Flaming Ice
The cartwright’s wife had no wood left for the fireplace before which her guest could warm his limbs as her dinner had warmed his stomach. Her visitor, a hermit who had settled just beyond the city walls to bring the message of Christ to Nuremberg’s poor, told her to fetch icicles outside from the eaves and cast them into the fire. Obedient to the missionary hermit, she was soon astonished to see her icicles blaze as if oaken tinder.
The hermit, Sebald, who was later recognized as the patron saint of Nuremberg, visited this same family on another occasion, and expressed a taste for fish. Unfortunately, the lord of the city had just passed an edict that no one would be allowed this dish until the castle was first provided. When it was discovered that the cartwright was in violation for the sake of his guest, the lord had his eyes put out. This ruler should perhaps have considered that the breach was for the sake of Sebald – all the town knew of a man who had once heckled the hermit while he preached, knew that Sebald had called the ground to open and swallow him whole. But no such punishment came to the lord, as it was not the gospel in Sebald’s mouth to which he objected, but only the fish in his belly – the hermit simply restored the cartwright’s vision.
* * *
I learned this lore of St. Sebald while living in Nuremberg, where a gothic cathedral fixes him in the city’s memory. His body rests in a silver casket within an iron shrine built by Peter Vischer, east of the altar. Like all such churches in Europe, the exterior of Sebaldskirche (the church of St. Sebald) is darkened by the modern city air. Stone saints imbedded in its walls cast stern eyes on the world’s corruption, and demons trained as gargoyles hold others of their kind at bay. The cathedral doesn’t seem meant to bring a presence into this world, but rather to carve out a protected space inside. Its inner skin does show some stain – the graffiti of privileged families hawking their names, resembling the faded tatoos of once nubile women whose concepts of beauty have been profaned by the world. However, in from the walls, the holiness of the place is palpable.
I felt instinctively that Sebaldskirche is the spiritual heart of the city, even before learning of the patron saint. I was thus excited to notice a placard one day which announced an Angels’ Choir Concert to be held in the early evening. I’d absorbed much of the instrumental music that flows continuously throughout this city, but very little choral work.
And sundown is the perfect time to be in the sanctuary. There are two rows of pink sandstone columns which branch at the top, creating quite the sense of a woodland clearing with its canopy of tree limbs. The sandstone is quarried from Nuremberg’s own bedrock, and catches the sunset from the west window perfectly. With the rosy glow augmented by flickering candlelight, one feels himself to be at a timeless forest campfire – as all these stone cathedrals are cool like the earth beneath the frost line, it’s a welcome, warming impression.
I learned at least one architectural term that evening – it seems that an Angels’ Choir is not a collection of heavenly voices, but rather the balcony high up in the west between the two towers. The music was actually a string quartet, the performers positioned against the railing. The audience, too, was required to ascend the spiraling staircase and take seat in the balcony, which was much deeper than would be imagined.
It was well worth the climb. Before I had only known Sebaldskirche from a perspective on its stone floor. The columns, statuary, alcoves – all enhance the sense of forest clutter, in which the space marked as one’s campsite fades indefinitely into the woods with the bonfire light. But from the balcony high above one sees the perfect order of the architect’s vision of sanctuary. I had not imagined this space held so much light.
I had already realized that it was time for me to move away from this medieval city when I saw another placard at Sebaldskirche. Something about a meditation – the sign’s language was too complex for my skill – but again I anticipated music of a very gentle sort. After all, Pachelbel himself had once been organist in this very church. But I’d forgotten how literal the Germans are – this was indeed to simply be meditation. A score or so drifted into the sanctuary alone or in pairs. The host acknowledged each arrival by striking his hand-held chime, its voice a crisp, wintery tone inviting each to take a seat for silent prayer.
The feeling of Nuremberg leaving my heart became increasingly like a placenta pulling itself away from the womb, cramping in my gut so hard that I moved from my pew to sit on the stone floor, my back against one of the columns. No sunset light, and what candles there were barely lit the space in which I sat, above and around me only darkness.
But the host insisted I move my limbs – we were to take our meditation to different stations throughout the church. Like a stray dog, I followed the line of native citizens up the spiral of the south tower, endlessly, so high that many were winded. The weight of my own legs increased with every step as if affixed to a cable, hauling more and more flagstones up from the floor below. We finally halted on a tower platform, and with the thinness of the air everyone easily recovered the meditative state. All but me, my feet still objecting to stepping away from the town I’d come to know in these past years, to walk into an unknown future.
We were ushered through a door onto a narrow rim around the outside of the tower, high above the old city. Familiar streets, the river, restaurants where I’d met friends so often – I had drifted above them, separated, it seemed, forever, as if I were already in the airliner that would be taking me away. Again we paused to meditate. No words were ever spoken – our guide used his chime to announce the beginning and end of our movements. Nonetheless I felt I had only a migrant’s understanding of the language used in this place.
Evidently our pilgrimage was timed to bring us here on the hour, for the bell in the opposite tower began to dong. So massive a sound, the north tower found a harmonic with which to sway, and in a moment the ledge which suspended our legs so high above the cobblestones began also to weave. It was here I realized that my grief was visible to others in the group, that they were allowing me distance for the wind to clear it away. A human touch might have drained my heart straightaway, but this was not forthcoming.
Not until the tones rippled away were we allowed to leave the ledge and partially descend the tower. I’d left much behind, was lighter because empty. Our host showed the entrance to an attic – I hadn’t known that this space existed between the roof and the sanctuary ceiling, but it was quite large. We found our places along wooden walks for this station. The ceiling below appeared as rows of cement dunes – odd that from heaven’s perspective the holy sanctuary looked to be under primitive burial mounds.
A pilgrimage always ends where it began, the place changed not in what is there but in who we have become. And so we returned to the sanctuary to embed the experience in our souls. My heart felt blank, but light enough to smile with the hope that what I’d given to the air outside the tower hadn’t added to the pollution darkening the walls of Sebaldskirche.
How like a church is the human psyche, separated from heaven and buried in the earth below. And yet within the walls there is a sacred space full of light, the seed of Deity. Little deaths and big, yet always I emerge, empty but restored, ready to go through those doors out into the next world. The meditation was at end, and I grew restless. The past life finally surrendered to winter, its icicles in my heart have flickered into flames – the hermit’s gift warming me in remembering Nuremberg.
The Voyeurs
The two aged scientists were alone in the observatory. It was quite late, although the hour was irrelevant when using the uplink to a telescope suspended in Earth orbit. Perhaps they were too old to change their ways.
“Let’s see - 11:15 PM. What would that be in sidereal time?” Steve asked.
“17.32156 hours, today.” Joyce checked the orientation of the telescope, clicked a bit on her computer, and called out the rotation figures.
Steve fetched champagne glasses from a drawer while they waited for the telescope to execute the command. They turned their attention to the monitor. The planet was so far away that it took almost twenty years for the light reflected from it to reach the lens and be transmitted back to Earth. But their equipment snapped pictures so quickly that they were effectively watching live video of the planet’s past.
“Focus in at that lake in the northeast quadrant,” Joyce instructed. “There…”
Joyce and Steve could see what was obviously a group of living humanoids enjoying what appeared in every respect to be an old fashioned Sunday afternoon picnic.
“Here we are,” said Steve, and popped the cork. “We’ll make history on this day.”
“Teens at a lake shore,” Joyce observed. “Yes, I can hear the news vans filling the parking lot now, come to beg for our footage.”
“What a handsome boy standing there underneath the tree, proving our theory. You bet. MTV will probably pirate this video and make a rock icon of him.”
“They will want to wash him up a bit first. What – is that chocolate smeared all over his face?”
“Give the kid a break, Joyce. He’s wiping it off.”
“Oh, and his species has discovered napkins, too. I had feared for his sleeve.”
“When he’s fixed his eyes on that pixie over by the table? Oh, she is a little darling, isn’t she? Were you ever that skinny?”
Joyce pushed at his chair with her foot, but only caused her own chair to roll away. Steve cautioned her, “Careful, dear – I don’t know how well our insurance covers hip replacement.”
Joyce returned to the monitor. “She is cute. I don’t know, though – is he studying her, or the food set out behind her? Look how he’s wolfing down that cake – I don’t know how he can even taste it for worrying about what’s still on the table.”
“He looks like a clever young man – he may be trying to decide if she knows how to bake.”
Joyce said, “I don’t think she made the cake. Aren’t those crumbs of chocolate on her plate, too? Look – there’s still a slice left on the table. Is that devil’s food?”
“Devil’s food? The girl or the cake?” Steve asked. “Oh, it does look good. If that frosting were any thicker it would just slide down onto the platter. Uh oh – look, he’s turning to her. I think he’s making his move.”
“My turn to ask,” said Joyce, “His move on the girl or on the cake? Look how he’s stepping between her and the platter.”
“He wouldn’t bother to wipe his mouth if he were after more cake.”
“He is talking to her. But I don’t know,” she said. “A smooth operator like him would know that a girl could never take a second slice with someone watching her.”
Steve said, “Oh, but there’s always someone watching.” The two astrophysicists exchanged knowing smiles. “Look – what’s he saying to her?”
“Like I can hear from halfway across the universe. Well, I’ll try to read his lips. Hmm… something… look at him motion to the sky with his arm – do you think he knows he’s being watched?”
“He’s telling her that their love is written in the stars,” Steve said.
“Every boy tells every girl that,” said Joyce. “Look, she’s dropping her chin to hide a grin. She’s not buying it.”
“You’re interpreting the data too quickly. Would disbelief make her pink-up like that? Such a pretty face. But a girl who wears white to a picnic – does she look like a young rocket scientist to you? Look, look – he’s reaching for it.”
“For the cake, I hope, and not her,” said Joyce. “He’s going to leave chocolate fingerprints on anything he touches. Oh, look in the eyes of that hungry beast – he’s frightening.”
“Come here, let me put my arms around you. I won’t let that monster get you.”
“Wait,” she said, “No time for kissing. What’s he doing? See – he’s picked up the cake knife.”
“What do you think, Joyce? Are her charms so wanting that he’s taking the last piece for himself, or will the young gentleman serve it to her?
Suddenly the voice of the observatory director broke in from behind them. “Are my two senior scientists making history again.” Studying their monitor, he said, “Hmph. Billions of dollars of equipment – so powerful that it can look back almost to the beginning of time, back to the Big Bang itself – and you two use it to watch your own courtship reflected on the lakes of Vulcan.” But, seeing that there were only two glasses for toasting their success, he turned for the door.
Joyce whispered to Steve, “Oh, if we’re going to watch the Big Bang, we’ll need to recalibrate, and switch to infra-red.”
He replied, “Our theory is proven – every stolen kiss is recorded in the heavens.” As the director pulled the door to, Steve slid the drawer open again and pulled out a box of cherry cordials, adding, “Every secret chocolate, too.”
Robert C Flanders
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