Seeking Confirmation

            My laptop was out of commission for a week, which is bad for the blogging business.  And, at about the same time, the end of Noah’s grade school career came, which brought with it an insane amount of final concerts, picnics, meetings and nostalgia.  I’ve got another kid starting, for lack of a better word, high school later this year.  And I’ve got none left in elementary school, because Colin died before he could even finish kindergarten.

            Sigh.

            During my daily Bible reading, I came across this passage in Job, which is making a lot more sense to me this time around:

            My days have passed, far otherwise than I had planned.

            To which I can only say “Tell me about it, Job.”

            He goes on with “and every fiber of my heart is broken” which is probably a step further than I’m prepared to go, though, had you spoken to me in 2019, heaven knows what I would have said.  Still, it’s bad if you’re reading with the book of Job and identifying with it quite that much.  But I guess that’s what childhood cancer, followed by a pandemic, followed by potential thermonuclear war two countries over can do to a person.

            I don’t know when I last read Job.  I usually get to the end of the Bible and then pick it up from the start.  Usually I read 2-3 pages a day, so I’m guessing it was 2-3 years ago.  I can’t imagine my mindset was that much better 2-3 years ago, but maybe I’m reading it more thoroughly this time.  I could imagine that, in 2018-19, a lot of things just washed over me.

            But religion is my point today.  It’s come up a few times since we went to a neighbor kid’s first communion.  Emma did her first communion while Colin was still with us.  Noah had his in the midst of a pandemic, delayed a year and even then, in my opinion, conducted under circumstances that were less than ideal, pandemic-wise.

            Now they’re both going to Catholic school, and the topic of confirmation is coming up.  That discussion was in turn inspired by an event that was most definitely non-religious.  The girl across the street had what is called a “Jugendweihe” party.  It’s a tough one to translate.  I have no good ideas and, when I go to translation engines, I get “youth declaration,” “youth inauguration” and “youth consecration.”  None seem really right.

            What it amounts to is that religion was discouraged during the communist regime here in eastern Germany.  But people wanted to have some kind of event that marked a child’s transition to adulthood (and the kids wanted an event that came with tons of cash gifts) so they came up with this non-religious event to announce the transition into pre-adulthood.  The kids dress up, there’s a lot of speeches (this year, all on Zoom, I’m told) and then there’s a party.  This was just a garden party, but I know of people who have rented halls.  As Christina was trying to help me wrap my mind around the topic, the best interpretation we could come up with was “communist bar mitzvah.”

            So, we had kids getting first communions and kids getting non-confirmations, which all raises the question of what Emma’s going to do next year.  Like I said, it’s a Catholic school, so there will definitely be an offer to go through confirmation preparation and have the whole ceremony.

            Except Emma isn’t really sure what she believes in any more.  I can’t blame her at all.  I mean, I’d expect most 14-year-olds to be full of existential questions these days.  Emma literally watched her brother die while other people with, shall we say, more questionable claims on being deserving of a long and rich life keep on ticking.  And, as noted, she went straight from that to coronavirus to the Ukraine crisis which, admittedly, has impacted us very little at this moment.  That said, it could be a very cold winter here in Berlin.  She hasn’t quite come out and said she doesn’t believe in God, but she’s close to it. 

            I don’t really know what to tell her.  My faith remains, but it’s kind of hard to rally a family member to Team God under our circumstances.  I’ve long since reconciled myself to a God who isn’t a magic fairy godmother who comes and solves all my problems with a snap of a finger.  But I remember a time when I thought if you prayed enough you could get about anything.  Emma learned way too young that’s not how prayer works.  And if she’s having those questions, what’s the point of confirmation?  Yeah, there’s the party and all the gifts, but that’s not why you get confirmed.  There’s no point if you don’t truly believe.

            I imagine there’s numerous families who go through this kind of thing.  Churchgoing is less common than it ever was and, in Germany, people are leaving the church in droves due to disgust at the way some parishes handled sexual abuse scandals.  We’re not that unique in many respects with these family debates.  And yet, in that sad way, we have a very different problem than anyone else.  I guess this is one that we have to let Emma work out for herself.  I mean, we’ll support her and answer questions, but she’s going to have to make the choice herself, ultimately.