Interview by Hanna Strack

H.S: ‘Ms. Moosbach, your name used to be different. You chose a different name for yourself. Why ?

C.M.: ‘As a child I was sexually abused by my father and I always saw it as a burden to have to continue carrying his name. Later I heard that the law gives survivors of sexual abuse the option to change their names. It is particularly important to me that I am no longer forced by law to have the tattoo of my father’s name branded into me.
The name ‘Moosbach’ means ‘moss brook’. I chose it because it reminds me of healing fresh water and soft, protecting and calming moss.’

H.S.: ‘You have the gift to express the inexpressible. When did you discover that you can write - or have to write ?

C.M.: ‘Some years ago, I began to confront my childhood memories. Initially I was overwhelmed by panic and pain, and that experience left me completely speechless for some time. For me, such a silencing into speechlessness is part of the ‘murdering of the soul’ which happens through sexual violence. I began to write as part of a psychotherapy. There was a deep desire within me to break though the walls of silence of my childhood. The more I wrote, the more courage I gained. I kept wanting to push the boundaries of the unspeakable further and further, bit by bit. And right from the beginning I have had much support from others around me.

H.S. ‘You write: ‘Miracles are possible with God; perhaps she is breathing your pain into flowers of hope.’ Do you see God as your ally ?’

C.M.: ‘Yes, God is my ally. Of that I am deeply convinced and I experience it particularly when I feel paralysed and bereft of courage. Without this strength behind me I would have given up a long time ago.
The stories in the Bible also speak about God taking sides for all who are oppressed and deprived of their rights. The Bible describes them as those who are ‘last’ and shall be ‘first’. A Relationship with God became possible for me when I became able to push the ‘patriarchal idol’ of an ‘almighty father’ from the throne. This image had made not me but my father into God’s ally and I had decided very early that I did not want anything to do with such a God. Today I believe that God is the ally of the victims and not of the perpetrators, and always has been. I once read a sentence that each rape is a boot-kick into the face of God.

H.S.: ‘You write (I almost want to say: you speak and cry) prayers, lamentations, praise and thanksgiving, blessings and curses. Is writing merely therapeutic, or is it not also much more - an experience of God ?

C.M.: ‘Especially in the beginning writing was primarily therapy for me. What is special about writing prayers is, however, that I am not writing, lamenting or praising into the void, but that I can always relate to the mysterious and yet very close ‘you’ which we call God. Towards this ‘you’ I can speak out everything, even the most unspeakable horrors, without falling into a nameless void.
That I could develop this trust and that I can experience this being carried through by God again and again, is a miracle for me. The relationship with God which has grown through this experience is very, very deep. It is very real for me and yet completely incomprehensible. It is love.’

H.S.: ‘May I come back to the traumatic experiences of your childhood: how does it happen that victims are turned into perpetrators, that the girl is called ‘tart’ and ‘slut’?’

C.M.: ‘Perpetrators always try to shift the blame onto their victims. In doing so, they try to flee from their own responsibility for their crimes. Unfortunately some Biblical texts and their conventional theological interpretations have contributed to such strategies. I see one such example in the story of Lot and his daughters. The two daughters are presented as having seduced their own father. Through such an interpretation the father does more or less appear as not guilty of the incest which has happened. In addition to that, the incest appears as more or less acceptable anyway.
The story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise has repeatedly been used to describe women as the ‘gateway of evil’ and the symbol of sinfulness.’

H.S.: ‘Your texts are breathtaking - will you continue to write? I was most impressed by your prayer ‘Communion’. I guess that when you speak about the ‘living God’ you speak about God, but also about my life. God is alive within me.’

C.M.: I have just completed a third collection of poems. The book will be called Traces of Heaven and will also be published in English in February 2002. My concern in this collection, as it was in the first two books, is to develop a lively and nurturing language about God. Criticism of conventional and one-sidedly male images of God within the tradition alone does not satisfy, as much justification as there is for it. Maybe my experiments with this new God-language will help others to address God as an ally and to experience her as such. I would be very happy about that. And so would God, wouldn’t she?’

Worship of Live, No 20
Summer 2001
Stainer & Bell, London

Translation by Giles and Natalie K. Watson

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