Standing in the Gap 6-30-9

Rostock, Germany

Our journey towards St. Petersburg found us making a call at Warnemunde on the Baltic coast, which was once part of East Germany in the Soviet days. Warnemunde has basked in the great prosperity of the western political and economic tsunami that washed over Eastern Europe beginning in late 1989. Prosperity included enough capital for paint and flowers to cloak the entirety of the town in freshness and pleasing color. This small unknown town has become a major shipping port, looking like many all over the world with its myriad container cranes and terminals.

Modern public transportation is abundant and fairly priced. Clean new electric trolleys, busses, and trains provide connections throughout Germany. We chose to hop on one of the new double deck trains in Warnemunde and make the short pleasant journey to Rostock, a full-featured town about ten miles distant.

Rostock is one of those beautiful towns that compels one to look back a few centuries and contemplate life in its simpler forms. Certainly life was much harder in many ways, but it certainly had far fewer complexities. I was hoofing it around the old town center for six hours, trying to capture as much of the city as I could in jpg files on my flash drive. I don’t feel like a place is really ‘mine’ until I have carefully documented my experience of it in photographs. Verdant parks along the city walls made my circumnavigation of the terrain a delightful experience and a street vendor selling bratwurst gave me the energy I needed to keep on trucking. An eight-hundred year old town hall, four grand churches of just slightly newer vintage, and the considerable remains of defensive walls with tower gates around the center begged for my consideration. I did wonder how all of this antiquity survived the ravages of several world wars and the seventy year onslaught of Soviet thought.

The western medieval Kopliner gate is immense and imposing, even when competing with the glitz and lights of a prosperous shopping district once fueled by the dynamic growth that took place in Europe after the collapse of the Soviet world and before the economic swine fly struck the world in late 2008. As I climbed some 150 steps to the top of this gate tower and took in a commanding view of what is now a large sprawling urban area on the Baltic Sea, I wondered about what would have been visible from this same vantage point 700 years ago. Would I have looked out on a protected village and seen those four churches with sky-piercing spires and their cloistered monasteries functioning as obvious centers of activity? Would bells herald the beginning of a mass or service; would the faithful be seen making their way to their respective sanctuaries. Would true sanctuary for the souls of the faithful be found in these churches rather than the dreary dusty museum exhibits of a church history that has been truncated and cut off? As best as I can tell none of these once great churches conduct services or have congregations. As I continue on my journeys throughout the world I find that many churches and cathedrals have become little more than museums functioning as tourist attractions, complete with ticket kiosks and extensive gift shops. For the first time, on my present journey, I have seen vested clergy actively engaging in practices once found only in the marketplace.

Since these churches were built and since they were safely enclosed by massive stone walls with two dozen towers and gates, gun powder was invented; rendering the walls ineffective at providing real protection from marauding invaders. With the invention of the telescope and the subsequent articulation of a mechanistic cosmology, much of the perceived theological order of the universe collapsed into a black hole of uncertainty for many adherents to the faith. To this day many struggle with the meaning of life and the nature of the universe. Countless ‘proof texts’ have been written, trying to keep God included in an ever more secular cosmology.

I can’t but wonder if maybe in our post-Christian post-atomic age, we might not be as smart as we like to think. Is there something important we might learn by going back and listening to the wisdom of an age when virtually everyone was illiterate? At one point very near the great Kopliner Gate the former protective wall comes to an abrupt end and there is no longer any illusion of protection from outside forces that might have once overrun the town. That gap renders the great western gate utterly useless. I wonder if there are not major gaps in the foundations of our ‘modern’ belief and practice that put us at risk for being overrun by forces that we are ill equipped to cope with. Perhaps this medieval oasis in a post-industrial landscape is begging me to climb up on a high place and look down and see if there are gaps previously untended in my life. I know I have some gaps that need major attention.

We are encouraged in the very ancient writings to ‘Be still and know that I am God.” We are also told that God will not forsake the work He has begun in us. He will perfect that which concerns us and will not forsake the work of His own hands. If we allow Him, he will rebuild the gaps that have opened up in our faith and practice. Then we will have reason to feel truly safe, wherever we find ourselves.