Church Friends in Luxembourg

I can't believe it's been so long since I've blogged here. I think about this blog all the time.

My kids are calmer now than when we first moved to the States. I can speak French to them and they don't give me one of those really harsh stares they are so good at, especially my middle daughter. But as Luxembourg fades further and further from their lives and memory, I find myself more and more missing parts of my life there.

I have really missed Luxembourg during this Advent season. As I mentioned before, I loved the lights all around town, and the Christmas market at Place D'Armes.

But even more than the lights, I miss my church there.

At the Anglican church, we sang the most wonderful Christmas songs. And I realize that they had some problems with their pipe organ, but even on one of it's bad days, it was still a pipe organ, and with the right organist on duty, it was really a wonderful feeling to be singing along on some magnificent old hymns of the church accompanied by a real pipe organ.

I loved Chris's sermons, both his children's sermons and the grown-up sermons. I was never, ever bored during church, and I very often left with something to really think about.

One movie I wanted to see last year was Joyeux Noel, but my husband wasn't crazy about the idea, so we never went. I'm not sure they would have had it with English subtitles, and my husband would have needed the subtitles. I might have needed some help with the French, and as it turns out, the Scottish, so subtitles would have been best. I rented the movie this year, and I really enjoyed it. (OK, the lip-synching was really bad, but the rest of the movie was excellent and made up any minor problems.)

The more I thought about the themes of the movie, the more I found myself wanting to talk about it with Chris and Joan and with the people I knew in the choir. One of the main heroes of the movie is a priest from Scotland who comes up against the Anglican church. I think Chris and Joan, as Anglicans from Scotland, would have had a unique perspective on the whole thing. Also, one of the main themes of the movie was the power of music over war. One of the German soldiers is a famous opera singer from Berlin, and he begins to sing "Stille Nacht" to the German troops, and the tune is recognized by the soldiers on the other side of the line. Then the Scots begin to play "Adeste Fideles", on their bagpipes of course, and the German begins to sing it in Latin. A version of "Ave Maria" moves many of the soldiers to tears, even if they aren't Catholic or even Christians. It was really moving. The original music written for the movie was nice, with an excellent score. I would love having a chance to talk over this movie with several of my friends from choir.

I've tried to email several friends from church, but my email gets bounced back because their email servers think it's spam. I wish I could just send them a note to tell them we're OK. I need to find a way to get their real addresses and send them a letter, and tell them how much I miss them and how often I think about them.