Therefore, we strongly oppose SOPA and PIPA, two controversial proposals of US laws designed to give huge media conglomerates and the executive branch the power to shut down any website in a purely arbitrary way, without judicial oversight and due process. Those proposals, should they be adopted, have the power to break the web in a fundamental way. Just imagine Google being shut down for automatically linking to sites with content that may offend some lazy fat cat in Hollywood!

Even though we’re not visibly joining Blackout Day today since we’re too small a site to matter, we morally stand by all those who are fighting against American Censorship.

If you’re a US Citizen, please do call or write a letter to your Congressman and to your Senator, stating your concerns.

Thank you on behalf of Cordula’s Web Editorial Team.

East Summit of the Tres Picos del Amor Mount in Argentina. By Fabien Quetier.

So it’s this time of the year again, where people are supposed to enjoy and celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas and welcome the New Year with overwhelming joy. Undoubtedly, many of you do, and I wish you all the best: enjoy these days as if they were the last, for they very well may turn out to be just that. Drink from your dear ones’ cup of kindness, and be generous and kind to them in return, not out of gratitude but from the depth of your heart. Your little world will be better for it… and if only for a while.

Then there’s us, the lonely, the widows, the orphans, the dumped, the abandoned, the left-behinds, the depressed, the incurable sick… to whom those days are nothing less than pure living hell on Earth. It’s not like we hated Christmas & Co, actually we love it… if it were only within reach! For like no other day of the year, those days are meant to be spent in company, preferably with those we love and who love us. When our only company are ghosts of friends who deserted us a long time ago, and a small couple of postcard wishes from family relatives that we deserted and who are not even on the same continent, Christmas can be very, very hard to bear. And, just like Groundhog Day, it comes back year after year to haunt us, in an inescapable Dante-like inferno.

But that’s life: for every happy person enjoying this holiday season, there must be an equally distressed poor soul to make up for it. Just as there can’t be light without darkness, one can only be rich when another one is poor, one can only be happy when another one is sad, and for everyone having fun these days there must be one suffering in the clutches of holiday season depression.

So to all of us singing the Christms Season Blues, remember: our suffering is someone else’s merriment. In my humble opinion, if our pain is the counterpart of the radiant smile of a happy young boy or girl opening his or her gifts on Christmas Eve or on Christmas Day, it wouldn’t have been in vain.

So Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year 2012 for all those lucky enough to be on the sunny side of life. And to all of us not so lucky souls, may we find comfort in the fact that after every cloud, there’s a silver lining on the horizon.

The leading topic of the Kirchentag 2011.

Every second year, German protestants organize a nationwide meeting and get together (“Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag”, or just “Kirchentag”) in varying cities. This 2011 Kirchentag in Dresden features a beautiful heart-shaped logo, that I wanted to share with you.

As you can see, the leading topic of this Kirchentag is “… da wird auch Dein Herz sein.”, an inspiring quotation from the Bible:

[For where your treasure is,] there will your heart be also. — Matthew 6:21.

A little background

Kirchentag meetings started 1848 in Wittenberg as a grass roots movement of the Protestant Church, and ended 1872. After World War I, the Kirchentag tradition resumed from 1919 to 1930 and gradually died again.

It was only after World War II that the Kirchentag as we know it today was founded, and it has been a fixture in post-war Germany ever since.

Unlike the huge evangelizing events that some of you may know from US megachurches, Kirchentage are down to earth meetings, with many young (and not so young) participants eager to discuss matters of faith, social justice and current political topics.

The atmosphere is relaxed, slightly on the hippy side, yet sober. Women are often wearing uniform neckers. IMHO, the best feature of the Kirchentag are the lightweight cardboard boxes (“Kirchentag Papphocker”) that people sit on to listen to panelists’ debates. High ranking keynote speakers like the Federal President, the Chancellor etc. are mingling with the crowd, and the discussions are much more civil in tone than those in the public space.

Why and how I relate to the Kirchentag

My first (and only) visit to a Kirchentag was 1987 in Frankfurt. It was more by accident than intentional, as I didn’t know about them at all having moved to Germany just the year before. So there I was, young and lonely, living in an ecumenical student dorm that was jointly sponsored by both protestant and catholic churches. A co-ed friend living on the same floor whose family was involved with the protestant church suggested that I join a little group who organized a little pickup on a short trip to Frankfurt to attend the Kirchentag there.

Who am I to say “no” to such a charming invitation by a friend I was very fond of? So I went with them, and I really enjoyed this interesting and unique experience. I particularly liked the open-mindedness and welcoming atmosphere. Even as an alien, you get a heart-warming feeling of being among people who appreciate and maybe even like you a little, no matter where you come from.

As I wasn’t granted the privilege to see my old co-ed friend again in later years, I never went to another Kirchentag ever since. But every time a Kirchentag is taking place, I keep a discrete but watchful eye on the TV coverage, hoping against all odds to catch a glimpse of her in the crowd. Who knows? Maybe she’s still alive and doing well? I know, it is more likely to get hit by a lightning, but sometimes irrational hopes to get to see on TV even just for a split second an old friend are what makes life worthwhile.

Anyway, Kirchentage are great. If you have a chance to participate, then by all means, do it. It’s inspiring and really worth the time and effort.

The heart-shaped logo

Now that you know what mixed feelings I have about the Kirchentag, you’ll understand that their current logo had to strike a chord in my soul. Just as the old german folk song about someone losing his heart in Heidelberg goes, I have lost my heart at a Kirchentag — well, not exactly there, but allow me to poetically stretch the facts just a little –, and it is figuratively still there, as lonely as ever.

And the heart is a lonely hunter, seeking a glimpse of times passed by.

The heart is a lonely hunter
With only one desire:
To find some lastin’ comfort
In the arms of a lover’s fire.

Driven by a desperate hunger,
To the dark of the neon light –
Oh the heart is a lonely hunter
When there’s no sign of a love in sight

– Reba McEntire, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

The end of Schengen would mean an end to EU’s one and only visible advantage to its citizens: the open borders within the Schengen Area, i.e. the ability to travel around freely without being harassed by some nosy border guards. Sure, that’s nothing and just a minor annoyance, compared to its heavily fortified external borders where Frontex guys are militarily standing guard to keep the world’s misery on the outside, but still…

And once again, irrational fear, bigotry, and hatred are the best builders of self inflicted prisons. Brick by brick, we build the walls that surround and confine us. Be they the invisible walls in our hearts and minds, or the fortified barriers on our formerly open borders… and we’re raising all of them so high that they already meet the sky. And nobody cares.

The warm and cozy world of people building bridges, tearing down walls, and hugging and welcoming each others is long gone and dead. Welcome to the cold and chilly world of burned bridges, soaring suspicion, and barbed wire fences.

Too many of us have petty minds, limited horizons and generally not much place in our hearts except for ourselves. So who needs open prairies without fences anyway?

Maybe we didn’t deserve it any better.

Japanese fireworks for Cordula.

With 2010 on its well deserved way out, we’re looking at the coming year with a mix of pessimism and optimism, cynicism and idealism.

So what’s in store for us in the coming year? Will there be new wars? Probably. Will the economy collapse? Maybe… but do we really want to know for sure? Will some of us die of broken hearts? Certainly. Will others be so happy that they’ll die from a heart attack? It could happen! If there’s one reliable fact in this Circus Maximus we use to call our world, that’s the everlasting duality of pain and joy, sadness and happiness, despair and hope.

Will 2011 be the year of ethnic cleansing in a deeply shaken and insecure Europe, eager (again!) to get rid of its hated minorities in a time of economic hardships? One shouldn’t rule it out. Will 2011 be the year America lost its edge and turned isolationist again, leaving the world in shambles, unable to fend for itself? It’s on the horizon. Will 2011 see the rise of authoritarian regimes all around the globe — where not already established –, the return of Censorship, suspicion and fear? Probably. Will corporatism, cronyism and fascism grow further in 2011? Of course they will. Will banksters get even more taxpayer’s monies and the poorest of the poor even less to barely survive? You bet they will!

Fortunately, we humans have a wonderful ability to ignore bad news, and look elsewhere, when things get rough. When the outside world spirals down the drain, and nobody seems to care for the Big Picture, there’s still our private life, our friends (at least those who didn’t desert us and those we didn’t disappoint and hurt) and the family. They are all that really matter. When the lights go out in this Circus, when the ever faster spinning wheel of this world-gone-crazy has come to a grinding halt, when the music stops playing… it’s time to get back home, hopefully with the people we love. May they be there, when we need them the most. May we be there for them, in case they need us too.

It’s time to wish you all a Happy New Year 2011, and to a very special friend a Happy Birthday too.

A little candle in the dark for our friend Cordula.

Today, October 22nd, is St. Cordula Day! Of course, it is our duty to commemorate the name day of our beloved friend.

Numquam tui obliviscar, Cordula: you’ll stay forever in our hearts.

Lighting a little candle in the dark…

With so much emphasis on emotional pain in popular culture, that a broken heart really hurts physically is less known. Researchers have found that some people are more at risk of feeling physical pain from a broken heart than others… not because the former are more sensitive and the latter being superficial insensitive and uncaring heartless brutes, but, apparently, because of a specific genetic mutation of the OPRM1 gene. Grieving and social rejection are among the most common stressors and triggers of this condition. Actually, some 1% to 2% people are affected, and the proportion of women suffering from a broken heart is even higher, up to 6%!

Feeling real pain in the chest is scary, to say the least. After all, heart attacks are common, and at the very first signs of chest pain, one should immediately seek emergency medical treatment… provided there’s still time to act. But what happens to those few patients who are hurting from a broken heart, yet showing the typical symptoms of a real full blown heart attack (chest pain, transpiration, weakness, dizziness, collapsing…)?

Imagine being hauled to a hospital in an ambulance, because you collapsed on the street from this sudden searing chest pain — maybe shortly after having felt the shock of your life. Since a heart attack is usually due to an obstructed artery, paramedics would immediately inject some drugs to counteract this condition. Isn’t that kind of wrong treatment potentially dangerous, if not outright lethal?

Fortunately, despite it being relatively unknown to the general public, medical personnel are increasingly aware of the broken heart syndrome, a.k.a. takotsubo cardiomyopathy. We can expect them to at least think of this possible cause, before subjecting us to the dangers of an inadequate therapy.

In a nutshell, people suffering physically from a broken heart are experiencing a heart whose muscles have been “stunned” by an excess of adrenaline, which is released every time we feel stressed. Since emotional stress can be very intense, so is the amount of suddenly released adrenaline. People suffering from this condition, given appropriate medical care, usually recover rather quickly, without any lasting damages, for the simple reason that no heart tissue has been harmed by lack of oxygen as would have been common with a usual heart attack.

So, combine high levels of adrenaline with this specific genetic mutation, and your heart may break too some day. Sometimes, it pays to be insensitive and superficial, or doesn’t it? Trading off a world of hurt and emotions for a healthier heart condition may be a valid excuse for most people. Next time you’re angry at or sad about your friends being so insensitive, try not to hold it against them: they may just be trying to survive by avoiding excessive stress.

Still, they’re missing the depth of true love and hopeless despair that life is all about.

Phil’s official forecast as read February 2nd, 2010 at sunrise at Gobbler’s Knob:

Hear Ye Hear Ye Hear Ye

On Gobbler’s Knob on this glorious Groundhog Day, February 2nd, 2010, Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Prognosticator of all Prognosticators awoke to the call of President Bill Deeley and greeted his handlers, John Griffiths and Ben Hughes.

After casting a joyful eye towards thousands of his faithful followers, Phil proclaimed, “If you want to know next, you must read my text. As the sky shines bright above me, my shadow I see beside me. So six more weeks of winter it will be.”

There’s a video too:

Update 2010/03/20: changed link to video, as original one was removed.

As Ella Wheeler Wilcox aptly put it in Waiting:

The days flow on, and on,
And never one comes back.
Another year has vanished and gone,
As the waves of the sea wash out the track

On the shining sands o’ th’ shore.
And patience waneth, and hope is spent,
As I wait and watch for the one who went,
And cometh to me no more.

… and to continue, thinking of all deserted souls who are cruelly missing a kind word of their long departed friends:

And never a word from thee,
But a silence deep as death;
Though the winter gleameth on moor and lea,
And the cold, cold wind, with its cruel breath,

Blows over the angry sea.
Yet always and ever, till life is done,
Shall I watch, and wait, and weep for one
Who cometh never, to me.

But at the end of every storm, there’s a silver lining on the horizon: new hope will come with tomorrow, and 2010 will be yet another year of hopeful self-deceit. We’ll keep yearning for the unreachable stars, even though we’re deep in the gutter, looking up to the cold sky.

However, even in the darkest night of the soul, all it takes is a tiny little candle timidly burning in the wind to drive the cold winter away.

On behalf of Cordula’s Web: to all our dear readers and community, we wish you, against all odds, a Happy New Year 2010. May your wishes come true, even those you believe impossible. It’s human nature to keep hoping, and only through adversity can we reach the stars.