Dark Waving from the Green Oak

As usual I started this morning, having no idea of where to go. The sky was looking dull, dark and grey. Little sign of sunny breakthrough in the coming hour. Well then - as I was running downhill - why not visit the Church at the other side of the Weser, I thought. If you want to search the light in or of darkness, you may ignite that Inner Light, kneel, pray and wait...until the small miracles of daily reality are uncovered to you, seeing with your Third Eye.

As you may remember, Karlshafen(Sieburg) was build (in 1699) as an Asylum-town for French and Swiss protestant Huguenots, fleeing prosecution and annihilation by the French Catholics following the attempted murder of Huguenot Admiral De Colligny and the St. Bartholomew Day Massacres (August 1572).

Long after, since the end of the 19th century local Catholics started their own service in a small chapel until the actual church was build in 1955. The central Evangelical Church, where Lutherans and Calvinists celebrate, is normally closed...at an early hour. (So, I thought, but I just saw that you can visit that Church also.)

Now, what does a Free Man of protestant upbringing, married Oecumenically to a young Catholic woman, do in a place of worship belonging to the Holy Church of Rome? Is this a kind of repeating that “Paris vault bien une Messe”/”Paris is well worth a Mass” ( famous saying of former Huguenot, King Henry IV of France?

Apart from this reminder of the risk of “hypocrisy”, my question remains: how can you seriously endeavour your authentic groundings and find inner peace, love and serenity in prayer and candle-lighting in a Church of definite confession? And, haven’t you heard of the Death of God?

YES, yes, I am fully aware of that and nonetheless, I honestly try to mature, intensify my growing form of creative living without any denial of the deep “nihil” or “emptiness” remaining from this painful parting. Yes indeed, from within that dark emptiness, that’s where I’m given the starting-point of my creative explorations in authentic living/being. That’s how and why I share with you this photo of a holy old Oaktree, overgrown with dark green ivy, as a symbol of my quest into the Light of Darkness.

“There are no “atheists” in the presence of genuine Art, or none who are unawakened to the sacred”. Wise words of Thomas Altizer. They echo in me standing in awe for That Tree with my Lumix at hand.