Ehre dir, auferstandener Herr

Happy Easter, blogging buddies!

I got home from the monastery last night absolutely filled up with new experiences, new friends, new impulses, new everything. It was the kind of retreat that accomplishes everything it sets out to do. I got to approach Easter with a sense of liturgical significance, experience intentional community, intentional spring cleaning of the soul, intentional silence, intentional fasting and eating, and much celebrating when the time came. To me it felt like jumping out of the sauna directly into the cold creek--refreshing and utterly surprising, no matter how many times you do it. I can't do the multi-faceted, intense experience justice in a blog entry. Or even two or three. But on the other hand, I can't not try.

This year so many things became clearer to me about the Easter journey. Even on Good Friday, we are Easter people. Our celebration of Jesus' death rings with finality, but there is always that undercurrent of more than just hope--it is the certainty that on the third day, that tomb will be empty. Year after year. Certainty, because it already happened. There is a certain comfort in that. The trajectory goes down, theologically speaking, but never without the knowledge that it's coming back up again. Dying and descending, rising and ascending. The four-part harmony of Holy Week and Easter. I will get back to that later, after I've processed a bit and found my English voice again.

Because they come at regular intervals (Easter and New Year's), my monastery retreats have become guideposts for me in a couple of different areas, mostly my German language skills and my inner equilibrium. For the most part, Germans are fairly experienced with learning foreign languages and having to use them in context. At the Petersberg, people have always been very encouraging about my attempts to speak German. The first time I was there, I was overwhelmed by the patience and helpfulness of the brothers and the other participants as I searched for the right words for abstract thoughts or struggled with complicated grammatical structures. At that point it was exhausting to have such an intense experience and on top of that, to do it entirely in German. I felt timid and scared and my self-confidence went AWOL, but I had an amazing time and felt compelled to come back. The next time was several months later and I noticed immediately that I was a bit less shy, a bit less intimidated, a little less exhausted by the effort of being constantly social in German. Every time, it got easier, and the sermons and presentations got more interesting, and the conversations went deeper. And this time, I felt like a normal person. A 100% person. One whole piece of Jess, who happened to be being Jess in German rather than in English. Holy cow. This is a breakthrough.

I like to play this little game where I try not to let my conversation partner realize that I'm foreign. This involves much concentration, for even one little false case ending, mispronounced vowel, or strangely wielded clause might blow my flimsy cover entirely. I am helped in my effort by my now-mostly-German wardrobe, Germanic ancestry and the fact that German has a multitude of dialects, which increases the range of acceptable mutations and permutations of High German. I am proud of my progress. At the beginning of my time in Munich, Germans used to switch over to English with me after I stammered out one heavily-accented sentence. Now they stick with the conversation for a while, and then ask with a slightly embarrassed or puzzled air... "You're not from Wittenberg, are you?" "No, I'm actually from the Chicago area" (that's close enough for most people). "Chicago? The United States?" "Yes," I reply, doing my inner happy dance.

Clearly my German impersonation is not the most interesting or intense thing that happened this week, but it is the easiest to write about. More concrete than the rest, which require a bit more work. Like a crock pot as opposed to a microwave. So the crock-pot musings will come later. For now, enjoy your microwave meal.