Reflection ...

"Weihnachten 2016 PEACE"

Chalk art at the Münster Christmas Market 

Tonight, in a capital that I've never been to, 600 kilometers from where I live, a truck rammed into a crowded Christmas market. 

I will try to go to sleep tonight ... Knowing that as I sleep Politzei in Berlin will work to reconstruct events and build a case. 

I know that by tomorrow morning, the news outlet that flashed a banner and headline across my smart phone as I was setting my alarm will research and have background information. 

My Facebook page will have updates and notifications. 

Tomorrow morning at breakfast  I will tell my 11 year-old a tale we've repeated too many times.

For now, there is nothing I can do. 

But, in this moment, I can reflect. 

We've never been to Berlin (although it's on the short list of places to visit next.)

We know what that Christmas market would have been like ... we've spent our weekends wandering around Weihnachtsmarkts in

small towns and bigger cities in our corner of Deutschland. We have visited markets at castles, beside churches, and even Cathedrals. We've drunk warming gluhwein from collectible mugs, ate our way though German sweets and savouries, bought ornaments and just experienced the magic of the moment. 

There is a collective sense of community in the Christmas Markets. The days of advent are counted down with expectation. Every German, regardless of his level of devoutness, knows what week of advent we are in. Yesterday we lit the forth candle ... not just in churches, but also in communities. 

And now in these moments, before we know the gory details of death tolls, injuries and sleeper cells ... 

we think in terms of community :: the immediate community in the capital, the larger national community, the community of shared cultural affinity. On a global scale we can also share community, with a shared understanding based simply on our humanness. 

And as these communities, individually and collectively, mourn and weep, may we also come together in shared solidarity and with a continued advent-like faith in the anticipated, but not quite arrived day of peace we all long for.  

Traditional Advent Reading (week one)

4 He will judge between the nations
    and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
    nor will they train for war anymore.

Isaiah 2:4