Belief in the Present
One of the first pieces the Diasporist ever published was an essay by Millay Hyatt about her experience growing up as the child of Moravian missionaries, caught between languages, homelands, and religious inheritance. “I rejected this faith and all its cultural trappings as a young adult; I will probably be at the task of eradicating it from my mind and body for the rest of my life,” Hyatt writes. “If I’m from anywhere, I’m from this religion, which I have intentionally and actively turned my back on.”
The publication of this piece sparked a debate among our editorial team. In Germany, Christianity maintains an outsized presence in shaping public and political life. And yet, there is far less attention paid to the individual experience inside that collective. Hyatt’s piece showed one face of this experience, but how does faith act as a personal marker rather than a social one?
In Belief in the Present, the theologian Julia Koll approaches this question from a private register. Koll describes prayer as an embodied practice that can connect disparate moments in time while allowing for a sustained attention to the present moment. This is not the cultural Christianity that shapes German society or the values emphasized by politicians, but instead a daily, personal discipline that places no demands on the state and remains largely absent from public discourse.
This essay offers a vision of religious practice that engages in how people actually live rather than how their institutions vote. Koll doesn’t argue for belief, but rather offers an account of presence.
The belief in the Present, not doctrines, is braided into the very fabric of my religion. It weaves together texts and I, too, am a thread. I read. I breathe. Times layer themselves upon one another; those thought to be past continue to have an effect. Those set opposite come alive. To resonate within this interwovenness sets salvation free. In this I believe.
One Present: Müllheim an der Ruhr, 1728, early morning. A slender young man sits in front of his cabin. His keeps his eyelids closed and lifts his face toward the sky, just as I am doing now. At this hour, it is still quiet, even within him. It was not always so. Gerhard Tersteegen, from a solid, respectable family, was supposed to become a merchant like his father. But the money, the hustle and bustle, the noise of the markets was too loud for him. Instead, he became a weaver of silk ribbons. That left him more time for prayer and reading. In the end, he sold the loom as well and followed his heart, that urging which would not cease. He was awakened. Now he is known as a poet, an itinerant preacher, even a healer. He dries herbs and mixes medicines. At thirty-one, his back is already bent. He lives on almost nothing; he has devoted himself to Jesus. As he stands up and steps across the threshold of his cabin, a new verse comes to mind. He quickly writes it down: God is present. Let us worship and bow down before him. God is in the midst. Let all within us be silent. And bow down before him most humbly.
Another present: Somewhere in Macedonia, perhaps in Philippi or Thessalonica, around the year 55 AD. Paul, a tentmaker by trade, but occupied for decades now in spreading and defending the Christian faith, writes a letter to various churches in Asia Minor. At this point, it has been over twenty years since his own life was radically altered. He has described this in detail elsewhere. Here, only the short version, the essence of it all: I live, yet it is no longer I, but Christ who lives in me. It was when Paul fell to his knees before the gates of Damascus, blinded by a blazing light. And when he heard a voice from heaven so overwhelming that he could not eat or drink for three days. When it became clear to him that the persecution of the Christians had been a grave mistake. And when, in those very days and nights, he became a new person, it was then he experienced a change of sovereignty. What had previously ruled him — his zeal, his self-assurance, his rage — died within him and made room. Now Christ fills him; he had made him whole.
I worry about myself, about my friend and her marriage. I see before me burning forests, shot-up houses; I hear the lamentations. I think: we really must buy a camping stove and canned food, just in case.
And my present. For example, last August, at Bursfelde Abbey on the Weser. The sun beats down from the sky. I am signed up for five days of what is called contemplative retreat. The program is simple: We are silent and we sit, and sitting means we kneel on cushions or small benches in a large circle. We breathe in and out, each on our own, and sit there, doing nothing else, without stimulus, without music. For half an hour, then another, and sometimes even another. Why am I doing this? It’s stiflingly hot, outside and inside. My lower back aches, and sometimes my neck too. And yet: there is no more fruitful way to discover everything that is within me. I worry about myself, about my friend and her marriage. I see before me burning forests, shot-up houses; I hear the lamentations. I think: we really must buy a camping stove and canned food, just in case. Memories surface. Tears over old wounds I didn’t realize were still festering. Fleeting thoughts. Fatigue. Hard-heartedness. Dullness. A craving for watermelon and salami sandwiches. But after a few days, boredom, emptiness. It grows quieter within me.
During my lunch break, I sit by the carp pond. The carp are just as hot as I am. They swim close to the surface, gasping for oxygen. I sit in the side and watch them. In the bushes beside the bench, a little white wagtail is resting. I lean against a poplar tree and breathe: Jesus. Christ. I no longer know what is inside me; I have lost track of everything in the midst of all the silence. I am simply there. I pray: Jesus. Christ. It fills me up, for the moment. When the back pain returns, I try to sound my way through it. One exhalation: Jesus. The next: Christ. And again from the beginning. After a while, these words permeate everything and connect monastery, seat cushion, carp pond.
This is the Prayer of the Heart, also known as the Jesus Prayer. A practice one and a half millennia old, perhaps even older. Rooted in the monastic traditions of the Eastern Church, on Mount Athos and elsewhere. Rediscovered and popularized in Russia at the end of the 19th century. Originally linked to a longer mantra: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me,” and, in the case of experts, even synchronized with the heartbeat.
I no longer remember exactly where and when I first encountered this prayer. In any case, it has returned to me time and again. Jesus. Christ. To this day, every day. As a Protestant, I feel free even in religious matters to look everywhere and gather what is fitting and tested by time. Yet Christ is my plumb line, the icon that looks at me; his name is more than a cherished habit. By naming him, I instantly summon everything I have ever heard about him, from Bethlehem to Golgotha, and what followed, the healings and the miracles, the words and apparitions, early and late theologies. My confession lies in the tenderness that hums around my solar plexus when I breathe Jesus. Christ. I carry this story faithfully within me; I am woven into it. Even if name and form ultimately remain a mystery. The I am. Something incomprehensible. The salvation of the world. Life. A placeholder in a foreign tongue.
Is that an invocation or an incantation? A protective spell? I let one present flow into another.
I have spoken this prayer on operating tables, in turbulence on transatlantic flights, in moments of grief, in deep pain. But now it is not me. When I don’t know what to do, I breathe and hum Jesus along with it and breathe again, Christ. When I hear the news and feel I am about to lose my composure I let out a brief groan and breathe. Christ lives in me. Is that an invocation or an incantation? A protective spell? I let one present flow into another. I breathe Jesus Christ into myself, into this present moment, the history of salvation into the horror. Not me, but what makes me breathe. That is the smallest possible practice of discipleship. It is not all that needs to be done, but it is the foundation.
Mülheim again, that cabin by the river. Today the sky remains cloudy. It is a perfectly normal workday; Gerhard is tired. Next week he is supposed to hand in the little book of songs, that is what he agreed with the publisher, and a title has already been decided: “Spiritual Flower Garden of Intimate Souls.” He needs the money. The roof is leaking, and endless porridge is dampening his spirits. As soon as he receives his pay, he’ll treat himself to a salami sandwich and invite his neighbors for a glass of wine. One hymn still needs a conclusion. He looks out the window into the dull light, and before he knows it, the verse is written: “Air that fills all things, in which we always float, the foundation and life of all things. Sea without bottom or end, wonder of all wonders, I sink down into you. I in you, you in me, let me disappear completely, to see and find only you.”
Here and now: no change of dominion, no story of withdrawal. I am no apostle, no weaver of silk ribbons, at most a tired, minor imitator. I only read and breathe.
