Berlin's Eden

I read 4 other peoples' blog posts this morning. I love blogs. I love reading them. But, as much as I like to write, this is hard for some reason. I've noticed people blog about their families. My family is thousands of miles away. I know I make up for it by living in one of the coolest places on Earth . . . but still . . . I never know what people care to read about.

Yesterday was interesting though, so here goes . . .

There are very few of our "people" (how the local church refers to it's own) in Berlin right now due to the nation-wide 6 weeks of summer vacation. Almost everyone is somewhere else, soaking in the sun and dreading returning and resuming work and school. So for the 10 or so teenagers that are here and struggling with the I'm-stuck-in-Berlin-with-nothing-to-do-and-school-starts-soon blues, I took them on an outing yesterday. We went to Britzer Garten, a 90 acre park in Berlin's southwest region known as Neukoelln. I've been reading all about Adam and Eve and Eden in "By His Name" (see previous post) and I tell you, I felt like I was in a virtual Eden yesterday. There were beautiful meadows as far as the eye could see, full of fruit trees in full bloom. As you walked further through the garden, there were giant play areas for children . . . the most attractive playgrounds I've ever seen with pyramids to climb, hopscotch, water spewing from sprinklers onto giant rocks that kids were jumping to and from. No typical swings and slides at this park. So much imagination! A cute little train ran rumbled it's way through all of this once an hour.

And, the meadows were full of lounge chairs! We didn't have to bring our own or sit on the ground on a blanket. Our teens found a cluster of 15 or so chairs and for a while we just sat and ate. Then, they wanted to play Ulimate Frisbee, so we did that for close to an hour. Even I played! And, of course, (for those of you who know me, this won't surprise you) I fell. Hard. When I got home that night I had bruises all up and down my right leg. But, I caught the frisbee in the end zone and scored! The kids were shocked and I got a round of high fives. ;-)

After the game, two 19-year-old guys that are here visiting (Mitch and James) shared their testimonies and talked to the kids briefly about their commitment to purity. Later that night, one of the kids created an album on Facebook entitled the "Purity Picnic". I laughed out loud. That was not the official name of the outing.

At the end, right before everyone took off, our group attacked an apple tree. They were bound and determined to get the tree to relinquish all of it's ripe fruit. They climbed the tree, climbed each other to get to the higher branches, chucked rotten apples at the ripe fruit to get them to fall and chucked rotten apples at each other until several people had apple-sized welts. The apple tree afforded the most entertainment of anything in the giant park. It caused me to imagine Adam and Eve trying to get to the fruit of the trees in the Garden of Eden. Did they have to try? Did they climb the trees? Did Eve balance precariously on Adam's shoulders to try to reach it? Who knows, maybe she was on Adam's shoulders when she ate the forbidden fruit. Everybody always muses, "Where was Adam when Eve ate the fruit?" He might've been right there helping her get it down!