Denn Dousend Joahr sünd vör Di wi dä Dach, dä gissen vergohn äs. (”For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past.”) –(Ps 90: 4)

It is the time of the year when it is still dark at 8a.m. and the evening falls early. It is the beginning of the Stille Zeit (“silent time”) inviting contemplation, tenderness, and a longing for home and embrace. And it is the Gesellige Zeit (“sociable time”) with storage cellars bursting with the fullness of the summer gone asking for rustic feasts.
As the winds are blowing the last leaves from the trees, the congregation of the Lutherhaus celebrates its annual Plattdeutscher Gottesdienst (“Low German worship”).

[Stained glass window in the Lutherhaus showing Luther. I was baptized and confirmed in that church, right under that window.]

My great-grandparents on my mother’s side spoke Plattdeutsch and so did my grandmother. It was in her generation, though, that people were greatly discouraged from speaking dialect as it was thought to reflect a lack of education and social status. Thus, my mother understands most of it from listening to older relatives, but does not speak the dialect anymore. The same is true for me. As the Stiepeler Plattdeutsch was about to disappear, some people decided to rescue it. They organized a language club and many people of my mother’s age participate and learn to read and speak the tongue of their ancestors. I do not believe that there will be a revival of the dialect, but somehow taking part in it seems to connect people to their place and heritage and to each other. In the past, you would never have heard Plattdeutsch in either school nor church. Thus, why now? Maybe we need to store our treasures in our roots, just like the trees store their sugar in the Fall as fuel for bursting into new life in Spring, offering their nectar to the bees and butterflies and to us the beauty of fresh green leaves and of wafts of blossoms, and the promise of a great harvest.
Listening to people speaking or reading dialect fills me with images of plowed moist black soil, grazing cattle, fresh apple cake sitting in the window to cool, bacon and blood-sausage, ray bread, aprons, intimidating elders (my ancestors on my mother’s side have been blacksmiths and the women had been self-confident church-goers, who washed themselves with cold water from the outside pump even in deep winter), and clay crusted rubber-boots – thus, I may as well say: it connects me to some idealized past that I never really experienced, but one that is none the less part of me through lore and tradition. This is difficult to explain. It is as if language, its sounds and phrases, give a tangible substance to my landscape of memory.
The church was filled as if it were Christmas. But whereas it is children who bustle about excitedly on the 24th of December, now it were mostly people in their senior years who filled the seats along the tables that were set up in the church for the after-service feast. Everyone was wearing a festive attire of subdued colors neatly kept for birthday coffees and for church. The gentlemen appeared carefully combed, freshly shaven, and wearing a suit. The ladies had their hair laid in a fresh perm that curled their white and graying hair elegantly. Sweaters of fine knitwear and blouses, dark pants or skirts, and polished shoes were accessorized with a pair of pearl or golden earrings. Many women wore two wedding bands – their own and their husbands’.
Having arrived an hour early, my mother and I found a nice place beside her friend. Passing the time before the service, I took some pictures and we held the colorful leaves that together with berries decorated the tables to the candle to let the light turn them into precious gem stones.
The brass band played a hymn and the service began. Everything was spoken and sung in dialect – most of us were reading from the leaflet. Inspired by a reading of  Ecclesiastes 3: 1-16 “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter…” the sermon reflected on the relation between time and eternity. If 1000 years (the age of the older village church celebrated this year) are to God like the blink of the eye, what do they matter to him? Do the 50 generations that prayed in that old church – or as the pastor said: whose prayers became the walls of the church - matter to him? What counts in our lives? What do our lives count? How do our fundamentally human experiences of gain and loss matter? Martha Hofstiepel, one of the few people still fluent in dialect, contributed to the sermon telling the story of her dog Cindy who died not too long ago. Cindy was very old and sick. Somehow realizing that she was about to die, she searched for a place to go and lay down all night, keeping the house awake with her toil of hiding under the sofa, behind the wardrobe, behind the heater, and under the table. In the morning, Martha found her in the laundry room, and Cindy looked at her as if saying: “Sorry for the commotion, I tried to die, but it did not work.” Martha gave her a little water and food and then opened the door to let Cindy out. Walking out of the door, Cindy turned and lowered her head. In her heart, Martha knew that Cindy had said good-bye. She went and never came back. Martha was sure that Cindy had followed the call of eternity nestled under a bush in the open of a balmy summer night.
I have never experienced our congregation like that – allowing tears to rise and a softness from remembered pain of parting and the solace of eternity to caress the cheek. The church brass band transformed all of us into music playing the canon by Pachelbel.
[If you love dogs, try this link.]
Then the buffet was opened: bread with lard and fried onions, bread with blood sausage, steak tartar, bacon, smoked ham, beer, and coffee. People chatted, with lowered voices when secrets were exchanged and raised voices when making a point intended to be overheard by others, there were full plates brought back to the friends who could not walk that well, and the heartiness of the meal brought out once more the more robust side, the pride and joy of the Natives of the Ruhr-Valley. People were once more as I knew them – but having shared the space between time and eternity with them for that one moment has made the world of a difference to what they are to me.

I had an invitation for dinner and left; most stayed for the comic show - all in Plattdeutsch and written by Martha Hofstiepel, of course.
For those of you, who’d like to practice some Plattdeutsch as spoken here: The Lord’s Prayer. Read as if it were written in Standard German:

Use Vaar em Hiemmel,
Din Nome sall gehilligt wäärn,
Din Riik sall kommen,
Din Wille sall gescheihn,
Sou em Hiemmel, sou ouk op där Är.
Giäw us vandage use diäglick Braut,
Un vergiäw us use Schuld,
Sou as vi ouk dä vergiäwet, wä us wat schüllig sin.
Un breng us nich en Verseikung,
Sunnern hölp us af vom Böisen.
Denn din äs dat Riik un dä Kraft un dä Häärlichkeit in Äwigkeit,
Amen.

All the best,
Yours,
Anja

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