Pastor Scheifele: "I can do crisis"

Created: 04/20/2022, 13:00

By: Andrea Kästle

Pastor Stefan Scheifele spent 18 months in the war in Kosovo.

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The Schäftlarn Catholic parish association has had a new priest since last autumn.

Stefan Scheifele is a special pastor, he was a pastor in the Bundeswehr for twelve years.

And he made a non-medical practitioner for psychology.

He says: "I can do crisis."

Schäftlarn

– he got the opportunity to prove exactly that much earlier than he should have liked – when the two S-Bahn trains collided on the S7 route a few weeks ago (we reported).

Like many other pastors, Scheifele was there a few hours after the accident, cared for those affected who had been sitting in the car for hours, let them talk, listened.

A few days later, he opened a service on the subject to which he had invited his fellow Protestants Elke Söllner and Sabine Sommer, with the words: “Weeping and lamenting are already known in the Old Testament.

Whining makes suffering worse, when the believer in God complains, he lays before God what hurts him.”

Difference between whining and complaining fundamental

A few weeks later you are now sitting across from him in the rectory in Schäftlarn.

He is wearing a black T-shirt, he has trimmed his full beard and has a small earring in his left ear.

He looks at you when you talk, he answers thoughtfully.

Then just say that the difference between whining and complaining is fundamental and would generally reflect an attitude in life.

"If I keep whining, then nothing changes, the misfortune only solidifies." In the lament, which is of course not meant legally here, but "in the sense of the Wailing Wall", "I would go to the Almighty in my powerlessness".

And complain, so to speak.

"The suffering that a person experiences," Scheifele knows, "needs a place from which he, the person, can then move away".

Also on the road as a motorcyclist

The unusual clergyman, who is also a motorcyclist, says: "The saying helps me: I have to express what's bothering me before it overwhelms me." The complainer would want to change something, in contrast to the complainer, he avoids stagnation, a further development remains possible.

Which, by the way, is the better attitude towards life as a whole.

"You can forget even a relationship in which nothing is happening anymore."

18 months as a pastor in Kosovo

One can only say to all this: He must know.

As a military chaplain, now 54 years old, he not only cared for soldiers when they were on home leave.

Rather, he was there with them, at war.

He worked as a pastor in Kosovo for 18 months, and he describes the time as follows: "While we didn't know whether we would survive, people in Germany were looking for the superstar." You can tell in the conversation that he wasn't just part of the Bundeswehr (without being part of the Bundeswehr's internal hierarchy), but also felt that I belonged to the Bundeswehr.

And the fact that Germany took part in the NATO air raids on Serbia at the time without a UN mandate – that still outrages him today.

Corona should be disenchanted

Of course, with the difference between whining and complaining, that also applies in connection with the pandemic that has been with us for two years.

Stefan Scheifele says we finally have to "say goodbye to the pre-Corona period", it's about redesigning life now, i.e. with Corona: "If I want to stick to the pre-Corona habit, I prevent development .” Corona should be “disenchanted”, you have to take the “negative magical mood” from the whole thing, “nobody needs it”.

You have to prepare for the worst

And the war in Ukraine?

Are we not all at the mercy of each other?

Stefan Scheifele smiles a little, earlier he spread his hands as if he wanted to bless this meeting room, now he looks at the table and says: In such situations it has proven useful to imagine the "worst case", the worst scenario, and adjust to it.

To think, "What matters to me when everything collapses".

You arm yourself accordingly, which in no way means that you should start hoarding.

"Hamsters is a panic reaction," he says, and then says: Being prepared for supply chains collapsing might calm some people down.

He would have liked to have stayed in the Bundeswehr, but you can't work there as a pastor for more than twelve years.

And?

"I'm also happy here, in the Isar valley."