Cornerstone No. 183, page 16
Who’s new in the pew
Karma Fussell
My name is Karma Fussell and I was born in Schenectady, New York State. I
don’t sound like I was born in upstate New York though, because when I was
18 months old, my parents packed me up and moved to Montana, where I lived
until I went off to university. Montana can be rural in a way many Europeans
cannot really fathom: the entire state is
the size of Germany with less than a
million people in it. The city of Missoula
where I grew up is one of its biggest
cities with 60,000 people and a
university. My parents still live there and
I go back occasionally to visit.
Montana was a great place to grow up,
but by the time I was 18, I was keen to
see what the rest of the world had to
offer. I moved out of my parents’ house
to university (Biochemistry), and have
kept on moving and trying new things
ever since. After my degree, I worked
for a biotech company in Boston (the US
one), which led to (post-)graduate
studies in Toxicology in central New
Jersey. Finding it difficult to find gainful
employment as a scientist in posteconomic-meltdown USA, I moved to
Germany for 3 years. I found that I liked
living in Europe, so when my contract ended I found a position working in Food
Safety for Nestlé. I now live in Lausanne with my Suisse-Romand cat, spending
many of my non-working hours trying out my Pidgin-French on my poor
neighbors in Chailly.
I love the mountains here in Switzerland; they remind me of home and provide
me with ample opportunities to ski. I’ve been a Presbyterian and a skier just
about all my life. I’m probably closest to God when I’m gliding along on the
slopes, away from other people and the stresses of ordinary life. At least until
I fall over, at which point the bruised body reminds my bruised ego of my need
for salvation. It turns out that skiing is a pretty decent theological metaphor for
life and a lesson that I’m still learning, season after season.
Karma Fussell