TAKE THOU THY PORTION

O wayfarer in the path of God! Take thou thy portion of the ocean of His grace,
 and deprive not thyself of the things that lie hidden in its depths. Be thou of them
 that have partaken of its treasures. A dewdrop out of this ocean would, if shed
 upon all that are in the heavens and on the earth, suffice to enrich them with the bounty of God, the Almighty, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise. With the hands of renunciation draw forth from its life-giving waters, and sprinkle therewith all created things, that they may be cleansed from all man-made limitations and may approach the mighty seat of God, this hallowed and resplendent Spot.     

—Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh

Whatever our faith, or lack of it, and no matter how long our personal winters may have been, the springtime of divine grace always offers us another chance.

I’ve been tracing a path of family history, following portions of the route that brought my parents together in England during World War II and eventually resulted in my speaking German almost as early as I spoke my mother tongue.

During the U.S. occupation of Europe after the war, my military family spent two tours in Germany, the second of which holds my oldest memories. When we sailed across the Atlantic to a very new life, military housing in Germany was at a premium, so we lived “on the economy,” moving into a tiny village forty-five minutes from Frankfurt. There, a family named Geis welcomed us into the ground floor of their home while they squeezed upstairs to make room for us.

I say welcomed because, contrary to popular belief about German-American relations at the time, that’s exactly how it feels in my memory. They were kind, generous, really, even though they had very little, particularly after the war. But while they no doubt also welcomed the money they were paid for sharing that clean, accommodating space, they always felt far more like hosts or friendly relatives than landlords to me.

What I remember most is how cheerful and happy they always were. I later learned that Herr Geis, the husband and father of the family, was, like my family, a recent arrival in Germany. Before that, his wife and children had waited fifteen long years while he was a prisoner of war in a Russian prison camp, wondering whether they’d ever see him again. I understand now that after he came home, they saw every day as a new beginning and treated it like something too precious to waste on anything but gratitude and joy.

It was during Easter week that the couple and I shared one of my earliest intercultural exchanges. One day my parents had some complicated appointments and errands, and the Geises offered to watch me while they were away. I was four and delighted in the prospect of spending the day with our hosts. My day involved little more than following along behind the couple as they did their chores. We prepared the field behind their home for planting, and they helped me find some stray potatoes they’d missed at harvest time.

After we’d eaten those potatoes at the midday meal, together with eggs we’d collected from their hens, they introduced me to my first Easter eggs.

We were coloring them when my parents appeared at their kitchen door, bearing some traditional American fare—Hershey’s chocolate bars and a big bowl of popcorn—that they’d bought to celebrate Easter and to thank the Geises for their hospitality.

Most Germans had never seen popcorn since corn was grown only for animal feed in Europe in those days. That bowl lasted for hours as the Geises removed a piece at a time, holding it up and marveling as they named the creature or object that its shape approximated. Eventually, we all began to do the same amid lots of laughter. It ended up being quite a good vocabulary lesson for everyone and helped us to overcome our collective language barrier.

This event stands out in my memory because it signals such a perceptible shift in my family’s bond with the Geises, the kind that meant they’d become regular guests at our on-base apartment long after we’d moved out of their home. Few other American families had this kind of friendship with their German hosts, and after my mother’s horrific experiences during the Blitz in Britain, most anyone would have forgiven her if she’d been hesitant to embrace Germans. This experience, along with countless other memories of living in different places across the United States and abroad with my family, remind me of how grateful I am that my parents always seemed able to see the humanity in any situation, above and beyond any history or politics.

A German friend recently shared a story with some very similar parallels to my family’s stay with the Geises, yet his story is one that gives a glimpse into the German family’s experience, too. Toward the very end of the war, on Good Friday, they expected their tiny village to be overrun at any moment by U.S. soldiers. The German troops were retreating, and my friend’s family members, six adults and two children, were trying to decide whether they should stay put or hide in hills above the village.

In a previous war their village had been wiped out in a similar situation, with every single person killed, so they were quite fearful. They also had a family member who was a prisoner of war overseas—one with whom they would later be reunited, and who would become my friend’s father. Like the Geises, these folks were just trying to eke out their simple lives in terrible times, during a war that they’d just as soon had never happened.

They decided to stay in their home, and within hours, several vehicles pulled into their farmyard and U.S. soldiers climbed out and ordered them upstairs while the soldiers took over the lower floor of the house. What my friend’s aunt, who was among those present, most remembers is how young these soldiers looked to her at the time. As she and her sister peeked down from upstairs, she saw that the soldiers were having trouble figuring out how to light the cook stove, and so, to her family’s horror, she bounded down to help them. (Her sister would later tease her that the only reason she’d done this was because those soldiers were so handsome.) That weekend, they all eventually feasted together on the farm’s fresh eggs and the soldiers’ rations in a shared meal around the kitchen table. On the morning of Easter Sunday, the family came downstairs to find the soldiers gone, along with a basket of hardboiled eggs that the family had colored earlier that week. In the basket’s place was a huge stash of chocolate.

“My family hadn’t seen chocolate for years,” my friend said, “and this, combined with how carefully the soldiers had left everything in its place when my family had expected them to ransack the house, gave everyone great heart, and the possibility of believing that maybe things would be all right after all.” The miracle of his father’s return a short while later was the very best evidence of that, of course, and soon spring bulbs were blooming in the yard and, despite the ravages of the war, his family knew that they’d see green fields again.

It’s no coincidence that the essence of Easter—resurrection—is about restoration and renewal. Whatever our faith, or lack of it, no matter how long our personal winters may have been, the springtime of divine grace always offers us another chance.