The Rev’d Janet Wheelock
Dear friends,
Fifteen years before the Berlin Wall was broken through, a twenty-two year old American student in West Berlin went every Thursday to her neighbor’s apartment. She lugged two sacks of groceries up six flights of stairs for old Frau Spilner.
Frau Spilner lived in a huge apartment through both world wars and the loss of three husbands. “I saw Nazis lynched on the streetlamps just down below, and I won’t tell you what else I saw the Russian soldiers do.”
Frau Spilner was round in stature and found her dentures too uncomfortable, so her smile had a puckered way about it. Her eyes giggled telling stories and showing pictures of her vacations before and after the War.
As she talked, Frau Spilner and the student shared Kaffee and Kuchen on her balcony with its panoramic view of Berlin, at the time in a constant state of rebuilding from World War Two.
Frau Spilner left her apartment and shuffled down the endless stairs only for doctor appointments. Her neighborhood church had paired her with the student in a project bridging young people with elders who did not leave their homes any more. She watched church tv on Sunday morning. She made her peace between life and death.
The Book of Revelation deals, among other things, with death and the end of history. The apocalypse, full of burning lakes and capital punishment, births what the prophet rejoices as:
“A new heaven and a new earth.” “Now at last God has his dwelling among people!” “God will wipe every tear from their eyes; there shall be an end to death, and to mourning and crying and pain.” (Revelation 21:4)
Our faith guides us to warm to death’s presence, to join the hands of living and dead. “Momento mori” it used to be said, “remember death” that you might more fully live.
In our secular calendar, a new year is upon us. Let us focus on God, our God, come here to dwell with the living and the dead. The wolf and the lamb are at last in a peaceful embrace.
Frau Spilner died at 93 and only her ancient nephew and I were at the graveside. I still see her in my mind’s eye, toothless, eyes sparkling as she purveys Berlin, now one city, from her flower strewn balcony.
Love in Christ,
—Janet+
