A Conversation Between a Lion and His Master, Somewhere in North America.

T: Hi dude, long time no see! Where have you been?

F: Well, all over the place…enjoying myself.

T: Tell me more! I have missed you.

F: For starters there are many things to do here in Ann Arbor. So I have enjoyed going to the opera and to some concerts. Then we had an art fair last week, which gave me a chance to walk around town and see lots of interesting art work. I also have many friends here, so most evenings I have been out for dinner, visiting old acquaintances and making new ones. Not sure I can handle any more barbecues for a while though.

T: I understand- lots of rich food, big portions, and soon you will have outgrown your shorts, little guy! But since I have not seen you at night either it seems that you have also been further afield, no?

F: Very observant. I have gone to Lansing, an hour north of Ann Arbor. This is where you served from ’86 to ’88, at Michigan State University. So again, many old faces worth seeing. A highpoint though was going even further north, to the Leelanau peninsula. That little piece of land is surrounded by water, creating a micro-climate favourable to wine-growing. So I went wine tasting and had a more than average bottle of local Auxerrois, accompanied by barbecued (here we go again) salmon.

T: Man, for a little lion, you get around.

F: This is not at all. I also went to Minnesota, eleven hours by car. St. Paul and Minneapolis, also known as the Twin Cities, sit right on the Mississippi river. Apart from re-connecting with old friends I also toured the place: beautiful cathedrals, three superb art museums, and a play on a showboat. Very cool! What about yourself?

T: Well, I have been trying to figure out what a sabbatical is.

F: And…?

T: It’s not simply a vacation, that much is clear. It of course comes from the Hebrew word “Shabbat” which means Sabbath, day of rest. But when look more closely, for the Jews that day is not a day to be spent on the beach, but a day of prayer, study and relational interaction. In doing those things, you get refresh, restored, re-created. And then (stop me if I am boring you) academics have taken over that term to describe periods when they don’t need to fulfil their normal teaching and administrative responsibilities, so they can concentrate on research and writing.

F: So how does that apply to you?

T: Not sure, Fritz. I have tried to take more time to pray and reflect, and that has been wonderful. Simply sitting and not feeling guilty for taking another hour to read or write. I have also followed a church history course “Church and State in Europe from the French Revolution to the Present”.

F: That does not sound very restful!

T: It has been incredibly stimulating. Every week I need to do some reading, mainly original sources, and then produce a five page essay which I then discuss with my tutor Dan Keating. It has sparked many very interesting conversations.

F: My goodness, I am glad I am too young to qualify for sabbaticals. Don’t you do any fun stuff?

T: Not to worry, I do. I have had a chance, almost every day, to do some art: both reading some art history (Sister Wendy Beckett) and actually doing some painting. It has been hugely restorative, and lots of fun. For example I now know that your fur is yellow orange, but not very bright, so I need to dull it with purple to match the exact tone- if I ever paint your portrait, that is.

F: Are you ready to go back to work then? After all it has been almost two months now.

T: Not really…One interesting book I have been reading is called “Transitions”. It speaks of the need to allow the old to die before something new can grow. I feel like I have gradually been able to let go of old stuff, almost like lightening the grip on a handle. As I have done so, new ideas, inspirations and thoughts are beginning to come to me. I think that is part of what a sabbatical is supposed to be: a neutral zone allowing you to think outside the box.

F: Don’t tell me! I don’t believe Tino needs any more “thinking outside the box”.

T: Be quiet. So what are your plans for the next little while?

F: After all this socializing and travelling I feel l need of a vacation. What about yourself?

T: Same here. How about if we go off to somewhere quiet and nice, say Cleveland? I know some nice people there.

F: It’s a deal, provided you stop talking about church history and help me watch some good movies.

T: I think I can do that.

Les Américains : un drôle de peuple ! Réflexions de la part d’un lion

Pour quelqu’un comme moi, qui n’a ni l’expérience ni l’âge pour juger de façon adéquate les différentes cultures et ethnies, mes six semaines en Amérique ont été un cours d’ethnologie ravissant. Je dois avouer que mon éducation européenne a naturellement contribue a établir, dans mon esprit, des préjuges bien fermes envers le pays de Georges Bush, Georges Clooney et George Gershwin.

La première chose qui vous frappe quand vous arrivez, ce sont les grand contrastes : les villes sont énormes, mais a trente minutes de voiture vous vous trouvez dans un petit village qui pourrait servir de coulisse pour un film de John Wayne ; on est très confortable et prend la voiture pour rouler cinq minutes, mais on a naturellement un abonnement dans le club de sport ; les magasins vendent toutes sortes d’objets de luxe, mais en même temps bien plus d’Américains que d’Européens savent réparer leur machine a laver.

De même pour la politique. Le parti démocrate est bien installe et est en train d’exécuter une agenda tres libérale ; mais bien d’habitants de ce pays sont nettement plus conservateurs que nous en Europe. En fait, ils nous considèrent tous comme socialistes qui ont perdu le désir du travail et qui attendent que l’état s’occupe de nous.

J’avais toujours cru que ce peuple a une histoire tellement récente qu’il lui manque la conscience historique qui marque les Européens, mais ceci n’est pas vrai. On est très conscient de ses racines ethniques (même quelqu’un qui a vécu pour cinq générations aux Etats-Unis se considère comme « Irish » ou « Italian ») et les célèbrent a maintes occasions. Avant-hier j’ai passe une soiree dans un restaurant bavarois ou je pouvais lire le journal americo-allemand, en allemand. Et l’ histoire qui a fait de ce pays ce qu’il est a bien marque la population : l’esprit pionnier est toujours présent, la chasse, les randonnées en canoë un passe-temps fréquent. Mais malgré l’amour pour la nature on se moque du recyclage d’ordures européen.

Jusqu'à présent je n’ai que visiter le « Midwest », la région des Grand Lacs, qui est fascinante : beaucoup de noms géographiques sont soit indien (Washtenaw), soit coloniaux (Lac Mille Lacs). Ces grandes masses d’eaux ont joue un rôle important dans le développement de cette région. Le minerai de fer venait des montagnes de Minnesota vers Cleveland ; la on en faisait de l’acier qui ensuite passait a Detroit, et la on en faisait les automobiles. Les grand noms comme Carnegie, Ford et d’autres firent beaucoup de leur argent dans ce négoce et dans chaque ville de cette région on trouve encore d’énormes maisons qui leurs servaient de résidence.

Je dois donc avouer que je suis fort intéresse par les découvertes que je fais ; et chaque jour un autre de mes préjugés se trouve falsifie.

Bend Over and Have a Look

The British painter J.M.W. Turner had the habit, when studying a new landscape, to bend low and look at the scene through his spread legs. While somewhat unorthodox as an approach, this “change of perspective” allowed him to see past “colour constancy”. Colour constancy is the phenomenon of human beings attributing certain colours to objects from memory, rather than by actually identifying them by sight. So I might look at an orange, and everything tells me instinctively that it is orange. But if I manage to get beyond this instinctive reaction, then I will notice that the orange is actually partially white, in places dark brown and black, in others deep red- and yes, in some places orange. Colour constancy is such a strong instinct that painters have to invent techniques and tools so as to find a fresh perspective and thus to paint what they see, not what they know.

Colour constancy does not just affect painters; in our daily relationships we can also be prone to that phenomenon, by assuming that we already know what the other one is like. In order to make human interactions easier, we tend to put people into boxes, categories, schemata. And especially if we have known somebody for a long time, then the temptation is immense to attribute certain characteristics, “colours” and traits to the other. “I know what you are like” is what I say, at least to myself, and I stop looking and listening. In other words, there is no more mystery about the other, no more surprise, we have them pegged and figured out. But the truth is that we are wrong, and by making such assumptions we not only box the other in, we deprive ourselves of discovering new things about them. However long we have known somebody, there is always something new to discover. And if stop discovering, then our relationships become dull and predictable. So maybe it is time we bent over like Turner and took another look?