Pilgrimages

When I returned from Germany, a friend told me of the pilgrimages she makes, whenever possible, to view pages from the St. John’s Bible.  Back in the nineties, a calligrapher from Wales and the Benedictine Monks of St. John’s abbey in Minnesota began a project to create a new illuminated version of the Bible.  The result, my friend told me, is visually stunning.  Intense colors, bright gold and platinum leaf on vellum - she goes out of her way to view pages as they are exhibited around the country.  She goes also because in her early life, the Bible was central.

I suppose it should have been obvious to me that my frequent sojourns in Germany are pilgrimages as well.  This time, as I tried to plot a course between my father’s hometown of Gera and my own Krefeld, I realized I have traveled this path so frequently that I struggle to find new sights along the way.  I have gone as far north as Lüneburg and as far south as Ulm between the two points.  Our trip to Nördlingen and Trier via Speyer was a compromise route, but it was filled with history and art.  When I tell my cousin Ulrike about my travels through Germany, she marvels that I know the country much better than she does.  She’s a passionate traveler, but she is attracted to Thailand and Bali. For short trips, it’s the south of France.  

I know Germany far better than I would if I lived there.  If I had stayed, I would be drawn to more exotic places too.  Germany is an easy, comfortable trip for me.  I can slip on my alternate language and culture. In fact, I feel so secure, I don’t need to plan the trip in detail.  But something was different this time.  This was the first time I didn’t ache with longing to merge with the land.  It didn’t bother me that I have to struggle to express myself; that some words refuse to leave the deep storage of my brain without coaxing.  I even asked for help a few times.  Maybe something shifted with the publication of my book.  Germany will always be where I grew up, but it is no longer home.

But I am drawn back, over and over again, not because Germany is visually stunning, but because the sounds and sights connect me to a deeper past. The other reason is that it’s the only place where there are people that have known me, however distantly, all my life.

Here I am with my cousins Ulrike and Mareike.