January 12, 2015
A while later
I had my first day of University. Medieval Studies is a compulsory module of my
study. If you ask me, it’s incredibly boring and extremely unnecessary (I’ve
seriously got no idea how I should pass that final!!). Anyway, it’s about – who
would have thought it? – Middle Ages. And, as you might or might not know,
religion played a very big role during that time. The Professor mentioned
religious terms or talked about seemingly important biblical figures, symbols,
themes, etc. almost constantly. In the majority of cases, I had no idea what he
was talking about, and that really annoyed me. I decided that a good teacher –
which I want to be one day – had to know at least a little bit about the events
of the Bible. I began to look for a Bible study.
And that’s
where my grandma comes into play. My grandma dealt with nearly all religions
during her 70+ years of life. Seriously, she met representatives of almost
every group of faith! She even met some of them for years. And still, she
doesn’t really believe in God and never joined any faith group. Not even when
her only son, my dad, became a Jehovah’s Witness.
It was
tough for her. From one day to the next he didn’t celebrate Birthdays,
Christmas, Eastern, etc. anymore, just to name a few things that changed. And
yes, I never celebrated a real Christmas, Birthday or anything else in my life
before because that’s something my parents didn’t start doing again, once they
weren’t active members anymore. Nevertheless, my sisters and I turned out
pretty decent and we had to wish for nothing during our childhood. But let’s go
back to our actual topic.
Months ago
my grandma met a man who’s a member of a faith group called, “Universal
Salvation” (Please note! I’m not sure if that’s the correct English name. The
correct German name is “Die Allversöhnung”). She meets up with that man once a
week to read and study the Bible.
My grandma
really seemed to be taken with him, or better, his religion. She mentioned
quite a few times, that she thought, she had finally found the right religion
for herself. At first I made fun of her for it, but, as I told you, my attitude
had changed…a lot. Anyway, I told her that I wanted to meet that guy so he
could sum up the Bible for me and only a few days later I really met him.
I arrived
at my grandma’s place and the man was already waiting for me. To make things
easier I’m gonna call him “Mad Hatter”. You will understand why in a moment.
When I saw him, my first thought was, “What the heck!? He looks like a serial
killer!”. He was about 50 years of age, his expression was way to friendly, his
grin a lot to wide. Behind his gigantic glasses with yellowed lenses his eyes
looked huge and alien-ish. He quickly introduced himself to me with a fleeting,
limp handshake. Of course I played it cool and smiled gently back at him. The
true value of a person does not depend on the outer appearance!
Neither he
nor I really knew what to say so my grandma tried to liaise. “He once was first
violinist in an orchestra,” she said, of course knowing how much I loved music.
I pretended to be surprised and impressed. Why I pretended? Because my grandma
had already told me that story like a trillion of times.
The Mad
Hatter explained that music had been his raison d’être. After a terrible
accident though, his arm had been damaged beyond repair and ever since that day
ages ago, he couldn’t play the violin anymore. Only just the thought of something
similar happening to me, leaving me unable to play the piano, made me shudder.
I told him how sorry I was but it was really difficult to be serious because he
was still looking at me with that creepy, wide grin. He told me that it was
totally okay and that he was more than happy about it because only that way had he been able to realize how important he was in God’s plan. That he could now serve
in the name of God was by far the greatest honor. That answer shocked me a
little, but I still wore a smile. He was already too fanatic for my taste.
In
hindsight I’m pretty sure that this is what the Mad Hatter is trying to
convince himself of because otherwise he probably couldn’t live with this hard
stroke of fade.
However,
the meeting went on as shocking as that. Before we even opened up the Bible, the
Mad Hatter started to pray and begged God to take over his body and mouth so
that he wouldn’t tell me anything wrong. I’m pretty sure at that point I looked
at him open-mouthed.
To be fair,
what he told me about the Bible was, mind you, quite interesting. He could answer
all of my questions and explained everything pretty well. Not even my partially
very disrespectful questions (like e.g.: “Why don’t you just kill yourself if
it’s all about what comes after death?”) could disconcert him.
To sum it up, I indeed had a better overview of the
Bible after that meeting, but I was also healed of my thoughts of maybe
becoming religious; at least for a while.
