we are between the years

gifts, challenges, and hopes

Dec 31, 2024

Welcome back readers, and welcome, new readers –

On the Bruderhof we use the expression “between the years” to describe the week between Christmas and New Year (a quick search on Google tells me that we adopted the phrase “zwischen den Jahren” from Germany). It’s a time for continued celebration of Christmas, for reflection, for sleeping in, for emptying the fridge of leftovers and usually – at least in the Hudson Valley – for some skating.

Before 2025 gets underway, we’re taking a moment to look back to 2024 and remember some of the gifts and challenges from this past year, as well as looking forward to the new year. We’d be happy to hear yours as well!

Marianne – in Woodcrest, upstate New York

Gift. This past year included a lot of good things, but the most spectacular was travelling in September (with Kent and our two oldest sons) to the site at 4700 feet elevation in the Liechtenstein Alps where a Bruderhof community existed from 1934 – 1938. I wrote about the improbable and exciting story of how this community came to be in an article “The School that Escaped to the Alps” in Plough Quarterly, where I also described the commemorative event we attended there. This was an opportunity for our church to thank the people and government of Liechtenstein (represented at the event by its Prince Nikolaus) for welcoming 100 penniless refugees at a politically perilous time. Researching the article and piecing together the many seeming coincidences – together with many acts of bravery, courage, and generosity – which allowed all the members of our community to first find refuge in Liechtenstein and then safely leave Europe before World War II gave me much to think about: what today we recount as an adventurous story was day-to-day life for people who didn’t know how the story would end, and certainly didn’t know that ninety years later their descendants would return to remember those eventful years.

Music in the Alps provided by Kent, Sue, and Asenath at the commemorative event. This was exactly as beautiful as it looks.

I thought more about how history reaches into the present when we travelled on to Keilhau, the village in Thuringia where my grandmother was born. Although it’s tiny, with only about 100 residents, Keilhau is notable as the site where Friedrich Froebel, the inventor of the kindergarten, built a school to practice his progressive educational ideas: respect for each child as an individual, and a strong belief in the importance of free play in nature. The woods around the school are still full of cabins and campsites built by Keilhau students as extended projects.

The village of Keilhau. The big central building is the school.

My grandmother’s family (Froebel was her great-uncle) operated the Keilhau school during the years she was growing up – at that time it was a boys’ school, and I always enjoyed the group picture showing her as the only girl student.

My sons standing by a Keilhau memorial to their great-great grandfather Otto Wächter, a beloved principal of the school who died unexpectedly when my grandmother was 12.

The school is still running today with around 400 students from first to tenth grade, many referred from challenging backgrounds by social services. We were shown around by my friend Else who has worked there for over a decade, and it was a delight to hear the voices of children playing in the same courtyards and meadows where children have been playing for well over a century.

Several years ago I spent many hours reading about Keilhau and its history when I edited a book of my grandmother’s writing (Anni: Letters and Writings of Annemarie Wächter). Her happy childhood there is a part of the story told in that book, but even while she loved her home and admired the work of the Keilhau school, her search as a young adult for a “fixed point” – her shorthand for absolute truth – led her to a life of committed discipleship at the Bruderhof – and within a few years, to participating as a teacher in the story of “The School that Escaped to the Alps”. She and my grandfather were engaged and married at the Liechtenstein community before their story continued with a wedding day escape to England – a story for another post.

Challenge. With violent conflicts continuing around the world, a challenge of this past year has been to continually remember through prayer the suffering and fear of children. I know what relatively small fears can create terrible anxiety for my younger children who are secure, loved, and constantly cared for, and I pray for all the children who live amidst real fears and dangers.

As for 2025, I’m happy to look forward to whatever surprises and challenges it may hold.

Trudi – in Spring Valley, southwest Pennsylvania

This is a challenge: how do I sift through a year as full as 2024 and come up with just one gift and one challenge?

January 2024 saw me four months back from Korea and still adjusting to life in Pennsylvania. A visa-less existence (I’m American) and no plans beyond today made me uneasy. For two years in Korea, I had always had a visa expiration date before me. That gave me a strange security simply because it was a fixed point in time. Now I felt like I was traveling without a destination. It was the same feeling I’d had after college graduation. Now what?

The gift I received in 2024 was a new understanding that God alone is our security. We don’t need a timeline or a destination. He’s got it. He is guiding our lives even when we least feel it and prayers seem to have gone unanswered. In the meantime, we can get through each day if we’re willing to recognize and receive the little signs of love He sends. And all He asks is that we trust Him.

The challenge of 2024 was learning the above. I am still learning to let go and rest in God’s plan for 2025 and beyond. One of my greatest joys has been to talk with friends, old and new, and find that we are all learning to entrust the future to God. Now I look forward to a surprising new year—365 days to be lived one at a time.

Norann - in Danthonia, New South Wales, Australia

A gift: there were many gifts of 2024, a number of which I’ve shared about here (watching my husband and his 80-years-young Mom produce Our Town, having one son finish university and another get engaged, welcoming our neighbors’ newborn, the deepening of old friendships and meeting new friends, etc.) but two visuals stand out as unexpected gifts I’m carrying forward: Wineglass Bay, Tasmania, and Mount Cook, New Zealand.

I can recall both without effort, and instantly I am standing in front of those wonders, watching the scoop of coast and curve of cloud, feeling the icy breeze, hearing the glaciers drip, and praising the design of our Creator who called it good.

A challenge: carrying the pain of world conflicts where women and children are at the coalface of the suffering. It’s a challenge I want to take with me into the new year, as I never want to feel inured to ongoing violence, and, as my friends at World Vision say, I want to let my heart break over the things that break the heart of God.

Like Trudi, I am looking forward to the gift of a new year – to the surprises, the lessons, the growth, the setbacks, the increased understanding. May love abound in the places we least expect it, and may obstacles become opportunities for kingdom-building.

Things we’re doing and enjoying

Norann

It’s really been the year of Our Town for our family. Right now, I’m enjoying hearing about the Broadway production from our Year 12 son, Derek, who watched the play this week at the Barrymore Theater in New York City just six months after being in his grandmother’s production of the play in Australia.

I’ve listened to him describe every detail of the set, stage, lighting, costumes, delivery, lines left out (his, as it turns out – there were no baseball players before the wedding), and other nuances to his grandmother who was just thrilled for him to have an authentic Broadway experience….especially with Our Town.

Featuring Jim Parsons from The Big Bang Theory, this current iteration of Wilder’s play is being hailed as the Our Town for our time. (Derek did allow as he kept expecting Jim to deliver a few Sheldonisms, but no...he was the Stage Manager throughout.)

The themes of this play are perfect ones to take into the new year - as the character of Emily Webb asks us, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?”

Trudi

The writings of Elisabeth Elliot, Henri Nouwen, Corrie Ten Boom, and others have been a great help and inspiration to me this past year. I wanted to share thoughts from Elisabeth Elliot. Her words encouraged me as often as I read them:

There is only one classroom in which to learn: