It’s been a memorable journey.

I’ve visited seven countries, stayed up to watch the midnight sun never set in Finland, sung vespers with monks in eastern Germany, been to a hairdresser in France, visited the Archbishop of Finland at his residence, been reacquainted with my precious cousins, spent time with three of my four God-parents, knelt at the altar where Luther was ordained, eaten reindeer soup with very special friends, had more saunas than I can remember, eaten Brussels sprouts in Brussels, been cycling with an Olympian, had coffee with the Finnish Ambassador to Iceland, been interviewed by a Canadian university professor for a TV documentary on migrants, met all of the diocesan bishops of Finland, been rendered speechless at the horror of a concentration camp, observed Minna as she relished in the love and the care that was shown to her by her extended family, visited the graves of both of my grandmothers, rowed a boat on a still lake to my mother-in-law’s island, walked around the velodrome in Roubaix, sat on the steps of the Cologne Cathedral, been enchanted by the beauty of Luxembourg and enraptured by the deep silence in the Chapel of Silence in Helsinki.   

All of this has been different to the everyday, to the mundane. But the most valuable experience of travelling isn’t experiencing that which is different, but the fact that all people are so similar, with such similar needs, hopes and dreams. Someone has once said that if we were dogs, we’d all be the same breed. How true! Although we speak different languages and live in different countries, our hopes and dreams are very similar.

Or to take this a little further, perhaps the most valuable lesson that travelling can teach us, is not just that all people are basically the same, but all people are the same as me. If I can be unreasonable and unjust at times, then can others. And if I can acknowledge this and change, then so can others. Just as I’m not to be defined forever by my bad hair days (which I have none of course, since I don’t have much hair), then I don’t need to define others in this way either.

If I’m not inherently bad and unfair, but loved and forgiven, then so are others. Whoever they are. Wherever they are. They are loved and forgiven. This is the basic human story, common to everyone. This is the story of seven billion people. Seven billion stories. And one of those is yours. 

I was privileged to attend an organ recital in the Helsinki Lutheran Cathedral by the renowned organist Seppo Murto.

Visiting my grandmother's grave for the first time. May she rest in peace. An amazing lady!

Holy pilgrimage to the Roubaix velodrome (as in the second part of Paris-Roubaix Classic), northern France. 

The Erfurt Cathedral, the church in which Luther was ordained in 1507.

The Archbishop's residence in the Archdiocese of Turku has received popes and presidents, kings and queens for 130 years and now the travelling padre.

A Melismatic Life

‘I believe we all, men and women, have much to gain by reflecting on religious community life as a spirit that can be fostered within our ordinary, secular lives.’ So writes author Thomas Moore in Meditations: On The Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life. It’s a book that I read during my stay in a Lutheran Benedictine monastery in eastern Germany. It’s not a book to devour from cover to cover. It’s a book to meditate and reflect on. Much like the monastic life.

The monastic life ebbs and flows according to the canonical hours, as the church bells call the brothers to prayer – Lauds, sext, vespers and compline. There is no hurry. The prayers are said and chanted peacefully and slowly and in harmony. Sitting in the pew, listening to the brothers sing the lauds early in the morning, is soothing. One leaves the church centred and hinged.

Sometimes the brothers land on a note and sing it in florid fashion, a syllable of text for 50 notes of chant. They call it ‘melisma.’ Thomas Moore points out: ‘Living a melismatic life in imitation of plain-chant, we stop on an experience, a place, a person, or a memory and rhapsodise in imagination!’

I believe that travelling allows us to do this. Staying at a monastery while travelling certainly does! There is no hurry anywhere; all there is really to do is to wait for the church bells to chime. When I arrived at the monastery, Brother Klaus mentioned that I would be sleeping in a part of the monastery that is a ‘bit newer.’ It was built in 1745. A Christian church has gathered in the town to pray the liturgy since 802AD. So I guess 1745 is pretty new. But Brother Klaus’ comment was much more than a history lesson. It symbolised the monastic life.

Outside the monastery life goes on. It progresses and travels along at an autobahn speed. But step inside the gates of a monastery and one might as well be back in the middle-ages. Or in 802AD. And you can bet your firstborn that if you go back in ten or 20 years’ time, life in the monastery will be exactly like it has always been. You see, monks and nuns march to the beat of a different drummer, to borrow Henry David Thoreau’s words. Their daily life is a living reminder that there are some things that are permanent, that don’t change, that don’t need to improve or progress to be somehow more acceptable, that don’t go out of fashion.

Only those who are self-assured and well balanced can march to the beat of a different drummer. The monastery is not a place to ‘drop out,’ if life outside is too tough. The monastic life requires discipline and character. It requires an ability to see life differently and to slow down in melismatic fashion and to stop in awe and wonder at God’s good creation. It also requires hard work and dedication. As the brothers live daily according to Benedictine’s rule, Ora et labora (pray and work), monastic life is not all beer and skittles. Well, beer maybe since often the monks brew their own, but certainly not skittles (at least I didn’t see any, whatever they are!).          

One of the many things that appeal to me in a monastery is the silence. Often it is held from compline to lauds and often meal times are also spent in silence. Monks don’t eat in a dining room, but in a refectory, much like at seminary when I was a seminarian. Hence, monks (and seminarians) don’t dine, but they ‘refect.’ The word refectory comes from the Latin word refectorium, which means a place one goes to be restored. What an apt name!

As one eats, one is restored physically, but as one eats prayerfully, in silence, one is restored also spiritually. And from this perspective, the entire monastery is in a way a refectory – A place where one goes to be restored. If, however, we take Thomas Moore’s words seriously, we can (I’m sure) learn to ‘refect’ anywhere and almost any time: ‘I believe we all, men and women, have much to gain by reflecting on religious community life as a spirit that can be fostered within our ordinary, secular lives.’

If People can Learn to Hate, They can be Taught to Love

As I entered through the iron gate of the Buchenwald concentration camp, I was reminded of the words about Jesus in the Creed, which we recite each Sunday in the liturgy: ‘He descended into hell.’ This is how it felt. Every stone, every building, every piece of concrete in this place told a story of evil beyond description. Humanity’s capacity for violence, hatred and cruelty surprised me and shocked me. The mistreatment of others by the powerful was confronting and sickening. There is no living species on earth that can administer such atrocities on another of its own kind.   

The main entrance to the camp.

One of the first and largest concentration camps on German soil, Buchenwald concentration camp was the hopeless hell to over 110,000 Jews, non-Jewish Poles, Slovenes, the mentally ill and the physically disabled, religious and political prisoners, freemasons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, criminals, homosexuals and prisoners of war.

Although not technically an extermination camp, Buchenwald was the site of an extraordinary amount of deaths, at an estimated 56,545 prisoners. A primary cause of death was illness due to the harsh conditions and many were literally worked to death under the ‘extermination through labour’ policy, as prisoners only had the choice between slave labour and inevitable execution.

Cell number one in the camp's torture bunker was the cell where prisoners spent their last night before their execution at the crematorium.

Torture room.

It was confronting. Very confronting. And disturbing. In fact, I was deeply disturbed. A visit to a place like Buchenwald changes a person, but it’s necessary. Very necessary. These places should not be hidden away, or anesthetised in their presentation. They need to be raw and confronting to respect even a little bit the horrors experienced by so many.

Slaughter house at the crematorium. Most people were strangled to death by hand before they were cut up.

The Nazis used to cut off the prisoners' heads, shrink them to fist size and send them to each other as presents. 

Looking at the photos of the guards and prisoners, it hit me that these atrocities were done by people like me, to people like me. Perhaps this is what I found most confronting. These were no longer people hiding behind titles like ‘SS guards’ or ‘prisoners,’ but they had faces and body features and sympathetic eyes and biographical information next to their photos. Finally, the evil and the victim had faces.

And what I found most confronting out of all of this was that the majority of the SS guards looked just like me, with short blonde hair and blue eyes. As I looked at the photos of the SS guards at Buchenwald, I was reminded of the words that the barber in France who cut my hair said, as I stood up to leave and put on my sun glasses. He said jokingly in his broken English, ‘Sir, you look like a neo-Nazi.’

If I had lived in Nazi Germany, what would I have done? What would have been my response to the zeitgeist of the time? Would I have had the fortitude, wisdom and courage of someone like Dietrich Boenhoffer, Lutheran theologian and pastor, who vocally opposed Nazi Germany already from the early 1930s and who met his death at the hands of the Nazis at the Flossenburg concentration camp, after spending the previous two months at Buchenwald? At this very camp. Or would I have been one of the countless numbers of clergy who through silence condoned the horrors of the camps? Or even worse, God forbid!

Science fiction scholar John Clute has written much about fictional universes, or ‘pocket universes’ as he calls them. In a pocket universe, the world perceived seems to be the entire world. The classic generation-starship tale is one in which the descendants of the original crew members have forgotten the true nature of things and have instituted a repressive, taboo-governed society, which suppresses any attempt to discover the truth.

The pocket universe of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Nazi Germany fell victim to a pocket universe. Through an orchestrated and relentless communication campaign by those in power, certain groups of people were targeted and demonised. As the years of demonisation continued, people started to forget the true nature of things and instituted a repressive, taboo-governed society, which suppressed any attempt to discover the truth. The stage was set for one of the most evil episodes in human history.

It sounds quite withdrawn from today’s society, doesn’t it? Or does it? I wonder what’s happening in our society today. Are we creating a pocket universe of our own? As you read this, you need to read very carefully to what I’m saying and what I’m not saying. What I’m not saying is that we are becoming another Nazi Germany. Correlations to Nazi Germany are thrown around indiscriminately and without measure. This is not what I’m saying at all.

But what I’m drawing a correlation with, is the way that our leaders are creating a pocket universe for their own political self-interests. Dr Peter Catt, the Dean of St John’s Cathedral, wrote recently about pocket universes. He said that the human capacity to create pocket universes is testament to the power of narrative. We can tell ourselves a story and then live as if it were true. We can create our own reality.

Rev Dr Peter Catt

For years powerful forces in the media and political parties have been spinning an untrue story about asylum seekers and an equally untrue story about us as a nation. We describe ourselves as generous and compassionate. Generous and compassionate, but also battling to cope – battling to cope with an invasion. Asylum seekers are illegal and queue jumpers, economic migrants supported in their mischief by nasty 'people smugglers' and an outdated international convention.

The smugglers are so wicked and we are so at risk from an invading force of overwhelming proportions that—as generous and compassionate as we are—we need to set the military on them. This story has become our truth and as a result good, decent people have become concerned and so want our leaders to take decisive action.

An untruthful portrayal of asylum seekers has become our truth. In our pocket universe those fleeing torture and persecution have become self-interested opportunists, illegally invading our generous nation, swarming over our borders and swamping our communities. By seeking to jump the queue, they have affronted our sense of fair play.

The universe that many Australians inhabit, however, is a completely different universe. It is a universe in which the bipartisanship that Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser demonstrated in their approach towards Indochinese refugees in the 1970s stands as a symbol of hope; a beacon which might yet draw our current politicians out of the pocket universe our nation has created for itself. In this universe, compassion and generosity still loom large as values that can make Australia…Australia.

Thanks to Dr Catt and many other voices of reason, perhaps we can also receive the fortitude, wisdom and courage to demand a fair go for refugees. We need to remember that they are refugees. Perhaps in the pocket world of our politicians they are illegals or criminals, but in the real world they are not. A horrible tragedy happened off the coast of Italy a couple of weeks ago, where 31 people died trying to reach Europe by boat. Not one European newsagency called these people anything but migrants. They weren’t even called refugees, let alone illegals or criminals. They were migrants.

The main gate of the Buchenwald concentration camp has the slogan Jedem das Seine formed into the steel. It literally means, ‘To each his own,’ but figuratively ‘Everyone gets what he deserves.’ The slogan is legible only from inside the camp. One needs to remember that the prisoners never walked out of the front gate, they only walked in. It was only the prison guards and the soldiers who walked out.

The text served as a reminder to the soldiers that what they were doing was justified. The soldiers deserved freedom and the ability to walk in and out of the concentration camp. The evil prisoners, however, deserved hell inside the camp’s fences and walls. And if they deserved hell, the soldiers and prison guards weren’t doing anything evil, they were only giving the prisoners what they deserved. In other words, it wasn’t unfair what they were doing.

We keep hearing that to treat refugees who are fleeing the atrocities of their home countries is justified, because they impose a threat on Australia’s national security. The two leaders of our main political parties, Rudd and Abbott, are in a race to see who can be the cruellest and meanest in their treatment of refugees.

It’s no longer a race to the bottom; it’s a race to the abyss of hell, the same abyss that laid the foundations of Nazi Germany all those years ago. It’s our very own pocket universe where a certain group of people is targeted and demonised. As the years of demonisation continue, people start to forget the true nature of things and the inhumane treatment of tens of thousands of men, women and children continues.

There is hope, however. In the words of the ever inspirational Nelson Mandela, ‘No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.’ Therefore, let us teach people to love. Let us teach our loved ones to love. And most importantly, let us teach ourselves to love. For love conquers all, even the pocket universes of our political leaders!

All Roads Lead to Ausfahrt

A cursory look at road signs in Germany would suggest that Ausfahrt is a popular name for a town. The first time I saw a sign pointing towards Ausfahrt, I thought it was a bit of an unfortunate name for a town, depending of course on its pronunciation. As I romped along the autobahn, soon another sign proudly displayed the same name and reminded me that Ausfahrt was not far away. And then another. And yet another.

I started to wonder if I was on some sort of a ring road circling Ausfahrt, while I was meant to be heading in a straight line towards Luxembourg. When I came upon yet another Ausfahrt sign, I pulled over and googled the word. I thought surely even the Germans aren’t this unimaginative that they call every second town by the same name. It turns out that Ausfahrt means ‘exit’ in German. Ausfahrt is used for cars and Ausgang (another interesting word) for pedestrians, as in an exit from a building.

It seems I haven’t been the only tourist confused by the word, as a Canadian punk rock band NoMeansNo named one of its albums All Roads Lead to Ausfahrt. They were probably travelling around Germany thinking that while in Italy all roads lead to Rome, in Germany they all lead to Ausfahrt. Once I had solved the Ausfahrt mystery, I hopped back on the autobahn towards beautiful Luxembourg.

The autobahns are something else. Driving on the unrestricted sections, is like flying at a low altitude. I’m no chicken behind the wheel of a car, but 200 km/h+ is a bit too fast even for me. I chose to cruise at a far more respectable speed (somewhere between 120 km/h and 130 km/h), as my car kept swaying from the turbulence of the passing cars. Then I came upon ‘Autobahn Church,’ a Lutheran church near the motorway that invited tired travellers for a moment’s rest. One has to love a country that combines fast driving and the sacred!

The churches in Europe are of course a treat for someone like me. I’ve visited many in the past weeks and I plan to visit many more. They are restful places; places where there is always an absolute and unequivocal welcome of all people. What really grabs me about old churches and old buildings in general is the way that they simply are. Architecture is an invitation for people to become part of something much greater than themselves. Old buildings especially do this. Some new buildings compete for attention in their design through harshness and 'loudness'; I think this is a shortcoming in modern architecture.

The Church of St Bartholomeus, Frankfurt, goes back to the 14th Century. Its spire extends 95 meters. 

I’m fascinated by architecture and design and enjoy talking about it with our future daughter-in-law Taylor who is studying architecture at university (yes, this was a ‘not-so-subtle’ hint for our son Rafael). The genius behind architecture is that it invites us towards slowness and silence, because it is forever present without demands and it continues to be present with patience.

The world-renowned Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa once said that old buildings ‘warehouse and protect silence.’ He likened old churches to museums of silence. I like this! We don’t have enough silence in the world today. Old churches invoke in us a sense of awe and admiration that can only be experienced by simply observing and admiring – in silence.

Many old buildings in Europe have experienced the horrors of many wars. Many beautiful and irreplaceable buildings were destroyed beyond repair. Some have been recreated and others restored. Yet many buildings wear the scars of shelling, reminding people of the high price of human conflict. Buildings don’t fight. People do. Yet, buildings join people in telling the stories of past horrors by wearing the scars of past conflict almost as a silent, non-violent response to the violence of war.

The Romerberg Town Hall Square, Frankfurt, bombed during the Second World War

Tomorrow I’ll be driving past the fields of Passendale, Belgium, on my way to Brussels. The Tyne Cot cemetery is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission burial ground for almost 12,000 soldiers, including over 1,300 of Australia’s young diggers. The message on the headstone of Second Lieutenant Arthur Conway Young reads, ‘Sacrificed to the fallacy that war can end war.’

The idea of a unified Europe was brought to birth some years after the Second World War not far from the fields of Passendale. Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and many other visionary leaders decided that they had had enough of war. They visioned a unified continent that would bring together the economies of diverse nations and hence conflict in Europe would end. Through many different phases the European Union was born. It has been a resounding success in reducing violence and conflict in Europe. It would be impossible to consider today that Germany and France for example would be in war with one another.

The answer in coming to terms with a difficult past is not forgetting what happened. The soldiers who are buried in Tyne Cot will never allow us to forget. The answer is not in forgetting, the answer is in forgiving. As Igor Stravinsky said, ‘Sin cannot be undone, only forgiven.’ Commenting on Stravinsky’s words, Benedictine Joan Chittister says, ‘What we do to ourselves or others stays in the soul like dust in the air. We cannot undo it. We can only begin again. For that reason, God has no memory.’

Travelling through Europe with its shelled buildings and the fields of Passendale, but yet now with its open boarders and unified economies, reminds all people that we cannot forget, but we can forgive. There is no other way. Joan Chittister continues: ‘The failure to forgive, the unyielding memory of the debt, is too great a burden to carry. It smothers the joy out of life. It blocks our own ability to move. It makes growth impossible. It traps us in the juices of the snake that bit us.

‘That is not the mercy of the forgiving God who wipes out the past and every day, makes all things new again. To forego the need for requital releases us as well as our debtor from further harm. We free the debtor from shame and ourselves from bitterness.’

Beautiful Luxembourg

The Grass is Really Greener on the Other Side…of the World

They’ve told me I’m colour blind. Not every colour mind you, mainly just red and green. It has its advantages, however. Some studies have shown that colour blind people are better at seeing certain colour camouflages. Such findings apparently may give an evolutionary reason for the high prevalence of red-green colour blindness. So instead of seeing it as a disability, perhaps red-green colour blind people are actually more evolved than others!    

And even red-green colour blind people can of course see most reds and greens. Thankfully for the rest of the motoring world, I don’t have a problem seeing red traffic lights for example. And I certainly don’t have a problem seeing the green in the grass in Finland. The grass is really greener on the other side…of the world, that is. It’s amazingly green. It’s the green of children’s picture books and Kermit the Frog. It’s the type of green that has defined all other greens at the beginning of time. It’s so green, it makes you dizzy just looking at it; so dizzy in fact that you have to grab on to the grass, to keep from falling off the earth.

This is the first time in 20-years that we’ve visited Finland in summer. Having visited Finland a number of times in winter, one begins to think of Finland as a country of perpetually freezing weather. Snow covered countryside and iced-up lakes are of course beautiful and winter sports keep Nordic people healthy and active even in winter. In many ways a Nordic winter can be appealing. But it’s not for me. I’d rather see Kermit green than frosty white when I look out the window.

Having visited Finland only in winter in recent years, one forgets that summer comes to this northern country once a year as well. Every year. That’s every 12-months. And that’s not really a long time to wait for a summer that is so breathtaking, albeit brief. I’ve often said that Finnish summer is like Minna, short and beautiful. And talking about Minna, she had her birthday last week.We organised a bit of a party for her at her auntie’s holiday house. It was an ‘open door’ type of a day, with people coming and going all day.

While Minna is an only child, she has a huge extended family, probably only surpassed by Father Abraham himself. It was a joy to observe Minna mingle with her family that day. Her extended family were invited to come and celebrate Minna and come they did! In droves. Car after car pulled up to the yard as people came to celebrate their favourite Australian cousin and niece. While it was a joy to observe Minna mingle that day, it also brought home to me the sacrifice she has made to join me on the other side of the world.      

Minna has a way with wordplays and quirky and quick quips. In her mother tongue that is. This doesn’t convert as much into English. And that’s a sacrifice, because it’s a witty and beautiful side of Minna’s personality. She has also sacrificed her Finnish friendships and her otherwise close connection to her parents and her extended family. That’s a real sacrifice. It takes a special kind of person to do that.

As my mother-in-law and I dropped off Minna and Samuel at the airport the other day to fly back to Australia, I once again got that sinking feeling that migrants know all so well. I didn’t feel it for myself, since it won’t be long and I’ll see them again, but for my mother-in-law, who doesn’t know when she’ll see her only child again. I mumbled a few poorly chosen words about the difficulties of saying goodbye, to which she quipped in her quintessentially pragmatic Finnish way, ‘There are as many “hellos” as there are “goodbyes.”’ Which of course is true. You got to love the Finns for being able to articulate the dead obvious, but in a profound kind of way. Minna is her mum’s daughter!

Being able to immerse oneself in two cultures is of course one of the blessings of being a migrant. One doesn’t get any tourist brochure glossy pictures of life in either country. A friend of mine I hadn’t seen in 20-years said to me recently that he wished he could simply drop everything and move to the other side of the world – like Australia. The grass is always greener and all that. As a migrant, however, you know that reality is different and while the actual grass might be greener in Finland for a fleeting moment every summer, the daily grind meets and greets us wherever we live. It’s a type of colour blindness that migrants develop fairly early on in their lives.

So the secret to happiness isn’t about moving to the other side of the world, but to be truly present wherever we are. I’ve been reading Tuesdays With Morrie that came highly recommended by a good friend of mine. In it, Morrie, an old professor shares his wisdom with Mitch, one of his old students, as Morrie’s body slowly succumbs to a debilitating illness.

When Mitch asked why he had never moved somewhere else when he was younger, where things would have been better, Morrie replied, ‘Look, no matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our short-sightedness. We don’t see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you’re surrounded by people who say “I want mine now,” you end up with a few people with everything and a military to keep the poor ones from rising and stealing it.’

As I read Morrie’s words, I couldn’t help but think of the plight of so many refugees who see countries such as Australia and Finland as places where the grass is truly greener. And for them it really is. And I couldn’t help but think of our well-to-do societies being hysterical over losing ‘what is ours’ and hence needing a military to keep us safe from the encroaching boat people army. Yes, under the recently introduced Australian laws, the boats will probably stop and that will mean that people won’t drown – in our waters. But they’ll drown somewhere else, or they’ll be shot somewhere else, or they’ll die of hunger somewhere else. But at least it won’t be in our backyard.

But I’ll let Morrie continue with his wisdom. ‘The problem, Mitch, is that we don’t believe we are as much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about that family, the way we care about our own.’ Perhaps we could even see boat people as, well…people. Because they are not actually ‘boat people.’ Just people. On boats.