What Sleep Can Do
We’ve been in Copenhagen almost a week, and last night I had my first decent night of sleep in I don’t know how long. It’s amazing what sleep can do to one’s outlook, as well as finding one’s circadian rhythms slowly settling into step with the time of a place.
Yes, we’ve done a move like this so many times, but it is not true that one gets used to “moving around a lot” just by doing it. What you do get used to is enduring the discomforts with a steely stoicism and also noticing and savoring the respites when they come, as they surely do.
We got ourselves to church on Sunday. Having rolled in new to so many places, we know not to expect too much and remind ourselves that new places and people don’t replace “old” precious places or people. We prioritized visiting a church where we had a name to drop, a bridge through which to make connections to others. A friend of ours attended this church before moving away not long ago. So even though they are no longer there, having their name unlocked even bigger smiles and hellos to us than we would have received.
But we didn’t need that name. The church was incredibly open and hospitable; that was palpable. The whole service felt like a giant dollop of God’s love, every word pulsating with meaning, color, and depth, even if every last bit of it felt alien and new. We didn’t know what to do at all. Even the liturgical “passing of the peace” was completely different than any we had experienced before. We sat far in the back to give us time to observe how things were done. We used available headphones to listen to an English translation of the Danish service.
The church building was beautiful, both in its distinguished older brick architecture, but also in the grace notes of small attention: all along the center aisle, tall votive-width hurricane lamps held lit taper candles on odd pew ends, while even pew ends held little vases of pink roses. Pillar candles placed in satisfyingly non-symmetrical ways adorned the niches behind the altar. The Lutheran priest wore thick black glasses, a long, nearly Billy Goat’s Gruff style goatee beard, and an enormous clerical “ruff,” that is unique to Northern European clerical practice. The exterior of the building was tagged with graffiti, which I found oddly comforting, a little hat-tip to our Berlin days. As we mentioned our friend’s name to the priest at the end of the service, he replied, with a warm smile of recognition, “AH! They said you might come! Welcome!”
After the service, the whole congregation, visitors and all, moved to a fellowship hall area where we had coffee, juice, and baked goods. A fellowship snack does its reliable weaving magic wherever offered, whether here over baked treats, or at our dear church back in Northern Virginia over single-serve bags of popcorn and Goldfish crackers. Our oldest, heading to college in about a week, drank coffee and dined on a lingonberry and whipped cream cake treat. Our middle child and I each enjoyed an almond-covered and almond-paste stuffed croissant, and our youngest savored a thick slice of chocolate cake. “Honestly, it’s not quite as sumptuous as this spread every Sunday, but we always have something,” a new acquaintance said to me as we waited in line. “This after-service gathering is as much the reason I come every week as for the service.” It was gratifying to meet new people. I know we’ll be back, and both feasts — both the Lord’s Supper and the baked goods — drew us more deeply into Jesus’s love and life and to others’ too.
Sleep helps, but so does a lot of integrated exercise. We will be carless for quite some time, and while we’re taking public transit here and there, we’re also walking a lot. The walking is sorting me out so much, and I’m enjoying feeling the pleasant familiarity that inevitably forms to certain streets, shops, and landmarks as we pass by them regularly.
On Sunday, we walked in drizzles from the church after the service to the main City Hall square, remembering our 2018 visit to Copenhagen from Berlin, with the kids running young and amok across the plaza. This time around, we stood in the rain, marveling that we were back, older, and now as residents. The rain showers were increasing, growing steadier and then turning into a true torrent. Still, we walked on, each of us clutching an umbrella, and sloshing with confident courage through the waves, not minding that we were getting soaked.
Perhaps you’d like an update about the toilet. Thank you all for your humorous commiseration about it. Yes, sleep and walking are helping my outlook, but so did writing about the blasted commode. We’ve discovered that what I presumed was a prominent branding feature on the back of the toilet is a sensor — ha! Its mode of surveillance! (Indeed, the kids have assured me that they all knew that that was a sensor the minute they got here, and they tried to tell you about this, Mom!) But, with a slender square of toilet paper covering that sensor, we can render the toilet neutralized, lulling its automation into slumber, like how a leather hood calms a hunting falcon. It no longer opens its maw at us as we walk near it, menacing and flicking its lid at us. I no longer try to hold its mouth shut with my heavy toiletry bag. So, it is calmer, and so are we, thanks to a week’s worth of living, more walking, a bit more writing and, thanks be to God, a truly good night’s sleep.