Saturday Moning in Berlin ~

A Saturday morning. We breakfasted and went to the Sony Center, Berlin's spectacular new meeting place at Potsdamer Platz. Then for a change we all went our separate ways. I walked. And walked until I was out of the great city. Maybe it was too much for me, I thought. It felt good to be where kids were playing in the street. But I felt lonely. Like a stranger. All the pictures of Berlin in W.W.II came back, then the daring Airlift and the DC-3s flying overhead to keep the grandparents of these Berliners sustained. The Soviet presence so mightily stated in architecture and monuments. The Wall. The Reichstag and the shimmer of swastikas, the cafeteria where we had lunch, where outside in the courtyard the Graf Stauffenberg, after his unsuccessful attempt to assasinate Hitler, stood before a firing squad and was shot down. The bewildering burden of history during my own lifetime was suffocating.

I had walked so far that I had to hail a taxi and be driven back into the City Center where the group had planned to meet.

Forlorn ~

Do the stars shine friendly down at me tonight blinking through such small radiant eyes, or are they cold? They seem to be holding back all the glory that is behind, dispensing of it in miserly measured portions.

Soothing Darkness ~

It was dark this morning and foggy. With my coat collar up around my ears I felt hugged and somehow protected. Walking across the fields I could see nothing but the path passing under my feet. In the distance the sound of cars rushing to their urgent destinations.
Oh darkness, stay! . . . How will I ever be able to face the bright, glaring days of spring when everyone is so happy and dancing blithely around the maypole?

Good Friday Liturgy ~

Stood in the choir loft on Good Friday and sang. The atmosphere was overwhelming. The sad tonality of the singing, the absence of organ and lighting and the half-darkness in the nave, the eery porcession with cross. It was later, after the ceremony, that I noticed what it had done to me, causing an extreme down-heartedness, mixed with a strange kind of joy. I was unable to shake it off on Easter Sunday and on into the week.