That was 2023
Well, well, you truly add another page to the book of wisdom every day, don’t you?! Because we really didn’t see that one coming. This summer VanMoof, the manufacturer of our almost new bikes, went bankrupt. But because these weren’t just bicycles, but “the iPhones among bikes,” as the Süddeutsche Zeitung once wrote, we were totally stunned by a previously unknown and difficult to understand problem: If VanMoof’s bankruptcy administrator would now shut down their servers, our bikes would turn into electronic scrap with spokes – from one second to the next. That is… um, a little thought-provoking. How vulnerable is modern society? So if Elon Musk turns off his servers while throwing a tantrum, there won’t be a single Tesla rolling in the world. At least technically that would be conceivable. The power of companies could soon extend to our refrigerators and washing machines too. That can certainly have advantages, but it doesn’t have to be: The company Adobe released such a terrible update to its “Express” app this year that users are fleeing en masse – and even our Christmas letter, although not written on papyrus again, will be nothing more but a simple website in 2023.
Well, well, it’s a tricky thing, software. In Sweden, you better do not die right now because of it. At least not if you are a member of the svenska kyrka, the Swedish church. It was hacked in November with a so-called ransomware. Since then nothing works anymore, neither a single printer nor funerals. And that’s been the case for weeks. Mortuaries are slowly filling up again, just like during the Covid pandemic. In 2021, the Coop grocery chain was hacked and shut down across the country. Problems we didn’t have before. So because of that, we, that’s us, Karen and Marcus, are learning how to better produce our own food. In 2023 we were not only growing herbs and tomatoes, but also onions, garlic, peppers and strawberries. With a lot of trial and even more error (the Nordmann fir Christmas tree cultivation failed miserably), but every now and then a little success is being granted to us. Have a look at this, for example:
Sauerkraut!
We get a lot of other vegetables, such as white cabbage, from Olle, the friendly small farmer nearby, who sells us every year a portion of his entire harvest. Week by week.
The big Highlight of the Year…
… was of course Anna’s and Nils’ wedding! At the end of August they gave their vows in a wonderful forest service in the Scottish Highlands. Marcus had the honour of preaching. This was followed by an equally wonderful celebration in a rustic farm with different accommodations so that all guests who had traveled from near and (very) far were able to spend an entire weekend with bride and groom and each other. What a great company, community, celebration it was! We are pleased to now be able to call an even larger family of relatives in Great Britain part of our international family. We had already met Anna’s parents in 2021, and now we were allowed to dance Cèilidh with the rest of the clan. The only disadvantage is that everyone is so extremely nice and personable and we would like to meet each other more often, but we all live far too far away from each other!
There are also a lot of wonderful photos and we have permission to show you some.
But that’s not enough…
Because many of Marcus’s relatives were unable to travel to Scotland, the bride and groom decided to get married again in Gummersbach on their way back from their honeymoon. A Scottish wedding doesn’t happen that often there, which is why even the local press was interested in the Scottish couple with the groom in a kilt and live bagpipe music.
Anna and Nils are now enjoying life and work in Inverness.
Otherwise?!
Otherwise, 2023 was rather decelerated. This is probably also what a car-free life brings with it, when you no longer can rush here and there quickly, when purchases and transports have to be planned – which sometimes leads to creative solutions. The Dutch have always been way better at that.
Tro & Tvivel (= Faith and Doubt, our creative church project) continued with various activities and gatherings, such as an art exhibition with music and creative texts on the subject of suffering and hope on the Easter weekend.
And believe it or not, whether you think we’re crazy or not – but we have become part of an order! Yes, exactly, that monastic something, but in this case different, like urban and modern. Marcus had long experienced the monastic silent retreats on Bjärka-Säby and considered this as a beneficial counterweight to the very volatile ministry. Now that these retreats unfortunately no longer exist, Urban Monastics brings a little
more structure into structureless lives. In addition to training your own discipline, it also provides wonderful opportunities to meet completely new, completely different and unexpectedly many people who are seeking and searching for something, offering them a little guidance and orientation. The order has its roots in Communitas by the way and is therefore a good fit for us.
We’re not riding on donkeys yet, but compared to previous flight travels with gold card and food while visiting the lounge, Flixbus still feels like quite a similar step down. But yes, you can travel by regular bus from Gothenburg to Germany, with a change in Copenhagen – on this occasion you should pay a visit to the statue of the Inner Swine, a German and Danish expression of the Weaker Self, which one always has to overcome all the time anyway.
But otherwise we prefer to travel by bike. Even at -10°C. Our limit is only when there is snow and slippery conditions. Thank God that the VanMoof problem got sorted out. The brand was bought by McLaren this autumn, the servers are still online and now we’re cycling Formula 1. Here, for example, to a completely unmanned grocery store, open around the clock. Hopefully this will all work out with software and such.
Ever heard of Alvar? This is a very special limestone soil that is not often found in the world. But it exists around the Kinnekullen area at Lake Vänern. The landscape there reminds us of Narnia, and therefore of our heavenly home, which is why we travel there every May for a long weekend. But also because wild garlic loves lime and May turns this area into a wild garlic paradise (wild garlic is rather rare in Scandinavia). Wild garlic bread and wild garlic soup, wild garlic spaghetti and wild garlic anything! It’s a pre-taste of heaven. By the way, this little hut there in the picture with Lake Vänern in the background is right next to one of Sweden’s oldest churches, because this is the very spot where Swedish church history began more than a thousand years ago.
Svea spent most of the year as an Asian chef in Scotland, but every now and then she proudly likes to wear a Bavarian flag – after all, she is Eichstätt born.
And in January we had the great and extraordinary joy of getting to know Ole’s and Athene’s life in Panama. As already mentioned above, an international family is worth pure gold – but you really have to travel far and work hard to get all the nuggets.
“Peace on Earth!” the angels sang, and so do we in many Christmas carols. However, our belief in the entire Jesus story from Christmas to Easter has been massively questioned and doubted time and again over the past two decades in countless conversations with people who find it very hard to believe in anything. Many see religion as the cause of violence. Some point to religious terror, others to Israel and Palestine. Those with knowledge of history point to the Huguenot Wars and the Thirty Years’ War, which were leading up to the Enlightenment and thus to secularization
and the abolition of religion. Immanuel Kant dreamed of “eternal peace” coming through a religionless Europe, and in 1795 he published his book “On Eternal Peace”. I, Marcus, often have no choice but to point out the fact that humans are very complex creatures, that easy answers and simple propaganda rarely offer good solutions. On top of that, it is also a fact that the centuries after Kant’s “eternal peace” became the deadliest and cruelest of humanity! Kant’s dream became a nightmare. Because if humans believe above all in themselves as the highest authority, we’ll soon forget what
humility and submission is all about. It’s difficult for me to believe in Kant, and I therefore choose to put my trust in the God who himself became a model of humility at Christmas, who gave us the Sermon on the Mount about 30 years after the stable birth, a so much better manifesto on truly eternal peace.
Because it’s Immanuel Christ who’s the true Prince of Peace.
Humility is the true fabric of peace. But humility is also like manna, real fresh produce – to be collected and learned anew every single day. That’s why each one has to convert every day again.
With this in mind, we wish everyone a peaceful Christmas 2023.
Karen und Marcus
Author
marcusis@icloud.com