![](\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_dmDaLWNETzg\/Stx5cr0qOgI\/AAAAAAAAAZg\/fbqAn0XVWz0\/s320\/Luther\")
<\/a>At boarding school I studied German in my senior year. I loved the sound of the German language, still do. Some call it harsh, rough, crude; I find it beautiful. It might be that it makes my Anglo-Saxon roots ring. (FYI, Bull is not an Italian name, nor is Heffelfinger, my grandmother\u2019s maiden name.) For some reason, whenever I studied a foreign language, I loved discovering the translations of my favorite English verses, which were more often the original <\/i>words from which \u201cmy\u201d English had been translated. In German class I learned the original German of \u201cA Mighty Fortress is Our God\u201d: Ein feste burg ist unser Gott, <\/i>a hymn written by Martin Luther (left) himself.\u00a0 <\/i>I can\u2019t remember it all now, but I\u2019m quite sure that I learned at least one full verse of this Protestant power hymn<\/a> and spent a good week or two striding around campus in the manner of cracked adolescents everywhere, beating out four-four time with my right hand and muttering the hymn to myself with a fabulous faux <\/i>German accent. It was consoling; it was, to use an overused term properly, empowering.<\/i> I still feel the power of that hymn anytime I hear it, inside or outside my head. (This version<\/a> is both grandiose and fruity enough to allow you to picture the cracked adolescent I once was.)<\/p>\nLike most boarding school students, I went home on vacation from time to time, and on these occasions, I went to Episcopal church with my parents\u2014now more as a tourist than as a native. I distinctly remember a moment that always brought me back to childhood experience of the church: when we sang the Doxology, which if I recall correctly was sung as the offertory was presented:<\/p>\n
Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow<\/a>;<\/i> Forty years later, at my father\u2019s funeral in that Episcopal church, I was brought to tears by nothing so much as by this Doxology. We did not bless ourselves, of course, when we came to the final statement of the Trinity, but I think it was this line, above any other, that led me to ponder the meaning of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (I still prefer Ghost = Geist, <\/i>a good, strong Germanic word.) <\/p>\n I took a year off during college to travel through Europe at the beginning of what became, for lack of a better term, the eastern spirituality phase of my life<\/a>. Here, in Paris, I studied French at the Alliance Fran\u00e7aise for several months, and as I had done in German class, I learned the local version of a favorite piece of devotion, in this case the Our Father. Notre p\u00e8re, qui es aux cieux, que ton nom soit sanctifi\u00e9e\u2014 <\/i>It struck me as both curious and comforting that in French one addresses God with the intimate, personal form of You\u2014tu, toi, ton, ta, tes\u2014<\/i>instead of the formal vous, v\u00f4tre. <\/i>It brings God closer. What I remember most vividly is sitting at a particular sidewalk caf\u00e9, where we often sat late into the night, silently repeating to myself, N\u00f4tre pere, qui es aux cieux . . . <\/i>It was an odd devotion in those days of studying Buddhism<\/a>, sufism, and related belief systems. But it returned to my consciousness regularly, and it strengthened me.<\/p>\n Back in college after a year off, I went through a period when the First and Greatest Commandment\u2014Though shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength\u2014<\/i>was a sort of \u201cmantra\u201d for me (again because eastern thought systems seemed more congenial in those years). It amuses me now, and also pains me, that I never seemed to move on to the Second Commandment, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. <\/i>I\u2019m still working on that one. But while I do so, God, in His full triune form, yet close enough to hug\u2014a mighty fortress and an intimate friend at the same time\u2014is here with me, from moment to moment, each time I remember. From age 15 to my mid-50s, I rarely attended church, and still I\u2019m pretty sure that God never abandoned me. Even when I found myself bobbing on an open sea without a life jacket, tiny bits of prayer and praise came to me like driftwood, like the coffin to which Ishmael clung. \u201cA Mighty Fortress […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
Praise Him, all creatures here below;<\/i>
Praise Him above, ye Heavenly Host;\u00a0<\/i>
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.<\/i><\/p>\n
<\/i><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/6738513599344023043-5594559810939554907?l=yimcatholic.blogspot.com\")