Two days ago I took the train to North Germany to visit my brother and sisters over Christmas. One year had passed since my last visit, I was looking forward to meet them again.
I’m always observing the changes in atmosphere when passing over the border or when coming to other areas. Often you notice quite a sudden change of ambiance, and so it was also this time.
Though I hadn’t experienced it very consciously, I remember very well that the region where I grew up had a heavy, dense atmosphere – not just because the town is an industrial area at the periphery of the Ruhr area, but also that there is some feeling of gravity over the countryside. At times it had been suffocating for me.
In Dortmund I had to wait half an hour on the platform to catch the connecting train. I observed the faces and the energy fields of the passengers around. Again this feeling of density and gravity so well known was there in the air. It grew even stronger when I entered the regional “Westfalen Express” train. I just could get a standing place in the crowded entrance. The physiognomies were quite familiar to me, though I hadn’t been there with a train for years.
At my hometown my sister was already standing on the platform. Yes, there it was again, this feeling of my youth, gray and heavy. I breathed in the air. We entered her car and she drove me via the bypass road around the city. Strange but at the same time very familiar.
Yesterday morning my old friend came to pick me up for a walk. Since many years we meet around Christmas to exchange about what had been going on and which inner processes we are in. I love these talks. He is a very sensitive person, in a responsible professional position as a professor of literature.
I told him about my feelings when coming here, and he said that they are very familiar to him, too. His youngest child, a son of 12, is suffering from his classmates mobbing him, and he is struggling his way through school – very intelligent, but little motivated.
We talked on the difficult paths of the souls through their lives and the intense training we ourselves had gone through. It needs a special steadfastness not to be driven away or to get drowned in the currents of time. My friend had grown strong with the years, having found his expression through the writing of books.
I had a phone-call with a desperate woman stating that she feels her life had been destroyed the last years. I listened, tried to hold her a bit. Another phone call with my eldest sister who has to pass Christmas in hospital because of a broken ankle which got surgery 2 days ago. But out of the sojourn in hospital there arose interesting encounters and a time for relaxation. And other talks I had showed me, how, in spite of the difficult times many people take up the challenges of life and grow through them, using the difficulties as steps of experience.
Impressions from the walk yesterday afternoon: Light and Darkness meeting.
