so, i thought i should explain the situation that apparently made me so angry last saturday.
on the friday before, my german teacher, an elderly woman of 60 or so, invited me to a classical music concert in a nearby village for saturday afternoon. i said i was interested. she said she would call me later in the evening to discuss details. i thought that it would be a fairly low commitment. 1 or 2 hours in the afternoon and on to something more exciting, right? wrong.
my german teacher, i know her as Frau Schmidt-Siaw, is a retired teacher and what i would describe as a very sweet, typical old lady (early to bed, early to rise; that sort of thing). but she also loves to preach the wonders of healthy eating. telling me i'm not eating right and should be eating more raw fruits and vegetables seems to be one of the things that brings her great joy. in fact, i'd say that telling me that i'm not getting enough vitamins appears to be a german pastime. i've had too many people tell me that the reason i'm tired and have no energy is because i'm not getting enough vitamins for it to be just a coincidence. and all along i have thought it was the living in a different culture, working 40 hours a week in a manual labour type setting, and learning a language all at once. silly me.
anyways, Frau Schmidt-Siaw calls me in the evening around 7pm to go over the details for the concert tomorrow. these details were as follows: first of all we are to go to a worship service in the morning (i forgot to mention that she and her husband are Seventh Day Adventists, which i found that out rather interestingly), we will then have lunch at the church, the concert starts at 5pm, someone will be at my apartment at 8:30am to pick me up. then she asks me if this works for me.
...what? are you serious? i want to remind her i'm 24 and not retired. and i want to tell her i don't wake up before 10am on saturdays on principle. also, it has turned into a whole day affair. not the 2 hours, i had originally thought. but, did i really have the option of saying no to such a sweet old lady?
"sure that will be fine," i say, while thinking, "shit, Scheiße, merde." the phone call ends, and i'm begin to stomp around, cursing and saying: i don't wanna wake up at 8:30! just like a little child would.
the morning comes as expected. i am picked up, brought to the church service. greeted by many very friendly people. it's okay. lunch is okay. the food is provided by my teacher and her husband. melon, pineapple, rice and potatoes, cooked parsnips, fresh vegetables. nice but neither filling nor exciting in any way. only now, people can shut up because i have vitamins.
the only two young guys in the congregation offer to show me some sites in the area. which is good. we drove around in a fancy car. Volkswagon Phaeton (10 cylinder diesel, unlimited horse power).
finally, it's 5pm and the concert starts, and ends the same. by this time i'm ready to go home.
after standing around for an hour after the concert we finally leave. now here's where i learned some good lessons. one woman who is riding with us tells me how she found that the Adventists made sense for her. she asks me if Mennonites worship on saturday or sunday. i say sunday. oh, she says in a way similar to what i would expect if i told her i spent time in prison for murder. she tells me what she thinks about the whole "saturday sunday" issue and asks what i think. okay, here is where i learn to keep my mouth shut. trying to word it as diplomatically as possible, i say: God doesn't care. i don't think there is a worse thing to say in a car full of Adventist. but the Bible says...,she says. and then i make the second mistake. the Bible is a metaphor, i say. now i've done it. i am told i am a misguided youth and that i should ask the Holy Spirit to open me up to the Bible or something like that. we get to my teacher's house, where i am supposed to catch a ride with the woman who got me into this mess, only we must wait for one more person coming in another vehicle to go back to gießen. so I must sit and wait, being told to eat figs and nuts because there healthy and handed a bit of literature from my teachers husband.
"read it and ask the Holy Spirit!" i begin to think then that this whole day has all been an elaborate plan to convert me to Adventisms. i've been gone for 12 hours now. i wanna go home!
finally we leave. finally i get home. i light up a cigarette almost immediately, as if to spite them. but i don't think it's spite if they don't know about it.
then i write the angry post on my blog.
that was my saturday last weekend. and never ever again.
6 comments:
Hi Mitch,
I'll try posting a comment, although my incompetency with this technology makes me uncertain if it will go through. Ben told me about your blog when we were at Jubilee. I couldn't remember the name of the blog, but fifteen minutes of searching (on dialup) and there it was. I find that you and I have some common perspectives surrounding evangelical fervor. Periodically I run into experiences like the one you mention in the posting. I am not so brave as you, though, and usually, not always, shut up when I sense that what I want to say will offend the sensibilities/perpectives of the other person. But I feel the same frustrations and have to find some way of venting (usually through a steam blowing talk with Denise or Ben or some sympathetic friend who will be gracious with my angry words). It is difficult respond to such experiences with gracious thoughts and words. It has been good to read your postings. If this goes through, maybe I will comment again in the future.
Salaam,
John (Ben's Dad)
It went through John. Feel free to comment as much as you like. Have you thought of writing a blog as well? It might be a good venue to post angry notes on run-ins with the "fervent" ones. Thanks for the comment. Tschüss!
wow, so you told them "the bible is a metaphor" holy shit! how tactless of you, I'm having simultaneous feelings of shock and admiration. I would not have said that, I'm way to concilliatory. I can picture myself in the same situation. I would have likely spent hours atempting to stear the conversation away from subjects that are likely to cause offense. Only to find that the other parties involved continually turned the conversation back to potentially explosive subject. my experience has been that this approach is no more painless than the offensively honest approach that you took.
i didn´t think that me saying so would cause a problem. silly me. i forget if i´ve said that they gave me some literature in the post, but they did. i´ve given it a very brief once over. a lot escatalogical references to current events and one piece on Paul, what i assume says that everything he said is to be taken with the utmost seriousness. perhaps when i´m not feeling incredibly biased i will read it. so most likely, never. by the way, i´m going to be at the Albrecht´s next term. should be fun.
right on, you're going to albrecht's. I've recently been reminded of my time there by Russ. Russ has heard stories of Gunter from other former Albrecht trainees, so I told him some stories of my own.
also, in keeping with the theme of strange ideas about religion, I'll add my own little story. yesterday was the annual christmas parade in Comer, the nearest little town to Jubilee. so we went and took all of the refugees. Christmas, being a religious holiday of sorts, many local churches saw fit to enter floats into the parade. as far as I could see none of the church floats had anything to do with christianity, or even with christmas for that matter. the decoration was inevitably in some way based on the shapes and colors of the American flag, and every single one of them embodied some kind of clear statement of support for the military. a refugee from Chad said that the parade reminded him of Parades in Libya, where the only body allowed to even have a parade is the military. life sure is interesting in the land of the free.
Hah. Religion. I'm living in an Islamic state; and a rabid atheist acting as a terrible influence on his Muslim girlfriend.
Hilarity ensues.
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