Kongress Tag Drei

I have been avoiding using an acronym for the Kongress because I don’t want to initiate any association with something that might send you to the toilet.

This being the fourth morning of waking up on the continent of Europe I think I have made it past the jet lag.  The mornings have felt rough but long days at the Kongress and the walking have helped as well as the Tamazapan every night.  Tonight will be the first night that I will go without so I will see how that goes.  It was the first morning I was tempted to skip out on the first session but overcame that and scuttled my butt over to the Missionstrasse albeit a little late for devotions.  

The first session was presented by an Englishwoman and was interesting in her suggestion of “slow-ethics” ala’ “slow food”.  She began by claiming responsibility for the ecological destruction wrought by a large iron ore mine in southern Africa.  This set me off on a parallel thought while she was presenting of my grandpa as a human-rights activist.  His response to the death of his father in an iron ore mine in Ely and the circumstances into which his family was thrown as a result was to set off to organize for the workers of this world.  To keep more from dying.  That is my description of it anyhow.  I am sure human rights was not the preferred nomenclature for his activities but perhaps it was part of the lexicon of the movement. I don’t know. I will have to find that out. I had not had the thought of him as such before and am thankful to this Englishwoman’s presentation for sending me down that journey of thought.

I did skip out on the next of the morning sessions as it was to be presented in German and I was at my limit profound thought communicated through a polite translation.  So I went for a walk about around the old part of the city.  Walking about cities is one of my favorite parts of travel. I think I really caught that bug when I visited Jerusalem and it’s old city twenty years ago.  The exploration and adventure of finding your way around and discovering odd places and unique things is inspiring to me for whatever reason.  Basel’s old city was great because it is so old and mostly untouched by war and destruction.  The location dates back to the Celts settling and then became a Roman outpost.  It’s location as a hill on the Rhine aided in its development as a significant spot. It suffered an earthquake in the 11th or 12th century that necessitated the rebuilding of the Munster with the red sandstone that makes it so striking.  But other than that it was not bombed or destroyed in the two world wars nor did the structures suffer in previous wars, although the people may have.

The walk about led me down to and across the Rhine.  As you can see the Basel Munster sits above the flowing waters.

People love to float down the Rhine and sometimes even swim across it.  It is a big enough activity that they make special bags for it.  They are essentially big dry bags that you put all your clothes into along with a fair bit of the atmosphere and then seal with the folds and the clip.  Then you jump in.  With the current moving like it does you will surely end up somewhere much farther down the river so having your clothes with you is appreciated.  And with the bag acting as a bouy you needn’t swim and are visible in the water.  I wanted to have a go at it but timing and being alone I felt it to be a bit too much to go after.  

I cut up a narrow street that was obviously very old as it was not concerned with appropriate grade or modern ordinances.

I cut off of that street up another towards a fountain I saw and ended up very excited to have done so.  The street with the fountain was deserted but I continued down it and noticed some Legos built into the wall at one point.

A few weeks ago Paavo, Tuuli and I had watched the Lego Brickomentary and this little movement of filling in holes in walls with Legos was documented as happening all over the world.  And here it was.  Needless to say, I am excited to share it with Paavo and Tuuli.

I finished the walk about in time for lunch back at Missionstrasse 21.  I went to the first part of a session after that but then ducked out so I could go on a tour of Karl Barth’s house.  This may seems like a strange activity to some but bear with me and call me strange afterwards. 

 I caught a taxi over to a different part of the city with Luis, who was from outside of Rio de Janiero, Brasil and had been coming to the Kongresses for some years and was part of organizing this one.  He was in a wheelchair so the organizers called him a taxi and so I went with to help him with the stairs and such.  As was evident later on our way back on the Tram he needed neither the taxi nor all the help we were intent on giving him getting on and off Trams.  I suppose if you navigate Rio in a wheelchair Switzerland isn’t much.  But we all tried nonetheless.

 Karl Barth was a seminal systematic theologian of the 20th century.  He was the last theologian to create a systematic theology- which is to say he accounted for every dogmatic angle of life in this world and the role of God in it. A crude description but these were complete theologies that would take years to complete and they would fill volumes. I think Barth’s Christian Dogmatics had eight volumes. It was a practice for theologians going to back to the Middle Ages if they could accomplish it. It’s never been done in America (your wondering why someone would do such a thing is probably why) except for Paul Tillich who started his while he was still living in Germany before the war. Anyway, we don’t do it any more because we no longer think God has much of a role in the world or if we think that God does have a role we don’t really want think through the details of it. 

So Barth has been the most influential of systematic theologians in recent times (he was even on the cover of Time magazine) and wrote many of his works in this house in Basel. Hard for a guy like me not to visit. The house was unremarkable, nothing special.

His study was most interesting with the walls filled with books as one might expect. The were two rooms adjacent to each other that defined the study. His library was filled mostly with theology, history, biblical studies, with one shelf devoted entirely to Mozart that was within easy reach of the reading chairs. 

Here is Barth (right) with his publisher and friend.

Barth had a relationship to Bonhoeffer and the younger German visited the older Swiss in the Thirties.  Bonhoeffer was greatly influenced by Barth although he was never considered a Barthian.  That visit is one of the reasons this Kongress was held in Basel.  Most every Kongress has been held in a city in which Bonhoeffer had a connection during his life.  The exceptions I know of were Prague and South Africa but his theology held a large influence in those spots so it was appropriate.  A local good organizing committee helps, as well.  The next Kongress will be back in South Africa, again due to his large influence in the Apartheid movement.  As one participant told me, as Bonhoeffer’s writings were passed around the circles of that struggle they often came with no titles or author mentioned.  Most of those readers thought the writer was a living member of their struggle.

Barth later claimed Bonhoeffer’s Dissertation Sanctorum Communio, which he wrote at age 21, to be a theological miracle.  I found Bonhoeffer’s works from that time in Barth’s collection.

Enough about Barth, for a moment anyway. We returned in time for a last session and then a dinner that we lingered over because of the beautiful evening.  Later that evening the Karl Barth award was award was handed out in conjunction with our conference to a fellow with three Dr.’s in front of his name.  He seemed a deserving candidate for such a distinguished award but what do I really know. It was all in German. That was followed by champagne in the courtyard and another late night walk back to my bedroom.

Edited with BlogPad Pro