You discover the less confident man in letters to his friend and biographer Eberhard Bethge. In these letters he speaks of being unable to catch his breath, reciting hymns and scripture to gain composure; of suicidal thoughts, once; of sexual longings, although this discussion is highly intellectualized; of being tempted to sleep late, rather than rise on schedule, do calisthenics, and write.

Throughout the world there remain prisoners of conscience. I pray for them. I pray for their release. I pray for a better world.

******************************************

The death of Osama bin Ladin. I support the President’s decision to get him, and applaud the courage of the SEALs and others involved.

Commenting on “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he states: “Suffering willingly endured is stronger than evil, it spells death to evil.” (A Testament to Freedom, p. 317)

I keep always in view this icon:

Christ the Redeemer by Andrei Rublev, ca. 1410

In his book To Behold the Beauty of the Lord Henri Nouwen commented that the damage to the icon (by the preeminent Russian iconographer) symbolized for him the suffering of the Lord.

In reading a book for my Sunday School discussion group (via Skype!) I came across the notion of “a mellow spirit” being one of the pillars of healthy spiritual life. I like it. We can become so overwhelmed with the sunami of sorrow that we cannot let go and simply be in the joy of the Lord.

For me, though, it’s not mellowness that I lack. It’s willingness to deny self, take up the cross, and follow. So, I’m praying in the simple everyday things I will obey. Bonhoeffer insists “Only the believers obey and only the obedient believe.”

God help me to Trust and Obey!

i squint at the white computer screen,
lay down a pale blue background
easy on the eyes.
my friend’s cancer has come back.
his cancer has come back.
to get reports
i sign up for facebook.
my inbox fills up with messages from friends
confirming me a friend.

two years ago before Jerry May died
(i didn’t know)
he said Taoist-like: anymore
in his individual life
he couldn’t tell for sure
a good thing from a bad thing.
cancer brought him closer to God
and to his family.
the chemo that did away
with his cancer damaged his heart.
so, waiting for a transplant,
he wrote about the dark night,
a gentle time when lovers meet.
he couldn’t tell for sure
a good thing from a bad thing
anymore.

Dietrich the nazis strangled with a wire
for spoking the third reich wheel
april 9. may 8 germany surrendered.
now, Dietrich, can you tell a good thing
from a bad thing?
now are there no bad things?
at golgotha God spoked death.

Taoists say anymore
they can’t tell a bad thing
from a good thing.
I can, still.

like a billiardball a greenball my tv screensaver
bounces off the edges of the screen.
the clocks keep ticking their duet.
God, if only you could save life
as easily as a tv screen.
4:25 a.m.

I come more and more to believe the Western idolizing of the rugged individual, the Marlboro man, is pathological. My friend Jean-Emile Ngué suggested that Buber ought to have a category, not simply of I-Thou, but  of

We-Thou.

The more I think about it, the more profound my brother’s insight strikes me.

The incarnation of Christ continues in the community he founded: the Church. Not the political entities such as the Southern Baptist Convention or the Roman Catholic Church. These are instances of the Church. But the whole, the mystical reality of all who are in Christ is the Church.

Preferential option for the poor

I watched a Paulist film Romero, with Raul Julia in the title role. Oscar Romero was a bookish, conservative mouse who was elevated to Archbishop of El Salvador in the late 1970s. His priests were involved in the liberation theology movement. He was killed by an assassin in 1980, while saying mass in a small chapel of a cancer hospital.

Right-wing elements of the government opposed the people’s growing demands for free elections, full voting rights, education, and land reform. Romero recognized the power of his radio addresses and became the voice of the poor. He wrote the U.S. President Jimmy Carter, asking that the U.S. stop selling arms to El Salvador. Carter eventually did stop, I think; Reagan resumed the sales under the banner of defeating Communists.

In the German Peasants’ War 1524 Luther faced demands of the poor for such things as open grazing rights, and the right to choose their own pastor. Luther, sadly, sided with the powerful German princes who protected him from the Pope.

The Anabaptists, whom I consider my forebears, were among these people.

In the American Colonies Baptists rocked along, not making headway until the Revolution. Then, Baptists sided with the revolutionaries. Baptist numbers swelled.

Fear words: liberal, communist, terrorist

All this to say that we as Christians need to be wary of cries such as “Terrorists!” Is our government pursuing geopolitical goals, and manufacturing consent by hiding its real ambitions beneath a banner that most Americans will accept?

All this is so murky. People who profit from our ignorance don’t want us to know the truth.

But I’ve discovered some things that average people can do.

Fair Trade expresses faith and solidarity

One thing is buy Fair Trade coffee, chocolate, and crafts. The Free Trade agreements impoverish the farmers and workers who produce these goods while those who roast the coffee beans and sell it in North America make huge profits.

Fair Trade, on the other hand, assures that the producer—the small farmer—receives a little more and the goods are sold at less profit to the end of the line seller.

A Pound of Free Trade Coffee

 Farmer receives about 25 cents from buyer

 Coffee is Imported to the U.S. for about 61 cents

 Coffee is Roasted and Sold to the Coffee Company

 Your Retailer buys it from the Roaster and sells it for about $10.00

A Pound of Fair Trade Coffee

 Farmer Receives 90 cents from Cooperative

Cooperative Sells to Fair Trade Company for $1.26

Fair Trade Company Roasts Coffee and Sells it to you for $6.00

Source: SHARE Foundation here.

In memory of Romero and others martyred in El Salvador, Roman Catholics and others founded

the SHARE Foundation here

 helps accomplish the goals of the people to improve their lives: education for their children, food and peace.

Increasingly, consumers ask about the worker who produced the goods they are buying. Both Fair working conditions, wages, and sustainability are concerns.

Christ followers must take the lead in asking such questions.

Your Sunday morning coffee
can be Fair Trade coffee!

It seems to be a little thing. But in fact it is not. Check out Fair Trade facts here.

Solidarity

A beautiful word. We belong together. On the night of his arrest Christ prayed that God’s people might be One. What happens to the West Bank Palestinian who is barred from land that his ancestors have farmed for hundreds of years,  cocoa farmer in Africa, and the coffee farmer in El Salvador happens to me.

In 19th century England anti-slavery forces promoted the boycott of sugar because the working conditions of slaves on plantations in the West Indies were sub-human. William Wilberforce worked in Parliament for 26 years  to end slave trafficking in the British Empire.

How can we imagine that we might have stood with Wilberforce or Bonhoeffer or Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi or Oscar Romero, when we won’t do such a small thing as find out about those who grow our coffee and act to assure them Fair Trade. 

Left: Bonhoeffer

As I read A Testament to Freedom, Essential Writings of Bonhoeffer, I think I’ll wrestle with what I read here. I’ve completed the introductory life, and am struck again as I was when reading Bethge’s biography of the congruence of Dietrich’s life. He seemed to see clearly and earlier than many in the run up to the Nazi era that Christ called him to die. In the warlock’s cauldron of Nazi Germany,  his life was unified in the love of Christ.

What possible connection to such a life could there be with an ordinary life like mine? If he could have, Dietrich would have lived an ordinary life in the love of Christ; martyrdom was nothing he aspired to, the cult of personality he cosidered anathema.

I’ve read the selections from his dissertations. They’ll take several reads before I can grasp what he’s saying. In “The Communion of Saints” his 1930 dissertation he sees the church in Christ, not a socio-political entity, as the community of those who are in Christ, who live for Christ and for others in the world. I don’t think his views coincide with the emphasis on personal salvation that characterizes my primary faith tradition, Southern Baptists.

 (I no longer consider myself Baptist or Christian—the latter indicating the traditions and attachments to faith in the past two millennia; I aspire to be a “Christ-follower” for lack of a better term. I suppose the biblical name would simply be “in Christ.”)

“Act and Being” his 1931 dissertation requires more than one read. In the intro I highlighted this:

 “God’s Word becomes God’s revelation for us only in community.” (p. 65)

This is true. The word “solidarity” has become more common since the Polish labor union Solidarity successfully opposed the Communist regime. Most in the US, however, still pursue the individualistic capitalistic golden idol, and see no problem with individuals controlling vast wealth, while millions go without work, health care, food, shelter, personal safety, not to speak of the opportunity for self-realization that the middle class and well to do think of as a human right.

I also decided to jump around in the book, to avoid getting swamped in the super difficult sections like “Act and Being.” Therefore, I read

• “The Church is Dead” and
• “Learning to Die.”

But not all the dead are blessed; rather “those which die in the Lord,” those who learned how to die in time, who kept faith, who clung to Jesus up to the last hour, whether amidst the sufferings of the first martyrs, or in the martyrdom of a silent loneliness. (p. 267).

Back to the question of Dietrich’s relevance to ordinary life. I don’t think we live in ordinary times. Since Sept 11, 2001, the nation has been preoccupied with national security. Under Bush Cheney we violated some of our most cherished principles: at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, we imprison nameless people without trial indefinitely. We torture. In the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe the CIA (just like the Communists) set up a gulag where human rights were extinct. 

Now with the economic downturn, millions around the world have no work. The prosperity which cushioned many from the inequities of globalization has evaporated. Huge banks which oppose welfare for individuals accept tens, hundreds of billions of dollars from a government which simply prints more when needed. Some scientists wonder if we’re headed for another mass extinction event.

We view our circumstances as normal, whereas in World War II we realized we were in crisis. The church for the most part today has gone silent on all these  and many other issues, in relation to which being “in Christ” ought to bring about a beloved community where Christ is incarnate today through the metanoia and newness of life, not merely of the individual, but of the whole as one body in Christ.

But a couple books on Bonhoeffer have penetrated the fog: Jeffrey Pugh, Religionless Christianity; Bonhoeffer,  A Testament to Freedom. The latter is a collection of his writings, spanning his life. I take it to be a textbook for a college or seminary class.

Bonhoeffer excites me because of his vision. An excellent academician, theologian and pastor, he raised his voice against Hitler earlier than most.

He asks  the question: how is Christianity discernible apart from the so called Christian culture of Germany? How do you follow Christ in such a world? Is Christianity even possible any more?

American Christianity urgently needs to ask these questions, because  the Republican party most but all politics to a greater or lesser degree, is handmaid of the U.S. state.

I’m convinced the chains that bind us include property, privilege, and power.

Being poor would help the church see the world from below, the perspective of the underclass. Having no privileges or power also would help the church defrock itself of its collaboration with the principalities and powers.

A question I haven’t answered is: how do you hear God’s voice? The Internet has penetrated even the wilderness.

How do you cultivate silence and solitude?

How does blogging help you listen for the voice of God? Not to mention all the new technologies like the iPod and twitter.

I don’t know. But I think Dietrich knew how to discern God’s voice. I’m going to read these books with a hungry heart.

Oh, yeah, I’ve found daily devotions subject to the graying of life. But nevertheless, those daily psalms.

Somehow, God’s Spirit may break through.