Predigt zum Weltgebetstag der Frauen
in der Anglikanischen Kirche, am 2. März 2018
Auch als PDF: A song sleeps in all things
Dear beloved creations of God!
A song sleeps in all things,
Which dream on and on,
And the world begins to sing,
If only you find the magic word.
Josef Eichendorff has written these words in German,
so some of you might remember:
Schläft ein Lied in allen Dingen,
Die da träumen fort und fort,
Und die Welt hebt an zu singen,
Triffst du nur das Zauberwort.
What would be, if everything would be quiet different?
If not only the human being had his or her own inner world,
but also each an every living being on earth?
If not only humans would be subjects
but also trees, weeds, monkeys, butterflies?
Andreas Weber, the scientist,
researching biological processes as an Biopoet
asks these questions.
Everything belongs together,
the right and the wrong.
The Psychiatrist Hans Joachim März says in his new book,
The wrong life:
That we would follow the basic melody of the wrong self.
This basic melody does not listen to the song sleeping in all things
but it listens to the melody
of what a society wants and expects
and this is mostly more and more.
The norm is that we expect growth of material things.
It is always: things.
Collections of grabbed material.
Grabbing Societies all over the world …
But a longing sings through all of this.
Dorothee Sölle, the protestant theologian said:
We live in a cycle of violence and are caught in it.
Our prison is the best furnished in world history.
Still we are caught up
in the cycle of violence producing counter-violence.
Terror demands counter-terror
raising the first terror to another level.
Is there no freedom any more
to break through the circle?
Must we remain spectators
when violence increases daily
and threatens the lives of the majority of people,
fellow-creatures and our mother earth?
Globalization from above is a barbaric system
of impoverishment of the majority of humankind
and destruction of the earth.
We need a different economic globalization
from below in the interest of the earth
and in the interest of the poorest.”
All God’s creation is very good!
This sentence is Gods own thought for this world.
In his creation you can hear his basic melody:
his song from the earth.
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.
In Münster there is a theological institute for Zoology.
They tell us how much we can learn from all creations.
We can learn from the animals and the plants
who had all been created before the human being.
The human being has to share the crown of creation,
I believe, with all creatures great and small …
I firmly believe!
A friend of ours had a really difficult life.
As a young girl she always had to drive her Father home
on the back of her bicycle.
Imagine the shame and anxiety of the 8 year old girl,
riding her bike with this heavy load
through the village and the fields.
But she took on this strongest duty for the addicted father
who could not help his addiction.
She later on found a love in her life.
She never could have Children.
I believe the trauma was too big for her.
But – it is a big But:
She had found this love of her life:
a husband who coached her. He is a coach.
He loved her out of and away from this trauma,
as she loved him from the beginning
and forever beyond …
Today is her birthday …
This very sensitive and self-contained lady
will soon go into pension.
And she said:
I have planned it all.
I will give my time as a present for those in need
I will go three afternoons to the Gruft to help the homeless
and I will read with children, who are refugees.
There are words from Dorothee Sölle,
they make me cry,
because they are out of God’s basic melody:
You dreamed me, God,
Practicing walking upright
And learning to kneel down
More beautiful than I am now,
Happier than I dare to be
Freer than our country allows.
Don’t stop dreaming me, God.
I don’t want to stop remembering
That I am your tree,
Planted by the streams
of living water.”
Yes!
A song sleeps in all things,
Which dream on and on,
And the world begins to sing,
If only you find the magic word.
+ Amen.