Caught in my body

We need it every day, to live, to survive, and to stay independent - our body. We need our legs and feet to walk, our hands to do something, to grab something. But what would you do if you lose the control of your body? When others do these things for you? They feed you, they take you out of bed, they move you from one point to the other? This can happen when you get older, and weaker. When your body doesn’t want anymore what you want. But it can happen to all of us at every moment of our lives.

You maybe remember that once I wrote about Samuel Koch who had an accident on a German TV show and since then he’s paraplegic. He wanted to jump over moving cars with special jumping stilts. He did this for several years, he loved that and never had anything happened. But in the show he fell, and even surgery couldn’t cure him. He is now working on his acting career, praying a lot and keeps asking why this had to happen to him. The accident happened in December 2010. He is now 25 years old. But he doesn’t stop fighting, life goes on.

So this can happen to all of us, at any time. An accident, a disease, and then from one moment to the other we need someone to take care of us. Some people are unable to move from the start of their life. Their families have to take care of them. Be there 24/7. What kind of life is this? I heard about a man named Mark O’Brien, a poet, paralyzed from the neck down due to polio. Last year there was movie called “The Sessions” made about him and his life. How must it be like, when you are unable to do anything on your own? When you are just lying in your bed? At least he can talk to people, but he can’t touch them. The touch is the most important sense we have, we can’t survive without love and without touching and being touched.

It starts when you are a baby. You love it when your parents hold you in your arms. This is the only way to let you fall asleep. You need the touch when your Mom changes your diapers, or feed you. Through all your life, touches are the main things you need. It shows that there is someone who loves you and takes care of you. In these days we live right now, people don’t wanna show love that much, don’t wanna share it that much anymore. We touch others less than a few years ago, but this doesn’t mean that we don’t need it. And especially not that we don’t want it, does it?

But imagine you just can’t touch the person you love? As much as you want to, you simply can’t? Or you can’t do anything when you don’t like to be touched by someone? How would you feel? When I read about the movie, I have to admit I haven’t seen it yet, these questions popped up in my mind. It must be like you’re trapped in your own body. When you can’t control it, can’t tell it what you want to do. It must be very hard and I guess we should think about this more often. Think about how lucky we are, that we can use our body the way we want to, that we have the chance to touch the people we love, and that we are not completely and utterly at somebody’s mercy.

Watch here the official trailer of “The Sessions”

Pope Chuck, P.I.

Do you think about our new Pope? Who could it be? What country could he come from? Can you imagine Chuck Lorre as new Pope (despite the fact he’s Jewish)? Do you even care who’s gonna be the next Pope?
The Catholic Church was often discussed in the past years, not every time it was about good things. I am Catholic, and I am a believer but there are some things I simply don’t get. Why not equal rights for everyone? Why should a woman not have a chance to be Pope? I am sure she can do that, too. A few years ago, when only men were doing politics, some of them might have smiled, or laughed when a lady dared to say something, dared to have an opinion. But these women proved that they can also do that, and now men and women work together. And it works.

Within the next weeks the Cardinals will decide who will be the next Pope, after Benedict XVI retired. Saturday Night Live already showed him how he could spend his retirement. Christoph Waltz did a good job representing him. I simply love this, and if you haven't seen it, you can watch it here.

Even Chuck Lorre wrote in his vanity card  #409 about the Pope. Who might be the next? And how does “Pope Cuck” sound like? Could this be possible? This man has proved that he can do a lot, so why not Pope? At least he could write, like he suggested on his VC, a new sitcom called "Pope Chuck, P.I." (Kiss the ring, or get punched by it!). I laughed so much, when I read this. This man would definitely bring fun to the church, and help it to finally arrive in the 21^st century. Because sometimes it still seems that the church is stuck in the medieval times. There are people like Homer Simpsons who go to church every week (I know that he is Protestant, but anyway he's a good example, and by the way I don't think that there are that big differences between Catholics, Protestants and Jewish people), but he doesn't like it much because he doesn’t wanna hear what happened 2,000 years ago. That’s history. It should be more modern, tell us why the stories back then are still important in our everyday life. Some points of view just have to be changed or updated, because the times have changed, too.

Don't get me wrong, I don't wanna complain, I just wanna say that some things should be reconsidered. Like in some cases there can’t be a strict yes or no. There was a discussion about abortion and that the Church is totally against it. I support this, no doubt, every life is worth to live and I probably wouldn't, couldn't do that to my unborn child if I’d be pregnant. But what if a girl was raped? What if she was the victim and doesn’t want to be reminded of what happened to her? Can you just say ‘no’? Or don't allow her to take the morning-after pill, right after it happened? (Like in Germany, when a woman went to two Catholic hospitals but both sent her away without treatment, because they couldn't give her the pill)
Isn’t it the Church that says, everyone has his free will? Sure that the kid can’t do anything for what happened, he or she already lives before he/she is born and is a wanted child of the Lord. But what is about the free will of the mother? Okay, this might be an extreme case, but sometimes such cases are needed to show that there cannot always be a strict yes or no.
And why can cardinals and priests not marry? Why can’t women become priests? Why can’t gay people marry? Isn’t there this one sentence in the Bible that every person is equal?

Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

St. Peter's Dome -
picture by David Ohmer

No, it really doesn’t matter who will be the next Pope. It’s not on me to decide. I can understand Benedict XVI that he feels too weak to do this job anymore. He did a good job, and hey, he’s the first Pope tweeting. What a progress! I do believe the Pope will be heard and is still very important – and so the whole world is interested, like back in 2005, who will be the next one. So we wait till the white smoke will come from the chimney. The next Pope won’t be Christoph Waltz, and Chuck Lorre mentioned many reasons why even he can’t do that (and by the way: that man is busy enough, and we can’t let him do everything!). But whoever is gonna be our next Pope, he’ll remind us that the most important things in life are timeless and priceless, and love always wins over hate. We are all one in Christ Jesus. May God bless you.

You can read Chuck Lorre’s vanity card about “Pope Chuck”, and all the others he wrote, on his website.

Geeky Germans

Most people think that Germans are anything else but geeky, or funny or crazy. I realized that once more when I watched this week’s episode of Community, in which Jeff and the study group fought against the “evil Germans”. I have to say I laughed a lot about this, because mostly it is true. But Germans can be funny, they just often hide it. I can’t really say why. There are comedians in Germany and some are very funny, like Anke Engelke. She is smart, can act, sing and is simply hilarious. She’s also the German voice of Marge Simpsons. There might not be many funny Germans on TV, there are no German sitcoms, at least I don’t know one, and only one guy called Stefan Raab who’s having a late night talk show. The “heute show” is a funny news show, which can be a slightly bit compared to SNL. It’s just all about the news and politics, but very well made and very funny.

But Stefan Raab is the man of German Comedy. Whatever he does, it becomes a success. Many guys tried to do a late night show, but all of them failed. He does his show named “TV total” since 1999, which can be compared to Craig Ferguson, Jimmy Fallon or Conan O’Brien. But Raab also has many other shows right now, like the Poker Nights, in which he plays poker with 4 other guys, or he combines boxing matches with trivia. After each round of boxing, there comes a round of trivia, so it’s not only about a man’s strength. In the show “Schlag den Raab” (Beat the Raab) people can apply on the internet to be contestants of the show and fight against Stefan Raab. If they compete against him and get more points than him, which means they win more rounds, they win money. The largest amount someone took home was 3.5 Mio € (about 4.5 Mio $). The games can be any kind of sports like hockey or basketball, some games of skill like stacking cups, or answering trivia questions.

But the first thing he did beside “TV total” was the WOK WM. Since 2003 this championship (= Weltmeisterschaft in German, or short "WM") is a big TV event and every year it gets bigger. I guess you know that a WOK is an Asian pan. But Raab doesn’t cook with it, so it might sound that is a cooking competition, but it is not. He sits in the WOK and uses it as a sleigh. If that’s not geeky, I don’t know what is, or at least it’s some kinda crazy. But it works. People from 11 different countries start this year. There’s a single and a team competition, every team consists of 4 people. So they sit in their WOKs, and glide down the ice track which is normally for real sleighs. Stefan Raab proves very well that Germans can be funny, too, if only they want to.

I’m gonna watch the WOK WM tonight, it’s always fun to watch, and in my mind the best event of the year on German TV. That you can understand better what I am talking about, I found a video on youtube showing a man who works for a German radio station and did such a "WOK ride": 

Do you like sleigh riding, and have you ever considered using a WOK to do that? Would you like to sit in one and do a “WOK ride”?