A good experience with German bureacracy

After all my complaining about how incredibly inflexible, unhelpful and merciless people here can be when you don’t know them and there are rules to enforce (which there always are), I thought I owed it to them to report on my good experience yesterday – at the equivalent of the immigration office, of all places! (The Bürgeramt, Ausländerabteilung.)
I finally had my appointment to get permission to stay here more than three months, which people from non-EU countries need. I’d put it off almost till the three-month deadline, and was nervous that something would be wrong – e.g. that my proof of financial support wouldn’t be in accordance with “Article 66-68 Aufenthaltsgesetz (German Foreigners Act),” or that I would have forgotten something crucial. And I did actually forget something – students at Heidelberg have about four different documents proving their status at students, and the one that the civil servant lady asked for, I had left at home. I had been afraid that if I forgot something, I’d be told that I couldn’t get permission to stay without it, but unfortunately there were no more appointments free at the immigration office until after my 3-month deadline had passed, and so I would have to get on a plane and go home.
But that didn’t happen, it didn’t even seem to matter that I didn’t have the one student document that she asked for. And she smiled – not just once, but several times. It was a totally pleasant experience, and it only took about 15 minutes. Yea!

Note to self

Love of confrontation + unreliable memory = bad combination.
Remember this the next time you want to confront someone about something that happened 15 years ago.

Honey in the Rock

As we become more aware of the dynamics of our unconscious [through contemplative prayer], we can receive people and events as they are, rather than filtered through what we would like them to be, expect them to be, or demand them to be.  This requires letting go of the attachments, aversions, “SHOULDS,” and demands on others and on life that reflect the mentality of a child rather than that of a grown up.
- Thomas Keating, The Human Condition.

I’ve been asking myself where I am spiritually and, if I were to deliver a homily in one of our dorm devotions, what I would talk about. We have two devotions a week, which residents are encouraged to take turns leading; if no one steps up, the “Studienleiter” (i.e. “Resident Head”) has to do it.   I don’t really feel equipped to lead one of the sessions because I just don’t know where people here are spiritually – it’s a combination of being new to the country, not knowing the German church(es), and the fact that Germans, as far as I can tell, are way less open about their interior and spiritual lives than most Americans (let alone me and my family and closest friends – I think we’re on the far end of the spectrum in that regard).

Also, though, I get the impression that most people here are a lot further along in what I think God is showing me an inkling of right now – how to wait.  To be OK with how things are, rather than raging about inconveniences and perceived inadequacies.  And how to be silent and still and stop striving for just a second.  This is all a direct result of a comment that Matt made to my post of 8/14/08, combined with some things I’d already been thinking about through reading Anne Lamott and just realizing that my life had become unlivable, not really because of any outward circumstances but because of my approach to it.

I think it’s another one of those paradoxes that I love so much about Christianity: by stepping back from life and thought and events – by making a concerted effort to get off the bobsled (to repurpose one of my favorite illustrations from David Powlison) for just 10 minutes, and letting the desert in rather than trying to crowd it out,  and throwing myself at God’s feet in a different way than I had before – I’ve amazingly, in some small but significant ways, been able to enjoy it again.  To enjoy for example, the fact that it’s Saturday and I don’t have to work all day, and that I have a room where I can light candles and pray and journal and read.  I’ve started to enjoy reading again – nonfiction, that is, rather than novels I could drown myself in – in a way I hadn’t in about 10 years.  Simple things, like shopping, hiking, going to cafes, cooking, have started to be fun again.  It’s weird.  The pessimist in me says this is just a result of being in a foreign country, and that this peace and acceptance and gratitude will fade like the morning dew once I’ve settled in here or returned home.  But I’m hoping it’s more than that.