Hey You! Are you coming along?

Hey you! Don't sit naked by that phone - come along!

Some students from St Ann have already been there; my old folks too; as well as a bunch of Masovian shepherds, joined by a few local drop-outs and petty thieves. And now crème de la crème of the Orient's scholarly and esoteric community is there too, their wise heads bowed low.

I’m also on my way, hoping to get to Bethlehem before I die.

(Judging by the developments so far, I’m not making much headway. Right now, I’m busy drinking port and singing away an old English carol for a Buddhist neighbour of mine, who probably has already set out himself to Judah and just forgot to turn off the light.

But I don’t abandon hope – who knows, maybe the baby will crawl out of the crib and meet me half way…).

And you, mate? Will you be there?


PS At some point my problem with Christianity was that it was too familiar, too close at hand. I thought I’d prefer something more exotic, something to get to through some adventure, after long and exciting search and numerous thrilling challenges.

But Christianity was brought to my cradle and Jesus was the first person I was introduced to once I’d learnt to say “How do you do?”, or – as the parish records and a bleak black-and-white photograph show – even earlier.

It was only some three decades later that I realized it may take me my whole life – or longer – to finally get to my local church*.


*Which reminds me of a conversation I had a few years ago with another Obsendorfer, who lives in New York now.

We met by chance on a train from Warsaw to Wroclaw and started by arguing about American politics (I was frustrated that he refused to accept my opinion as binding, just because I’d never been there and he’d lived there for some five years then) and finished with religion to end the journey on a friendlier note.

He said that he’d been searching all over the world and across many systems to finally rediscover the answer in our parish church. (“Can’t you see it in the eyes of some of the old women from the local Rosary Circle of Prayer that they’ve got it?”, he asked me. I agreed. I’d noticed that some time before. I just hadn’t noticed it in my own eyes.)