Popularity

For some reason, I am a magnet of sorts for the German high-school girls. We’re all 17-29 in the young people section (which is the biggest part of Taizé), but there are a number of 17/18 year-olds, and I think it’s my accent that does it. The math is simple:

Brad Pitt = interesting to high school girls
German HSGs = very similar to American HSGs
Plus, BP’s star vehicle, Inglourious Basterds, is a hit in Germany, making BP even more interesting to German HSGs.

BP also = from the American South = traditional American, occasionally southern accent

Substituting the accent for BP, we get:
Traditional American, occasionally Southern accent = interesting to German HSGs.

Yet BP also = 5,000 miles away, whereas Adam = only American at Taizé all week who hasn’t taken the vow of communal life and celibacy

So, in the spirit of making lemonade out of lemons, Adam, who has a Traditional American, slightly Southern, often-mistaken for Canadian accent when he speaks clearly, and who talks much too often about films, even though Adam ≠ Brad Pitt, Adam more or less = interesting to German high school girls.

There. That’s math, how physics works.


This is not the point of the story. I don’t come to make friends; I come to shut my mouth and let my past and near future was over me like the consoling warmth of a warm, directional rain. To take stock, if you will, of the cultural limits we have shattered on this trip, to understand that we have come this far, to raise our Ebenezer as the old hymn goes, and to know deep in our bones that God has brought us this far; that by little glory of my own Ryan and I have been a part of some positive difference-making in people’s lives.

So rarely do we take the time to be grateful or, to take it a step further, to sit down quiet for a moment and experience in our bones how incredibly grateful we are. I have to do this before I get back to what I am used to and the rhythm and the status quo that tries to creep inside and tell us that we have nothing good to offer the world. We say that societal structures are too big to change, that some hurts are too deep to heal, that it is frivolous to create things that have never before existed when we have so much history before us and that everything is just recapitulation. We look at things mathematically in the status quo, and not the type of theoretical math that makes what we never thought possible possible; no, we tend to look at life in the status quo as a selfish sort of dollars-and-cents sort of way. If we give any credence to the Holy Spirit, then we understand that life is always new in some way every day, every day is gray, between black and white, and we are tightrope-walking through each day, trying to be the best stewards we can possibly be with the opportunities we are given.

When Peter wanders off to be by himself, no one stops him. We are hanging out as friends and yet no one thinks he is being antisocial. We can be silent together and yet experience together, whether it’s the subtle movements of a vibrant earth or graceful, welcoming countenance of the brothers. Sometimes we leave each other because we are all on the threshold of a new dawn, and sometimes you have to experience the sunrise for yourself before you can come back and tell the world of the beautiful colors you’ve seen.