Sunday, October 12, 2008: The village church of Stiepel

At some point I will formally introduce you to my church here and to all the other places and people around, but today, I heard such a nice story that all else will have to wait!

After church, there is coffee. However, where I am from (that is from Bochum-Stiepel), you are a stranger up to the seventh generation and while people will certainly pour you some coffee and hand you the cookies, they may not actually talk with you – not that they always talk among themselves, either. However, today was different! Maybe it was the caressing autumn sun or the fact that people found out that I am not a stranger, but the niece of my uncle the church archivist and the daughter of my parents, who are members of the Heimatverein – either way, conversations were lively and I was poured no less than four cups of coffee and ate at least eight cookies (small ones! but with chocolate chips!). And that’s what we talked about: If you were to walk into the community hall (which I hope you will some day!), you’d see a large and heavy wooden cross sitting on four fragile-looking black metal pillars. One cannot quite decide whether the cross is floating or solidly grounded. And it looks ancient with its pieces slightly disjointed and askew. It reminded me of an oak tree at the coast modeled by the incessant winds. Yes, I think that’s the best way to describe it: it looked organic rather than constructed. And it all has to do with the very wood itself, I learned.
The village church is very old. Indeed, this year people celebrate its 1000-year anniversary. Some time ago, the church-steeple had to be renovated. It was constructed of oak beams that had weakened over time. People decided to use a stronger and harder material, a material forged out of the ore and the coal that had brought forth the industry of the area, and the smell of coal, the grey dust, and the orange sky of the opened furnaces in the Ruhr-Valley, until its demise in the 1980s. The new steeple was made of metal beams that, so people thought, would last longer than any oak ever could. But then the autumn and winter storms came, and the steeple was so solid and inflexible that it did not bow but swayed in the storm causing the tower walls to deeply crack.
The congregation once again worked hard for many years to collect the funds for the repair and just recently, carpenters replaced the metal structure with fresh old oak beams. As these works were proceeding, the steeple was cleaned out and pieces of the old oaken roof that were laying about the bell tower were brought downstairs. It seemed that no one could bring him- or herself to discard the wood, let alone to burn it. And, thus, the oak was sitting there at the side of the church together with some of the oldest gravestones for many months, until a local artist, Pit Grothe, discovered it. The wood mesmerized him and he studied the traces that life left in the rings, the knotholes, and the growth of the oak, taking pictures of each detail. As he got to know the wood intimately, the idea came to him to work with it to assemble a cross. The cross now stands in the entryway of the community hall right at the spot, where an extension will be added to the building next year.
As we are talking about the cross and the photographs sipping our coffee, I am told by an elderly former presbyter that it is time now for the young to take over the responsibilities of community work, and that the coffee cups have always been piled on the side-table for each visitor to take before finding a place at the table for the after-church coffee. I’ll remember that when on coffee duty in two weeks!

Yours,

Anja

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