The ties that bind

How the time is flying here in Aachen. Took me absolute ages to settle down and now I realise the days are running out at rather an alarming rate. We have had such stimulating and interesting days this week. Firstly in the physics institute where our heads were filled with crazy info on the building blocks of the universe, then the computer centre where we got to spend time in the virtual reality 'cave', and today the /architecture/urban planning department where we went out into the laboratory that is Aachen and looked at the process of historical development.

Aachen is a multi-faceted city. There is the university with 40 000 students- that lifestyle and attitude; then just a few streets away, the mega-rich neighbourhood- people with old and new money, that Simon showed me on his tour last week. Walk a few streets in another direction, and one immediately notices that the people are poor and struggling, and there are also many more people clearly living on the streets than I expected. I guess there are many towns in the world like this, but here I feel it is all in really close proximity.

Aachen was originally a Roman town, and it is famous for the hot springs. The Romans built Aachen in the classical chess-board "castrum'', very ordered and regulated. Charlemagne came and the magnificent cathedral became the main feature. The altar of the cathedral traditionally has to face east, towards the rising sun, and so the city is orientated around that. Where the Carolinian roads then intercept with the Roman streets, there are often unusual triangular shapes. In the Medieval times, a circular city wall was built and the roads were narrower and more windy. Come the 1800's, the town planners were more into the classical boulevard style, as can be seen in front of the city theatre. Aachen in a huge fusion of different styles and spaces, and it all works beautifully. It is complex and interesting and connects all these different historical ages.

I have been thinking about the people and events of our lives, the seeming randomness of it, but yet how one somehow senses the invisible ties that hold those events and people together. There are so many seemingly unrelated paths and choices, but somehow beneath that, the mystical fibres that bind, that order, and cause these
experiences and relationships with things, places and people to converge and present sudden and magical answers. Serendipity. Connectedness. Complexity, Beauty. Infinite possibilities.

I realised that my thoughts have been connected to all the experiences I have had this week. The amazing building blocks of the universe: that the huge expanse of space is mirrored in the internal workings of the atoms, in the neutrons and quarks and bosons. That science is about the very particles that make up our universe, the huge spaces between them and the forces and fields that glue it all together. Connectedness. Imagine I learnt this week about the Higgs boson called the "God Particle". For me the incredible fusion between science and the spiritual life.

In the virtual reality cave, we examined space, and looked at tangible concepts, that are yet completely intangible. We believe that they are there, so they are. The visible and the invisible connected.

In my walks and tours around Aachen, I am reflecting on my life and path, looking at how the place developed, the spaces connected, the seeming unrelated elements fused into one unusual and beautiful town. I am thinking how my life has evolved, the people and the spaces connected, and how all the seemingly unrelated elements reveal themselves to be perfectly aligned, again and again. I ask myself how I can possibly doubt this, as I am living in the middle of this miracle. I feel so inherently like a particle of God.

Is this what love does? Bring it on.

My wish tonight, may we all perceive the order, the serendipity, the blessed continuity of our lives, no matter our religion or creed, and have the humility to feel gratitude for it. Amen.

http://www.ted.com/talks/carter_emmart_demos_a_3d_atlas_of_the_universe.html

Follow this link to see a 6 minute mind-blowing demonstration of a 3-D map of the universe.

Where the wind always blows

I have so much noise in my head that I have really struggled to get my backside back into this chair to share my words with you. When my thoughts and emotions are such a dappled pallette of colors and shades and light, it is difficult to find a theme. Somehow I have a need to draw one or two strands out of the entangled spagetti mess at a time and examine them before I can articulate.

I have to wait for that process to happen, thank God I am not professional writer! In any case, it all came together today in the middle of an energetic cheering crowd of 15 000, a football match here in Aachen, and I felt I could pick up my flow again.

I have been happy to be in Germany and have been having an enjoyable time with the students; it has not been stressful as so many before me reported. I am experiencing a lot of new things, and each day is an unknown,a mini adventure, even more so that usual as my inner landscape is also in constant flux. 

There is a large part of me that does not want to be away from home and feels really ungrounded. I feel like a balloon bouncing up and down, finding my centre and losing it, finding my centre and losing it, on average 15 times a day.

Happy to be in a country where the church bells are ringing all around. That and the sound of the cartyres on the asphalt in the rain are soothing and so deeply familiar from my previous life, that ocassionally I can take a deep breath. I am dreaming of the loved one often and wake up before dawn full of his stories and the lines on his face, and sometimes with tears, and this also makes me miss home. I am actually so blessed to have this intimacy, but also I am having a hard time keeping myslef rooted and letting my eyes perceive the different hues of this very moment.

How can a love be so fundamentally grounding and excrutiatingly uprooting at the same time?

We visited Cologne yesterday. The cathedral is a magnificent structure out of limestone and sandstone, the second highest spires in the the world, after the single spire of the Minster in Ulm. Or as I fondly call it, the Monster. I had the privilege to experience it again just a couple of months ago, a place I have deeply enjoyed since I first visited in 1997. In 1880 this cathedral in Cologne was the tallest structure in the world, crystalline white and visible for many miles around; an important place of pilgrimage, holding relics of the holy three kings.

It was hit in the war, but unlike the rest of Cologne, it was not wiped out. The story goes that the bomber pilots used it as a navigational marker. The facade is now quite blackened, due to the bombing and the acid rain, and there is a constant process of restoration in process. The cathedral has had a master builder since around 1240 when construction began, and it was somehow comforting to know that the current chief engineer is a woman!

I only spent a few minutes inside; my geologist friends with firm faith only in rocks, were waiting patiently outside on the square where the wind always blows, eager to show me their favourite Vietanamese watering hole. In those few short minutes, I sensed the centuries of worship that went before me. I sensed the faithful and also the doubters laying their sorrows and difficulties before God, finding a voice for their pleas, as well as their gratitude.

As I lit a candle on that ground, I joined those legions finding expression to their humanity and found there a moment of peace.