a pilgrim's tale

Relocation

hajo — Sun, 18 May 2008 19:23:20 +0000

After almost three years and more than 10.000 visits we gave up our old blog. I won’t make any promises concerning my future blogging activities, but hope to find some kind of routine when my real life is getting more smooth. I pulled over a big part of my old posts, so you can still read through some of the experiences from our world trip.

hajo — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 17:26:00 +0000

God’s land for sale

hajo — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 21:58:00 +0000

In the next weeks, Barbara needs to raise something like 9000 € for the piece of land. They were able to buy it last april with the help of some people who lent them a part of the total price for the duration of one year. This is almost over now and so it is time to pay the money back. In this first year more than 100 people spent time at the Mount of Oaks and found peace, community, support, healing, friendship, inspiration and love; just like I did. And there is much more to come in the future. I want to encourage you to be a partaker of what God is doing there and to consider giving a little amount for this community that will be a blessing for many people. You can find more information and the bank details here. Unfortunately I deleted all my Portugal pictures by accident, so I have been using the ones from Ton’s and Baba’s blogs.

Welcome home

hajo — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:51:00 +0000

My first night in Portugal I spend with the Hurst family in Lissabon. Denny picked me up directly from the airport together with Ben from the Portugese punk rockers Triplet. They just moved to Lissabon a few weeks ago after 22 years in Italy, where among other things they established the Rock on the Rock Festival. Together with them and some other guests they hosted I had a great evening before I travelled to the Mount of Oaks.

My travelling companions Eddy, a carpenter on the road and Jared, a hippie disciple from Carolina walked with me along the railroad tracks when I spotted the first sign. The green meadows with the blooming fruittrees reminded me of childhood fantasies, and when we reached the big cork oaks I felt an urge to put off my combat boots and continue barefoot as I was approaching holy land. Over the fields we continued, the others were singing loudly, and then in the distance we saw a girl waving at us and screaming: Welcome home! I cannot tell how much I longed to hear those words. They have a special meaning for me at the moment with all the changes and travels that lie behind me now.

The girl was Marieluise, a 22 year old German who had just regained her life after eating a poisonous root she found in the forest. She spent some days in the intensive care and almost died. You can find her full story here on Barbara’s blog. Amazing!

Pilgrimage to Portugal

hajo — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:55:00 +0000

In about 12 hours I am leaving towards Lissabon. From there I will travel to the Mount of Oaks, to the place where my dear friend Barbara is living. In 2005 we initiated together a kind of “outreach” (don’t like the word) with the Jesus Freaks to the European Rainbow Gathering and became sort of family members to each other. Tomorrow, when I will leave early from my coaching course I will say that I am attending a family meeting.

It will be my first time to Portugal - I can add a new country to my list! I am very much looking forward to get there, not only because I am very happy to meet Barbara again, but also because another old friend, Ton, is there right now as well. There are very few people who made such a strong impact on my life like him. Nine years ago I went to India to work with him on the streets of Delhi and in his Ashram. I learned so much about life (and death) in this place! Later on he was conducting our marriage in 2000. Ton’s words always challenge and inspire me and I love his poetic way of writing.
The trip is not just a visit for me but more like a pilgrimage. I have many questions and uncertainties at this point of my life. My heart is heavy and my head is full of doubts. Hopefully I can calm down for a few days and can look at my life with a little distance. During the time there I will read a book about the Desert Fathers, write in my diary, talk things through with good friends and work and pray. As a little tuning in I visited an exhibition of paintings about the temptation of St. Anthony. I feel like living in a hostile world for 3 years now and I want to get out of the desert now. I hope that God, friends, nature and books will speak to my heart.

Jesus Freaks Holland Meeting

hajo — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:41:00 +0000

Yeah, I bought some nice cookies when I went to Holland. My favourites are the sweet pies filled with marzipan. Yummy! I was invited for the Jesus Freaks Holland weekend and sneaked out with my good old friend Julia to go shopping. The JF Holland started around a group of people who organized a big music festival called Peacedog. At a certain point they were concerned about the spiritual atmosphere on the festival and started to meet regularly to pray for it. This group became the Jesus Freaks Ede, and I think it was 2004 when Max, Hermann and two other guys first came to Willow Freak, the annual leadership gathering, where I also met them for the first time. Their somewhat ecumenical concept is that all the people stay members of their home churches, but meet in addition every two weeks as Jesus Freaks. (Sidenote: This is quite a big difference compared to our German model, where most groups started out of frustration with or rebellion against the existing churches. I think that even now, years later, we deal with this problematic attitude in the Council process. So there is something we can learn from!) This year, two new groups were started in Kerkdorp and Amersford. A fourth one is in preparation in Utrecht. This is really cool, and I still wait for one in Amsterdam, the place where Martin Dreyer, founder of the Jesus Freaks, got the idea to start something new. Since many people didn’t know each other the main aim was to build friendship. It was great to see Jan-Willem again. Last time we met in the jungle of Malaysia half a year ago, totally by coincidence. Everyone I talked to this weekend was really friendly and welcoming.
We also watched a documentary about plastic surgery and the beauty mania. Now I know what a vagina rejuvenation is. Another thing that shocked me was the fact that all the billboard models are manipulated by graphic programms, so that today a young girl is trying to compete with an ideal that doesn’t even exist in reality! I liked the reaction of some of the people watching the documentary. They decided to do some action against the beauty lie and print stickers to put them on the billboards. Maybe I will order some and use them in Hamburg as well.

My new running course

hajo — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:55:00 +0000

The Council

hajo — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:57:00 +0000

Another weekend of community, prayer, discussion and seeking God is over. Another Council meeting of Jesus Freaks Germany. Every time I leave I feel such a strong love for those people. Some of them I know for almost ten years, others I got to know just some months ago, but being together in JF always makes me feel that we are bound together by some fate and that we belong together - which is actually true!! A sad fact is that some people who couldn’t agree with the recent developments and the “open space”-method which was used in the process kept distance or dropped out.
The location was an old castle - getting there in fog and darkness was the first qualifying test. The aim of the meeting was to adopt a new value paper that lays down the new direction, defines the leadership style and structure of the Jesus Freaks. In general there was a broad acceptance, but since we aimed for a one-voice decision, and there were quite a number of details to discuss, we could not even vote for the first of 13 pages. Maybe that sounds like a big failure, but in my perception we accomplished something very much bigger.
The main achievement in the whole Council is the ongoing process of learning to trust, respect and create space for each other, regardless of his position, opinion or the years of membership. Admitting that Jesus is incarnate in everyone of us and has an important contribution to make. At times there are contradicting views but through mutual trust and dialogue we could find to unity again and again. I like how the “architectural” team has put it in words: “Unity in gigantic diversity - not based on compromise but on miracle!” Jesus Freaks are not a subculture, we are made up from many different subcultures that normally would not get along with each other. Again and again I am amazed by this miracle!

A revived monastery

hajo — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:26:00 +0000

Recently we visited my Dad and his wife. I haven’t seen them for more than 1 1/2 years. They live just 2 hours away from Hamburg, so very likely we will meet more often in the future. One day we were driving through the countryside together and passed a small settlement. Rebecca spotted a quite big church tower and asked, if that was a monastery. My father said that he once talked to a monk there and suggested to stop and have a look. When we walked past the gate, a man who introduced himself as Brother Axel showed us around. and told the story of the monastery. Founded by Benedictines in 1224, it was used as hostel for pilgrims, refugees and the sick, for schooling and farming. During the Communist times after WWII it was declared as own of the people and the buildings fell apart. Shortly after the German reunification four Benedictine Monks moved back in to rebuild the church, live in community according to their motto ora et labora (pray and work) and to help people in need. They hosted kids’ groups from Tschernobyl whos health is affected by radioactivity from the desaster in 1986, they shelter homeless and mentally ill people.
In the future, when the buildings are in better shape, they want to have groups there to hold seminars, retreats or holidays. Now already it is possible to come for a couple of days to help with the resovation or the farmwork and join in their rhythm of work and prayer.
I was moved by the convictions of Brother Axel who chose to live in poverty and celibacy to serve others. He was totally sure that this is his calling. And he was not at all stressed by the insecurity of the future. “Maybe we still are not finished in forty years,” he said, “but this is God’s responsibility. We do our job and help others. And we experience that the more we give away, the more we get back.”
I also loved the place, the old builidings with their long and still unfinished story, the natural and peacefull surrounding.
Somehow I felt very attracted to the place and the way of life: Spiritual rhythms, close to creation, community, simplicity and meaningfullness. I could imagine to spend a few days there (even though with the winter approaching I feel more drawn to Barbara’s piece of land in Portugal).
In the near future we will have a chance to experience and experiment with community and prayer together with our new friends: Just last week five people of our housechurch formed a team to organize a 24-7 prayer week. I am excited. A new opportunity to dream about a deeper dimension to share faith and life.

Hierarchy vs Anarchy

hajo — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:50:00 +0000

In a couple of weeks the next unit of the FreaksLeadershipTraining will take place. This time the issue is leadership, a quite controversial one. Especially because the transition process of Jesus Freaks Germany (das Konzil) is still on the way. So there won’t be any “How-to” advices but just a introduction of different extreme positions and principles and a lot of space for everyone to draw his conclusions. I like this concept.
By the way, the FLT is so cheap - incredible 99€!! - because it was sponsored by an American Foundation that wants to help our movement. A nice move! I remember an article on the leftist internet news network Indymedia.de a few years ago that spoke quite bad about the Jesus Freaks and compared it to violent right-wing fundamentalism. It was the time when one of our leaders became (for a very short time) member of the right-wing party Republikaner (hier gibt es keinen Link, ich habe es auf der Seite nicht länger als 15 Sekunden ausgehalten und will das auch niemandem zumuten! Ich zitiere nur “Mach mich nicht an Ali!”) and could bring some people from there to Christ. It was a very controversial thing even in our own ranks. But I always apreciated him as a person and leader. Unfortunately he just left not only the blogosphere but also JFI. I am really sad about this. However, he did not leave the body of Christ! I wish him & his family all the best.
One of the points that was held against the Jesus Freaks in the
Indymedia-Article (German) was that we were financially supported by American Christians. That was not true at that time, but now it is a fact.
The hardcore band Preacher has a video on their myspace site where they also put in a picture of the headlines of that article. Click here to watch “when does protest turn into oppression”.