Summer travels, summer meditations

 My summer unofficially began with a summer school in the German city of Regensburg, it was one of the study weeks organized by the Dominican brothers, in this case one I know from Notre Dame but who is now living in Rome and working at the Angelicum. For last minute reasons, instead of staying in Pamplona for two more weeks after returning from Regensburg I returned only to pack up my summer things and close up my flat until September, leaving for San Sebastian and a week of being aunt to an adorable five year old nephew, whose parents had to go abroad for several days. I was in theory meant to be preparing a paper I was going to give at a conference in Vienna three weeks later but living and caring for a five year old is good for living the virtues but not really for writing about Aquinas' take on the virtues. The paper had to wait, and it was in the end, partially because of a lost suitcase partially my own poor time management, in the days directly leading up to the conference.

Behind the scenes, and totally unbeknownst to me, God was preparing a joyful summer of encounters woven into my travels mainly through German speaking countries. In San Sebastian, a place I have spent a lot of time in, one day walking the beautiful beach front, I bumped into an old friend, someone I had known in London more than a decade ago, when things in both of our lives were so utterly different. The year in London had been a complicated one for me mainly for health reasons (the perfect machinery God created is unfortunately unpredictable in some of us, ostensibly a reminder of our finitude). Her memory of that same year and our time together is infinitely rosier than mind, curiously she had been aware of my difficulties, something I was unaware of at the time. Discretion doesn't always work. I had managed to forget the fun we -her, her two housemates, and I, had had but she has the photos of our parties and excursions, and so clearly I did socialize. Every time we meet we had these amazing profound conversations, a process of healing, growing, and recognizing God's hand in our paths present in these exchanges. There were things I had seen in prayer while in Regensburg that I had wanted to share with someone and then they were present in her heart as well, God bringing two souls together at just the right time. It was as if we had experienced separately something we would then need to share together to really see into their depths. 

My trip to Vienna, with a stopover in Palma de Mallorca to visit family, was an exercise in making do with very little and borrowing the few things I did end up using. The airline lost my suitcase, and I had, for once in my life, put my notes in the suitcase rather than taking them with me. After submitting the missing suitcase report, I went to my friend's house where I would be staying. My generous and lovely Austrian friend lent me some dresses (being quite a bit taller than me dresses were really the only things that fit me properly) and I managed to convince the pharmacy to sell me, without prescription, my thyroid medication, and I sat down to patchwork together the paper with what I remembered and what I could get online, since, for some unknown reason, even the cloud was missing some of my things. This is where the network of friends goes into hyperdrive, with several people sending my copies and photos of materials that I should have had with me but didn't. Being in Vienna 12 years after I had lived there as an intern was a combination of work and spending time with friends I had not seen since before the pandemic. I had tea with the family I had once lived with. The children were older, now teenagers, but it felt as it had been before, like visiting family members, we had simply 'clicked' during my time there. I was also able to pray mass and vespers with the Viennese brothers and laity plus the two other Dominicans on my panel. There were also several other Dominicans present at the conference. With no planning on our parts, there were about 15 Dominicans present from at least four provinces. The Dominican priory, St Maria Rotunda, in Vienna is a treasure trove of gorgeous paintings of different Dominican saints, and given the beauty of the Vienna city centre and its many equally beautiful churches, that says a lot. There is this painting of St Thomas that especially caught my eye, there is something a so very moving about it.

After Vienna, and some holidays in the north of Spain, I went to Cologne, where I still am. There are few words to describe in all its complexity what the last three weeks in Cologne have been but an approximation can be made. First off, the veritable fruit salad of 'personajes' that I have shared with in the Carmelite guesthouse and archive. The two longer term residents are a Filipina sister who some three decades ago joined a Dutch order and ended up living somewhere in Westphalia and the theology student currently doing a psychology course. One day a week we are joined by a Franciscan sister who works with the homeless but who's convent is too far for her to go back to it when she comes for work. For a month a Carmelite friar from Salamanca, who is a happy, friendly addition to the mix with whom, because of schedule, I usually end up having lunch. For a few days a former Carmelite provincial possibly of a German speaking province. A Korean priest student of the Urbaniana in Rome, here for some time. For a week a Lutheran (?!?) Benedictine sister....all of those, who like me, have read Luther's writings on religious vows will understand. For a week a Benedictine monk from Cologne who is now living in Astorga, Spain where they have a mission to the St James' pilgrims. 

On Saturday I went to Aachen, to meet friends but also to experience Nightfever at St Foillan again. It also happened to be the 20th Anniversary of the founding of this eucharistic movement at the 2005 World Youth Day in Cologne and so it was also the Nightfever weekend for this year with young people from all over Germany present. As a student in Aachen I participated actively in this ministry singing in the choir and, with everyone else, inviting passersby to come into the church for a time of prayer. It was always such a beautiful experience, that also led to some interesting and challenging exchanges with said passersby who in many cases were either of some other religion or atheists, whose questions about what the eucharist was or what the movement was, led me to the firm belief than the Holy Spirit will speak for you when words fail you, or when having to explain something you have known all your life from the ground up in German, i.e. not my mother tongue, may prove a bit challenging. There were funny moments as well, I lost count of the amount of times I was asked to hold a bottle of beer or a sausage on a stick while someone went inside. There is somewhere in this world a photo of me holding two bottles of beer for the two Dutch brothers that stayed quite some time inside the church after I invited them in. Since then, and quite naturally, there has been a complete generational change in the student and young adults running Nightfever but there were four friends present, three who still live in Aachen, one who was visiting, who had come, like me, to take part once more. As the choir began singing the Adoro te Devote at the start of adoration it struck me how St. Thomas composed this poem 800 yrs ago and how we all, in this communion of saints, continue to sing it. Little did he know how we would still be using it today. How little we know exactly what God will do with our actions each day.