graduate-school-aged students who are learning to exert their independence.

To make a long, long story short, the mood in the house has gone from bad to worse since the beginning of April. Because of my position, I am on the front line of complaints: comments and critique are brought to us, and we share our newly garnered wisdom with the leader, who listens carefully and makes some wise decision or another, and peace is restored. (ha!) Between all of the new changes and stytems and reactions and complaints and basically mutiny, it got so that folks were constantly knocking on my door to complain about stuff I really can't do a darn thing about, and eventually it got very, very, mean, and political, and personal, and actually fairly irrational. Eventually I felt like I was getting 100% negative input from all sides, and somehow I felt my insides turn to tar and I really just did not want to be here anymore. I was ready to take the first flight out of this place, to wherever. This is when I realized I don't have friends outside of the Collegium any more. My church congregation is half Collegium folks anyway, and my friends from German class have mostly gone home to their respective countries of origin or moved on to other German cities. For a while there it was all I could do to drag my sorry ass out of bed every morning and go through the motions. It was really just not fun. Someone accused us of being spies (!) for 'the other side', because we talk so often with the leader (this is my job, as I understand it), and then 12 students got together and demanded a special assembly in order to take a vote of no-confidence in the leader, which wouldn't have passed, for one thing, and also wouldn't have made a lick of difference, since we have absolutely no power to determine who the board hires to work with us. When Johannes and I tried to take the students' concerns (at least a modified, rational version of them) to the board, the (not terribly beloved) president YELLED at us. Like jumping out of his chair, shaking his fist yelling. One of the other board members physically moved to my defense because the guy had such a threatening look on his face. And all this in German, which I've spoken now for nine months. It was too much.

Time came to my aid (how long can people sit on one, fairly groundless, topic?), as well as a trip to Berlin last weekend. Which, by the way, was to the biggest conference I have ever attended: 400,000 Catholic and Lutheran church members who gathered to attend lectures on all kinds of topics, concerts, speeches, church services and just to wander around the city. The Dalai Lama was there, and the German chancellor, along with thousands of other church-related leader folks. It was crazy! Whatever it was, it was a breath of fresh air, and it was something other than Collegium, and it did my soul good. And finally I have a little perspective. This too, will pass... at the latest in September, when the loudest critics move out and the new student representatives take office (if we can convince anyone to do it!). And I am very motivated to make some more friends outside this place, and to go away when I need it, and to not let other people's negativity crawl inside my soul.

So that's the hole I am currently dragging myself out of. It wasn't much fun at the time, but I guess all I can do now is collect those scattered fragments of lessons learned, and try not to fall into the same hole again... There is also lots of great stuff to look forward to: a long vacation (almost three months), a visit from mom, dad, my sister Abby and brother-in-law Matt, a seminar on listening and meditating that takes place at a monastery in Italy, another German class (hooray! Better communication skills!), a student trip to Breslau, Poland... and the arrival of the next LSTC exchange student, Meghan, in September (things will be OK by then, I promise!! :-).

So, I hope you all enjoyed this ultra-peppy email. :-) I thought about writing about all the other stuff, and NOT Collegium politics, but since that has really been the unwanted center of my existence for the last while, I thought: out with it! I know you folks don't ONLY want to hear exciting tidbits about Germany, like how citizens are assigned to a church congregation depending on geographical location, or how at least two foreign languages (almost always including English) are mandatory in high school from fifth grade on, or how you can expect that at any moment people will break out into a gorgeous four-part canon, or that milk here has a shelf life of about a thousand years.

Anyway, please excuse my really poor correspondence lately. I will work on becoming better, I promise. :-) I would love to hear from you, too... too much talking about just oneself can't be good for the soul.

Blessings to all,
Jess