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.

Left: Victor Hugo

I just finished Les Miserables, 1260 pages in the Modern Library translation by Charles Wilbour.  If anyone has read the new translation published by the Vintage Classics, please comment.  I’d like to compare translations, because I’ve read that Wilbour’s was hurried.

I confess, after the death of Javert, I felt less motivated to read the remaining 100 pages.  So I speed read them.

You got to give me credit: I read all four chapters on the sewers of Paris.  Hugo, the patriot, wrote that the waste of the French was the best waste in the world.  I’m certainly glad to know that!

My guess is, however, that the sewers of Paris symbolize all the people discarded by society as waste, and other things as well.

The final 100 pages also reveal Hugo’s genius level insight into human nature (like the 1100 pages before them). Jean Valjean could not be free until he reconciled his own self-image as a convict with the reality of his saintly life.  Rejection by his son-in-law Marius paralleled his own self-rejection.

I recall a young Korean woman whom we met in Texas.  She had been rescued from a tormented life by a loving G.I. who married her and brought her to the States.  But she couldn’t accept his love or a happy life, because the scars of her suffering remained unhealed within.

Just as Javert could not accept Valjean’s transformation, Valjean himself could not— until he found acceptance in the hearts and the eyes of those he loved.

The incarnation means, I think, that God does many things through human beings.  When we accept people who feel unacceptable then they begin to feel accepted.  And by the way so do we.

More as I have the chance to reflect.

Thoughtful minds make but little use of the phrase: the fortunate and the unfortunate. In this world, evidently the vestibule of another, there are no fortunate.

The real human division is this: the luminous and the shady. To diminish the number of the shady, to augment the number of the luminous,—that is the object. That is why we cry: Education! science! To teach reading, means to light the fire; every syllable spelled out sparkles.

However, he who says light does not, necessarily, say joy. People suffer in the light; excess burns. The flame is the enemy of the wing. To burn without ceasing to fly,—therein lies the marvel of genius.

When you shall have learned to know, and to love, you will still suffer. The day is born in tears. The luminous weep, if only over those in darkness.

In reading Revelation, I’ve gone back and read some of the Hebrew apocalypses in Daniel, Zechariah and some of Ezekiel, who was certifiably off his rocker. The encouraging thing is, God can use anyone. In a time of upheaval, a psyche undone may be the best vehicle for revealing truth.

This time through the last book of the NT, I’ve concentrated on the big ideas. For example, in studying the judgments as a unit, it’s clear that they had a purpose: to urge people to come to repentance before it was too late. Therefore, the first two series pause after the first four calamities. God assures us that God’s own are doing fine. This is poignant when you realize that about AD 95, a whole generation of Christians had died. Were they lost?

Not only weren’t they lost, but they will come first!

So throughout these scenes of incredible judgment, flows the soft melody of God’s love, securing and comforting the saints. The majestic choruses of heaven echo in the hearts of God’s people, even on the mean streets.

There are so many references in Les Mis to French history, and geography, that go over my head. I’m reading the Wilbour translation, which was done so quickly. You can’t help but wonder how good it is. Hugo is daunting. To develop a character he takes five or six long chapters of history, of literature, of politics; in that nest he places the individual character.

So why not cut out all the 19th century verbiage? I think it’s in those long passages that he really paints the world as he sees it. This isn’t just an incredibly well plotted drama about an escaped convict. It’s about a society, about what we need to become human. And of course, it’s the contradiction between law (Inspector Javert) and grace (Valjean).

The pity is, that many of our young students are learning computer programming and web page design, which I admire, but their souls don’t get stretched by big ideas and great hearts like Hugo’s.

For example, the following description of young Marius, Cosette’s future love interest (Project Gutenburg):

For many great deeds are performed in petty combats. There are instances of bravery ignored and obstinate, which defend themselves step by step in that fatal onslaught of necessities and turpitudes. Noble and mysterious triumphs which no eye beholds, which are requited with no renown, which are saluted with no trumpet blast. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are the fields of battle which have their heroes; obscure heroes, who are, sometimes, grander than the heroes who win renown.

Firm and rare natures are thus created; misery, almost always a step-mother, is sometimes a mother; destitution gives birth to might of soul and spirit; distress is the nurse of pride; unhappiness is a good milk for the magnanimous.

God’s hands, with destitution, can sculpt great souls. But how many thousands are simply ground into dust? Gandhi said, “Poverty is the worst form of violence.”

I’m currently reading 12 books—actually, 11. One “book” on my list is the Sacred Text Archive online, which contains hundreds of scripture-type books. But Internet reading ain’t the same, is it?

You see, I’ve got all this time on my hands. Due to chronic pain, I have to rest my joints and muscles a lot; my brain keeps going 100 mph, however.

Maybe I should memorize the DSM IV, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 4^th ed. This 1000+ page tome contains all the quirks, defense mechanisms, and mental disorders a psychiatrist can dream up.

Believe me, you’re in there. (Me, too.) And your insurance company has your number, the code which stands for the emotional or mental problem you want them to pay for the treatment of. It goes in a box on a form in a computer file. And it’s public knowledge. Ain’t no such thing as privacy where your insurance company’s money is concerned.

I like the classics: Shakespeare. I have all the plays on CDs, so I listen to one or two a week. I can’t keep up with the President, who read three Shakespeares.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKiWWi8rdJQ

Oh, I failed to mention how much I enjoy teaching DVDs: Shakespeare survey, history of Africa, Greek myths, Greek tragedy, surveys of Russian literature and existentialism.

Bitten by the used book bug, I find essential used books on Amazon and eBay; there’s always some book I, y’know, got to have. I’m careful, though.

For instance, C.F. Andrews, my current rage, referred to The Hidden Life of the Soul by Jean Nicolas Grou, a French Catholic writing at the time of the French Revolution. I found it on Amazon for $1777.00.

At that moment I got very nervous about the buy-it-with-one-click button.

Alibris had The Spiritual Life by Grou for $3.95, which’ll have to do for now.

Yesterday I became aware how I’m racing internally from one spiritual aid to another, trying to get better being still, better being for others, etc. It’s like all this popcorn’s exploding in my brain, and I’m compulsively consuming.

As a Nursing Home chaplain, I got a beautiful leather gilt-edged 1928 Book of Common Prayer to read with residents. I decided to start reading from that the Gospel and Epistle each week. Today the gospel was Luke 15, the waiting Father.

I’m into lectio divina. I have four or five essays on how to do that, and a small book somewhere on my shelves. I haven’t seen it in about five years.

Anyway I was lectio-ing away at the exquisite King James Version (naturally, because I’m in my Elizabethan English phase—y’know, the beauty of the language!) And these words hit home:

“And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat,” Luke 15:16 (KJV)

Dead bang! The Spirit uses scripture like a shrink uses the DSM IV.

Here I am, cramming anything and everything into my intellectual spiritual maw, like a whale engulfing krill by the millions.

What’s up?

Last week I jet read through Andrews’ Christ in the Silence; now I’m reading him one or two paragraphs aloud. Take this morning:

There was evidently a suppurating disease at the heart of Western civilization, draining its life-blood, which only the infusion of a life-giving spirit could staunch and heal.

C. F. Andrews, Christ in the Silence (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1933), p. 31.

Suppurating – causing to generate pus. I guess he’d seen many a suppurating wound on bodies in Calcutta. In the West he saw suppurating souls.

The earthquake, tornado, and lightning strikes passed, and finally, finally I got still. I realized, both Sandy and I have some run ins with medical types in the next few weeks. These are supposed to be fairly routine. But I’ve had more than once, a medical appointment rip up my life, shred my planner, implode my future. Even so called routine ones give me the heevie jeebies.

“You’re skittish about these appointments,” the Spirit said. No scolding. “Don’t be afraid.”

Lectio divina. That means reading only six books at once, huh?

Well, I’ll stick to 10, at least until we get the all clear from the docs.

I resolved, then, to read all the books I could, especially the great books, so that if the day came when I also didn’t read any more, I would have read as many as possible.

Reading the great books

I have in mind some of the classics. Homer, whom I’ve never read. The existentialists Kierkegaard, Dostoyevski. The great Russians. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and War and Peace. Of course, Shakespeare. I have him on audio CDs, and listen to one or two plays a week. Don Quixote has never held my attention for more than 100 pages, but one of these days…

I get distracted. I like biography. Bonhoeffer’s biography by Bethge is terrific. That led me to others of his works. The Cost of Discipleship. Life Together. Required reading for those of us who dream of a family-based monasticism. Mother Teresa’s Come Be My Light. Compelling, heart-breaking.

Distractions

At the moment I’m into C.F. Andrews. I noticed his character in the film Gandhi, and want to understand how this Englishman realized who Gandhi was and what was happening in India. So I read The Ordeal of Love by Hugh Tinker (Oxford, 1979), and I have Charles Freer Andrews (Harper & Brothers, 1950). The latter is more personal, lyrical, and more positive. I’m looking forward to two of Charlie’s books What I Owe to Christ, Christ in the Silence. These will shine light upon his religious quest, from High Church Anglican to some degree of Hindu and finally back to the person of the Christ.

I’m also reading Tagore. Gitanjali, for which he won the Nobel Prize. Sadhana: the Realization of Life. Selected Poems.

I also love liberation theology. We Drink Water from Our Own Wells I carry around with me. And I found Liberation Theology Resources Online.

Deciding what not to read

You realize that I don’t have all that much to do but read.

I’ve gotten to the time in my life when I realize doing one thing means not ever doing ten others.  Younger people think they’ll get around to everything. But decide comes from the same root as suicide, a root that means to cut off.

I feel conflicted. On the surface are the waves, the winds; in the depth is the Gulf Stream. You get to do both. Read the acknowledged classics and also read the blogs, some of which are emerging classics.

How do you decide what to read?