Month: February 2021

In this week we’d like to share with you Dietrich Buxtehude’s “Passacaglia in D Minor” played by our organist Jochim Trede at one of the concerts celebrating our 400th anniversary in 2012.

A “passacaglia” is a musical form in which a short bass line is repeated over and over again while on top of that variations flourish.

Is there something meaningful in your life to which you keep returning to? For some it’s a book they can never get tired to read again and again. For others it’s a special place they like to visit. Maybe you discover that there’s a constant meaningful theme in your life and a lot of variations on that? You can take your time to reflect on that while listening to Buxtehude’s Passacaglia:

Today on Ash Wednesday we enter the Forty Days, the season of Lent. Some ask: “What could I do to make the weeks in which we prepare for the celebration of Easter meaningful?” But you could also put the question in another way: “What can I leave out, so that I can make space for God’s doing in and around me?”

Often it seems really hard work to limit yourself and to leave a space open. When we post something each Wednesday in Lent here we hope that we don’t feed that impulse to add more and more things to your to do list (even if that’s a spiritual to do list!). So here’s a 12 minute organ piece played by Jochim Trede, our organist: Choral III in A Minor by César Franck. If it’s hard for you to “do nothing” start with small steps and listen to a piece of music. It’ll give you a good “excuse” if people raise their eyebrows and think that you’re just sitting around idly while in fact a) you’re listening to music and b) you’re holding a space of waiting and listening (and that’s the ground for prayer!).

17 February marks the beginning of Lent. We are not having our own service, but there are two opportunities to join other services online:

Our sister church in Berlin, St George’s, has invited us to join them for their streamed Ash Wednesday service.
The service will be livestreamed at 19:30 CET (on Facebook and available later via YouTube).

The Diocese in Europe Service of Evening Prayer is also at 19:30 CET.
Rev’d Sam Van Leer (Acting Archdeacon of NW Europe) will lead the service. Bishop Robert is the preacher. The liturgy includes an invitation to light three candles at the start of the service and extinguish them at certain moments during the service.
You can watch the service being livestreamed on the diocesan YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/S79rMG_zEWA