courage and inevitability

more spring!

This coming week is a big one. 

• On Tuesday, kid 1 is taking her driving test for the second time and might get her license. She isn't optimistic because she failed last time, but she's legit a decent driver, so fingers crossed!! 
• On Thursday, kid 2 finds out whether he passed the test that determines whether he'll be able to go to [the equivalent of] high school one day a week alongside his apprenticeship next year. The practice tests...did not go so well...but maybe?? 
• On Friday, I have the appointment in Chur to find out whether I passed the psychological assessment and am now *allowed* to apply for the program I [thought I] was interested in. Eye roll. Stomach turn.

Who knows where we'll be next Saturday?

Meanwhile, in this week's gospel reading, Jesus heals a man born blind and the Pharisees are rather concerned that God might be working outside of the approved channels and so they interview the man, and then his parents, and then the man again, and the reading goes on and on and if I were a Pharisee I would surely be avoiding just going and talking to Jesus too - because at some level I know that to face the thing directly would mean something would have to give, and cognitive dissonance sucks. But the formerly-blind man himself eventually gets frustrated and lays it all out for them:

"This is what is so amazing, that you 'do not know where he is from,' yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if one is devout and does His will, He listens to him. It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he would not be able to do anything.” (John 9:30-33)

"...Then they threw him out," of course.

Have I ever told you about my novel? I sincerely doubt that I will ever write it, but if I did (or maybe someone else has already?), it would be about a mild-mannered academic in the future who, although religion is quite dead at this point, has studied cultural anthropology and randomly gets mixed up with some scientists who think they've cracked time travel, and meanwhile Earth is barreling toward certain environmental collapse and it slowly dawns on everyone that the only hope for the future is for this dude to travel back in time and play Jesus, armed with miracle-performing antibiotics and the certainty that if humanity does not find nonviolent ways forward it will be doomed. Does he do it? Knowing that this might have been tried already, and obviously didn't work, and also that he will likely die a violent and painful death three thousand years before his own birth? My novel would end with our hero sitting in the time travel pod, ready to launch; it wouldn't say whether he presses the Start button.

I'm not sure what my point is here. I guess this moment feels a bit like that: I'm heading towards certain doom and I have to do it anyway. Maybe because the only way out is through. On the plus side, apparently I have a backup plan if this church thing doesn't work out: I'll become a famous author. Ha.

Bunny, hop

Spring!

My mentor at GAO liked to draw a target on the whiteboard and label the concentric circles "could," "should," and "must" - the goal of our mid-project "message development" meetings being to acknowledge that although the analysts had undoubtedly unearthed reams of interesting information, the report that we wrote for Congress had to have a hard focus on only the clearest, most relevant investigative findings. We wouldn't be able to include everything we could say, not even everything we should say. What must we say?

This is on my mind as it's Friday again, and the to-do list I wrote on Monday (which every week I honestly believe contains the things I'm going to accomplish on Monday!) has been whittled down must by must and finally I can spend some time writing. At least until a should intervenes...

Anyway. I'm doing somewhat better. Last weekend I (1) led a service at church and (2) washed the bedroom and living room windows, inside and out, which hadn't been done in...ahem...several years. The jury is maybe out on which of those things brought more clarity into my life. 

People genuinely seemed to like the service, even though it was a bit of a comedy of errors, so there's that for my positive list. 

Outside - and now more visible through the clean windows - there's rabbit drama. Bunny Susi, who apparently suffers from a chronic parasitic infection, has now for the second time lost reliable use of her back legs and is spending her days collapsed in a heap, or occasionally attempting to hop around, falling over, and then spinning in circles. It's...pitiful and painful to watch. Is our bunnies-on-the-balcony phase coming to an end? 

Maybe. But not so fast. When we acquired bunnies Susi and Lino six years ago, the vet gave us a solemn speech about how rabbits are prey: they ensure their own survival by looking healthy and spry, so a visibly sick rabbit can be assumed to be a rabbit on death's door, and we should not expect that a vet will be able to save it. Not too long after that, Lino proved her right. Susi, though, did not get this memo. She's been in poor shape many times, and we take her to the vet, and the vet gives us the speech again and then does one or both of the grand total of two (2) things she can do for rabbits, and no one expects Susi to make it. Then Susi miraculously bounces back, again. She might yet make it to the ripe old age of 7.

This coming week's gospel is John's story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, which honestly I've never quite understood. Jesus tells her she's had five husbands; she runs off to tell everyone that he is the Messiah! Huh?

I made the mistake of watching this exact clip from The Chosen. It's everything you'd want: Jesus with his big kind eyes starts telling the Samaritan woman the story of her own life through a lens of deep compassion, and she is terrified at first but then moved to tears by this man who sees into her very soul...

Good, good, all good. But also. The talk is about the source of life, the spring that never runs dry. And maybe this isn't something the Samaritan woman needs to get from Jesus; maybe it's something she already has. She's had five husbands, for goodness' sake, and the man she is living with now is not her husband. She's been through all that, and still she's mustered the energy to walk through the midday heat to the well. 

Maybe Jesus isn't psychic, maybe he just has the time to listen and wonder aloud at how far she's made it against crushing odds. 

Maybe he thing he gives her isn't magic, but a new story about herself, not as a failure and a sinner but as a person intimately connected to the very Source of Life. Maybe a new story is magic?

 

Maybe if she and Susi can keep trying, so can I.

the low

(h/t Scott Erikson, whose book I should probably read?)

(part of) St. Christopher in the Staatskirche St. Nikolaus, Wil. He's a real giant in this one!

I'm struggling.

I have an appointment to talk with the dean of the theology school in Chur about the results of the psychological assessment on March 20. It's a small relief to have a date, but I don't expect good things. Who would want a minister who can't talk to people? 

And if this isn't my next step, what is? 

For being the substitute sacristan in February for six Sunday masses, two Ash Wednesday services, and a funeral I will be paid precisely SFr. 666. Just sayin'.

My spiritual advisor said that maybe this would be a good time to think about other ways I could make money.

It's hard to escape the conclusion that last year's self-improvement project of 30 minutes of daily exercise was far more fruitful than this year's project of 30 minutes of daily prayer.

So.

For Lent I've decided to try to find things to like about myself every day. Which is absolutely as self-centered as it sounds but also...I can easily tell you ten things I fucked up in the last hour, but coming up with one thing I did right in the whole day is remarkably hard. So here's hoping for some improved self talk.

On Wednesday, my only son and I took a field trip to the city of Wil in Canton St. Gallen (population 25,000) to see a big St. Christopher mural. He - my son, not the painting - was in a dismal mood because he's spent his school break trying to learn algebra and the grammar of the passive voice in German and also because teenage hormones can just be sucky. But on the train and I convinced him to lean against me and take a nap, and he woke up feeling much more chipper. I'm quite a decent cuddler.

On Thursday...um...well I finished my sacristan stint without messing up anything too badly, and then I went out to lunch with a friend, so there is at least one person who can stand spending a couple hours of social time with me.

Friday was pizza night. My pizza skillz have evolved over the years from throwing a frozen one in the oven to assembling pre-rolled dough and pre-shredded cheese to making the dough from scratch and hand-stretching it. 3/3 family members approve of my pizzas.

Today I went to various second-hand and eco-friendly clothing stores to look for a long black skirt or dress for my skirt-and-dress-allergic daughter who might nevertheless be required to wear one for an upcoming orchestra concert. I think this counts as helping someone?

And I wrote this post. Go me.

reflection

look! the sun came out briefly! and the river was just so pretty!

I believe I have mentioned (like every time I write?) that in my optimistic head, this was the year that the kids were going to be relatively independent and I'd be in between projects and there would be lots of time to do THINGS. My optimistic head would also like to think that there exists a "normal week" and that sometimes one gets a bunch of "normal weeks" in a row and that a "routine" is possible. 

Just, nope. Not happening. One kid or the other is home, someone is sick, someone is visiting, there's some disaster that creates extra laundry, I signed myself up for something random and now there's a deadline, on and on... This is why people take jobs with regular working hours. 

And when some time does materialize: per the last post, there are just so many THINGS. 

And at least an equal number of distracting non-things. 

Anyway.

So the big news is: on Thursday I had the two 2-hour interviews of the psychological assessment to determine whether I am suited to work in the Catholic Church in German-speaking Switzerland. The first interview went...badly. How badly is for the interviewer to decide, but on a scale of 1 to 10 I feel like I managed, at best, a 5. Well after the fact, I realized why: apart from my normal social incompetence and nerves, I'd gone in with the attitude "there's nothing you can do to prepare! just be yourself!" but in fact what was called for was job-interview-level self-marketing and in particular some prepared, well-padded anecdotes about what an awesome person I am. Which makes perfect sense. In retrospect. But there are no do-overs.

The forensic interview was at least less unpleasant, though the interviewer discerned within mere minutes that I am not good at role play and spent a good portion of the interview extolling the virtues of social skills training. "You might be autistic - but no worries, you can learn to hide it better!" Fabulous.

I will hear in the next few weeks whether they "want to continue working with me."

And if they don't? Then this wasn't meant to be my path, I'll figure it out, and all that. But also: existential panic. 

Coincidentally, I was signed up to be the sacristan at church on Friday and Saturday and Sunday, with a bonus meeting about a service I need to write on Monday. I've got the three services next weekend too, and two for Ash Wednesday. It's exposure therapy...if only I were getting more comfortable with it. But it doesn't feel like that. Though of course it wouldn't, given the nerves and the doubt and the unsettling interview experiences. Maybe just showing up and getting through it is the best I can do right now. Participation awards all around!

Let's talk about something else.

There was one more thing I wanted to capture from Hebrew Week. After the last lecture on the last day, I braved going down to the beer cellar for late-night socializing. The woman in charge of organizing the week commented that this one had been different from other recent weeks because the subject - the biblical character of Miriam, Moses's sister - was so limited. In previous years there have apparently been meatier (and surely not coincidentally, manlier) themes: Isaiah, Elijah, Esau and Jacob... So the lecturers had a lot of material to choose from, and their subjects didn't necessarily overlap. But Miriam only appears in a handful of verses, so we heard about the same ones over and over. Only never the same way twice. Should the preposition in Numbers 12:1, "Miriam, and Aaron, began to talk [?] Moses..." be translated as "against," as is traditional, or rather as "to"? or as "with"? Opinions vary, apparently, even and especially among respected scholars. The effect was of the Bible as gemstone, or kaleidoscope: its great beauty lies in how different it looks from different angles. Cool.

And yes that's true of any work of literature, except that this is the one we've settled on to pass down through the centuries and millennia, and so it's our connection our ancestors and their questions about our collective place in the universe. 

Though of course mostly our male ancestors, the female ones generally being either explicitly forbidden to write, or possibly too occupied with getting the damn laundry done to do so. Or, in the case of Miriam, leading a tribe through the desert while her brother got face time with The Eternal One. Though on the side, she too was a prophet.

time, flying

Kloster Kappel, as viewed from a morning walk on a day before things got grey and foggy.

Friday was the last day of Hebrew Week, which turned out, not surprisingly, to be an intellectually stimulating if perhaps irrelevant break from real life. Kloster Kappel is a beautifully outfitted restored-monastery-turned-retreat-location with distant views of, somehow, *all* the Swiss mountains. The group of people who want to take a week out of their lives to study Hebrew is kinda my crowd. Which is to say that I met some nice people, but also that mealtimes ranged from slightly to painfully awkward...for lunch each day one could choose meat, veggie, or fish and I suspect if "sack lunch on a quiet park bench" had also been an option, I would have been far from the only one to take advantage of it. But forced socializing aside, it was nice not to cook, and it was nice to have someone else plan my days. There was a full schedule: a 3-hour class session every morning, then an hour and a half of sit-down lunch, then an afternoon lecture, another 1.5 hours of class, another long meal, and finally an evening lecture or event. The alternating classes and lectures gave the week some variety - and particularly for those of us just starting the language, a welcome relief from the flashbacks to kindergarten.

After a week I can reliably recognize maybe half of the Hebrew alphabet, and with some luck and a cheat sheet I can slowly sound out words. Oh, and print the Hebrew version of my first name - Shoshana - which makes me happy. It may well be entirely coincidental that I ended up with a very Jewish name (Bloch, in Switzerland, is famously and almost exclusively Jewish), but I like the idea that there might be some connection there.

And now that I'm home? If I do nothing I'll have lost even this very modest progress by next week - next month at the very latest. Maybe that's okay. I'll pick it up again if and when I study theology. But at least in theory I'd like to continue learning...just a few minutes a day?

Ha. If I had a list of all the things I'd like to do for a few minutes a day. Oh wait, I do, 'cause I made myself a checklist. Meditate. Practice French with Christopher. Read. Take my vitamins. Exercise. Get my steps in. To which we could add: Cook dinner. Lift weights. Write. Practice singing. Work on deep cleaning. Commune with nature. What happened to the budget project, again? And now, Hebrew. Why not also Latin and Greek? 

Back at home, the micro-habits feel like they are getting out of hand. 

hall of mirrors

Self portrait at the the Yayoi Kusama exhibit at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel (see "art!", below)

So yes, my most favored and only sibling was here for a rare visit and we did cool Swiss things (yodeling! churches! thermal baths! art! more yodeling!) and it was fabulous and also a bit exhausting, as these things tend to be, and his visit was far too short and I am sad that he's gone.

But also I'm away this week (all of [checks Google Maps] 15 miles from home, but still, away) at Hebrew Study Week, the result of certain deluded visions I had of having so much free time this year that I would be able to get a head start on the languages required for my as-yet-theoretical theology studies. The free time hasn't materialized. But I'd signed up, so here I am. Hebrew aside, I'm hoping that the German immersion will help with my psychological assessment next week. 

On which topic...once upon a time, long long ago, Daniel and I were jumping through the required marriage preparation hoops at church. We'd been asked to separately fill out questionnaires about common causes of domestic disputes: money, politics, having children and so on. And we were sitting with an older couple from the parish in Davis whose job it was to analyze our responses and conduct a premarital counseling session accordingly. Presumably the idea was to make sure that couples didn't rush into marriage without taking a breath and considering whether their values were aligned, which makes a lot of sense, but that wasn't a problem we had. In fact, in several areas our values were aligned just fine with each other's, but not with this couple's. So the session was awkward. We'd both said that we wanted to keep separate bank accounts, and were dutifully informed that having a joint account was critical to a healthy marriage. We'd both said that infidelity wasn't automatically the end of a marriage, and that was the right answer, but we had to listen to a lecture about marital repair anyway. And then we got to religion. "Susannah, you seem to be quite religious, and say that faith is a part of your life." Yes... "But Daniel, you...don't." Uh huh... "Is this a point of conflict in your relationship?" No... They seemed taken aback. "But Daniel, what is it about the church that you don't agree with?"

Put on the spot, my dear now-husband-of-20+-years couldn't quickly come up with a coherent answer.

"I don't believe in...um...uh...Jesus."

Stunned silence. For a brief moment I was afraid one or both of these kindly souls were going to keel over right there on the spot. Or that I might explode from the urge to inappropriately giggle at the absurdity of it all. But we all recovered. They very sincerely shared the joy of their own faith with Daniel. Would he maybe consider coming to church with me sometime? We left on good terms, the premarital counselors presumably leaving my godless fiancé's soul in God's (and my?) capable hands. All in a day's work...

This is all to say that 23 years later, as I spiritually exercise daily and imagine I want to start studying theology for reals next year, I'm not sure I believe in Jesus either. 

I mean, Jesus the historical person, sure. Jesus the seed of the Christian religion, also yes - although I'm more into Christianity being a collective movement rather than the creation of a male God and his only Son and his son's male posse. But I digress. Jesus/Christ as the archetype of Salvation or Love or...I haven't quite figured this one out yet but here also, yes. The Jesus I struggle with is the mystical companion Madeleine Debrêl and those marriage counselors and believed in so fervently. The one without whom you are Not Saved.

At midday prayer here they sing the Christmas song Weil Gott in tiefster Nacht erschienen (Because God appeared in the deepest night), of which two of the verses are:

Bist du der eignen Rätsel müd? Es kommt, der alles kennt und sieht!
Are you tired of your own riddles? The one who knows and sees everything is coming!

Er sieht dein Leben unverhüllt, zeigt dir zugleich dein neues Bild.
He sees your life - nothing is hidden from him - and shows you your new image.

I am indeed so, so tired of my own riddles. But is my eternal salvation dependent on my experience of a perfect imaginary friend with a specific magic name? I hope not, 'cause I just can't get there. And I don't think anyone could accuse me of not trying.

Of course, "trying" won't work in this case. Faith is a gift. 

I just wish people who have been given this gift could be a little gentler with those of us who haven't?

And if I haven't, what business do I have even thinking I might become a minister?

Though on the other hand, maybe I'd be a gentler one?

status

I was doing so well with the spiritual exercising! But...

...on the day after the aforementioned Baptism of Our Lord service, my brother arrived for his first visit to Switzerland since 2017, and he's staying just eight days, so all non-essential routines [including meditation and writing; laundry is somehow still on, hmph] have been canceled. Will I just skip a week? Try to catch up somehow? All questions for another day. 

On January 13 - Old New Year's Eve - we made a pilgrimage to Urnäsch in Appenzell to see Silvesterclausen (video), and while we were there we went to the Museum of Appenzeller Traditions to pay homage to our namesake, the Bloch.

immersion

I love this picture. Check out the Holy Spirit blowing in! 

I started the week and this post with high hopes of catching up with myself and not waiting a whole week before writing about the meditations from the last one. But it didn't happen, and my excuse this time is the dreaded annual Baptism of Our Lord children's service at Heilig Kreuz, which I was in charge of for the sixth (and I very much hope last) time. The last time I blogged about this, it turns out, was the very first time I did it. And this year was coincidentally a reprise of that service, without the child labor because it's hard to get my kids to darken the door of a church these days. But we again made the river Jordan out of blue baby blankets, acted out John baptising Jesus in it, then picked up the blankets and play-pretend they were "water." And then my script says that the blankets represent water but water, in baptism, represents something even bigger: something that, like water, helps wash us clean and and is important for life and can be tiny like a raindrop or enormous like the ocean. What could it be? 

At this point I got a sea of blank looks from the congregation. I *always* get blank looks from the congregation because audience participation is not a thing at church, even at kids' services, and ok also I am not the most charismatic of humans. But this part has always seemed to confuse my teammates, too, so...maybe my analogy here is not as brilliant as I'd like to think.

As I scanned the lifeless crowd and internally vowed never to do THIS again, one tiny kid raised her hand. And when I came over with the microphone she offered, in a little sweet voice, "Love."

Success! Woohooo!!!!!

At the end of the service the priest was supposed to invite everyone to pray the Lord's Prayer. Because a bunch of families from our Albanian sister community had registered to come, I had made a point of both printing the prayer in German on the song sheet and writing into the script that people could pray in their mother tongue if they wanted to. Still, I expected him to start in the usual way, "Vater Unser..." But no! He took off in his own mother tongue (Polish) and then everyone followed suit, in what languages I couldn't even say because it was such a mix but it was SO COOL. 

Afterwards we ate lunch and then decorated the blankets with fabric paint and that was a mess and chaotic craft projects are really truly not at all my strong point but I have survived to tell the tale.

And what does all this have to do with the spiritual exercises? Nothing and everything. More on that, I hope, next time.

It's a sign [to get a cookie].

another year

Y'know, in the last post I said I didn't see myself downloading divine instructions. And yet, there are things in life that feel awfully like...exactly that. One of the verses this week was Matthew 2:13 - 

Als die Sterndeuter wieder gegangen waren, siehe, da erschien dem Josef im Traum ein Engel des Herrn und sagte: Steh auf, nimm das Kind und seine Mutter und flieh nach Ägypten; dort bleibe, bis ich dir etwas anderes auftrage... (Einheitsübersetzung 2016)

When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. ‘Get up,’ he said, ‘take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you...’ (NIV)

I didn't go exploring other translations here, but at least in these two, the English "...until I tell you" doesn't go quite as far the German "...until I tell you to do something else." And boy can I relate to that. For all the trials and tribulations of living in Switzerland, and as clear as it has become that leaving the US wasn't the brightest idea in any practical sense...I've never wished we hadn't moved. Would I say "God told me to do this"? No, but something told me to do this. And now... Here I am, God, hanging out in a foreign land. Awaiting further instructions. Which will come...when again? Surely Joseph and Mary must have wondered too, as they raised their kid away from home and the years stretched on.

I don't even know whether further instructions are coming; this might be permanent. I've lived here far longer than I've lived anywhere else, ever. The kids barely know anything different, and also they won't be kids for much longer, but in any case I can't imagine moving thousands of miles away from them. Also did I mention the retirement budgeting? But on the other hand, little things have been triggering me lately.

• A Christmas post from a high school classmate from California - a fellow nerd: she had the best grades in our class, I came in second - who is now living in the Seattle area, working as a technical writer for an ultrasound company, with one kid each in high school and college. Wait, wait! Wasn't that where *I* was heading??
• On Christmas morning we turned on the livestream of the Christmas Eve service at my brother's church and...I know the words to all those Christmas hymns! But I haven't sung them in...years now.
• A friend from here who is temporarily there posted a nighttime picture of 4th and Marion in Seattle today and it brought tears to my eyes. Chill, Susannah, it's an intersection.

People often ask me if I get homesick and I usually say no - to move "back" would be starting all over again, again, to find neighbors and friends and work and community and and and... But did I leave part of my heart in Seattle? Clearly, yes. 

This week, as I was praying as I always do for love and grace, I decided that love feels like being at home in the world (I belong here! I have something to contribute!) and grace feels like being at home in myself. And yes I know religious grace is supposed to have the sense of "gifts from God," but what I pray for is in fact grace in the ballet-dancer sense of the-opposite-of-awkwardness, because I have so desperately little of that.

On New Year's Eve our neighborhood and particularly the park next door turned in to a war zone of fireworks, as usual, only it felt worse than usual (maybe people had leftovers because 1. August was wet this year?) and I was a nervous wreck and so relieved when the church bells finally stopped their half-hour (!) of ringing and things started to calm down. And then on the morning of January 1 there was the tragic news of the club fire in Crans-Montana... So this doesn't feel like your cheery-toast kind of celebratory occasion. More of a...may we all keep it together this coming year. And if we fall apart, may we hold each other's pieces gently.

Speaking of fragility...Daniel and I took a mini-vacation to St. Gallen, and on a whim we took the funicular up the hill and suddenly found ourselves in a magical land of frost. Like a fairy tale. Without a doubt, part of my heart belongs to Switzerland too. 

floating

Merry Christmas! We’re having a quiet holiday but it's tough to write when everybody is home, so I’m giving myself another hour with this and then I’m going to give up and post. Apologies for any incoherences caused.

The biblical texts for the exercises these last two weeks have been about Joseph, whose primary role in the Bible is to do whatever crazy thing the angels in his dreams tell him to do (marry a pregnant girl, pack up the family and go to Egypt, etc.). The idea seems to be that if I get this spiritual stuff right (like Joseph, like Madeleine Debrêl), then I too will be able to discern God's plan, and from there it's a question of obedience. Not that following God's directions is guaranteed to be easy or comfortable, but in submission to a higher power there is at least some relief from uncertainty, from indecisiveness, from those constant nagging questions of conscience. God, like a loving father, will always set me on the right path...if only I'd let him.

Sigh. I dunno... Lately I think God is: the incomprehensible infinity of all-that-is. And God's plan is: this one timeline we find ourselves in, with all its complexity and contradictions. And the future is: an infinity of possible others, over which we have only the tiniest amount of control. Short of a mystical experience, I just don't see myself becoming convinced that I’m capable of downloading and executing specific divine instructions. 

On the other hand, I could sorely use a hefty dose of Joseph’s drive to get up in the morning and get right to work. 

Water metaphors kept coming up in my meditations about this. The serenity of floating on a deep pool: relaxing, breathing, feeling held at the surface. The joy of being carried by a river: not clinging to the bank or trying to swim upstream but going with the flow, watching the world go by. Also that scene in Spirited Away where a giant stinky blob is revealed, after being given a very thorough hot bath, to be a river spirit clogged with layers and layers of mud and debris. (This, not coincidentally, after we had a meeting with a guy at the bank about retirement planning. Ick.)

And as frustrated as I get with the biblical stories sometimes, I keep being struck by how much we need them, and others like them. Not because they are true in a scientific or even in a historical sense, but because they are true in the mythical sense of “something that has never happened, but is happening all the time” (a definition of myth attributed to Joseph Campbell). Could it be true that even today, under the radar, beneath the news of money and power and manipulated facts and violence justified by religion there is, somewhere, a baby who will become a prophet whose teachings will become a movement of nonviolence that will save us from ourselves? Keeping this story alive in no way guarantees its success. But it is an act of hope, a spark of light against all the darkness.

My favorite nativity scene from this year's exhibit at the Swiss National Museum is a diorama set under glass in the wreckage of a gothic church. The scenes this year are grouped by setting, and this group’s description explains that "...the birth of Christ represents a time when a fresh start is possible, when something new can rise from the ruins of the past." I love the image of a ruined church sheltering the Holy Family…the circularity of it, the failed dream as a necessary ingredient for the newest hope. May it be so.