Tag: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Awaiting His Arrival: An Advent Series

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canadiancoastalrange

It was a time like this,
war & tumult of war,
a horror in the air.
Hungry yawned the abyss –
and yet there came the star
and the child most wonderfully there.

It was a time like this
of fear & lust for power,
license & greed and blight –
and yet the Prince of bliss came into the darkest hour
in quiet & silent light.

And in a time like this
how celebrate his birth
when all things fall apart?
Ah! Wonderful it is
with no room on the earth
the stable is our heart.
~Madeleine L’Engle “In the Darkest Hour”

 

The Advent Series theme on Barnstorming this year will be “Awaiting His Arrival” ~~ both the anticipated Advent arrival of God on earth as a helpless newborn, and when He comes again someday to this sick and sorry world.

His first arrival was in the midst of great distress between people whose faith was eroding into legalism and gods of their own making, along with interminable conflict between nations fighting over the same land and same issues as continues today.

Into such mean and gloomy darkness came a great Light.   As stated by modern martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer,  God’s coming to earth is “frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.”

The editors’ introduction to one of my favorite Advent books Watch for the Light includes this thought:
“The love that descended to Bethlehem is not the easy sympathy of an avuncular God, but a burning fire whose light chases away every shadow, floods every corner, and turns midnight into noon.  This love reveals sin and overcomes it.  It conquers darkness with such forcefulness and intensity that it scatters the proud, humbles the mighty, feeds the hungry, and sends the rich away empty-handed (Luke 1:51-53).”

So it is this love in action within our midst to be pondered in this Advent month of reflections — how His love came to change our world and ourselves and how we are meant to respond.  As Jan Richardson writes in Night Vision, “That’s just how Advent works.  What is possible is to not see it, to miss it, to turn just as it brushes past you.  And you begin to grasp what it was you missed, like Moses in the cleft of the rock, watching God’s hindquarters fade in the distance.  So stay.  Sit. Linger. Tarry. Ponder. Wait. Behold. Wonder.”

He did not wait till the world was ready,
till men and nations were at peace
He came when the Heavens were unsteady
and prisoners cried out for release.

He did not wait for the perfect time.
He came when the need was deep and great.
He died with sinners in all their grime,
turned water into wine. He did not wait

till hearts were pure. In joy he came
to a tarnished world of sin and doubt.
To a world like ours, of anguished shame
He came, and his Light would not go out.
~Madeleine L’Engle from “First Coming”

Solidarity and Silence

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madrona

 

We hear so much today of the word solidarity. It has become a part of our vocabulary in the past twenty or thirty years. Today our solidarity with brothers and sisters of our faith, and of other faiths, in a part of the world where there is clearly an effort to eliminate them is something that we simply cannot in conscience ignore.

Often we are asked: “How was it possible that in human history atrocities occur?” They occur for two reasons: because there are those prepared to commit them, and then there are those who remain silent. And the actions in Iraq and in Syria today are happening to women, children, men—their displacement not the least. Things happening to them is something that we really are not free to ignore, and sometimes all we have to raise is our voice. . . .

I ask myself: Where are these voices? Where the voices of parliaments and congresses? Where are the voices of campuses? Where are the voices of community leaders? . . . Why a silence?
~Cardinal Donald Wuerl at the 2014 convocation at the Catholic University of America

frontyardwalnut 

“Silence in the face of evil,” he said, “is evil itself. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Hiding Nothing

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changedpriorities
You can hide nothing from God.
The mask you wear before men will do you no good before Him.
He wants to see you as you are,
He wants to be gracious to you.
You do not have to go on lying to yourself and your brothers,
as if you were without sin;
you can dare to be a sinner.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Life Together

One of my Monday morning jobs in our college health clinic is to meet with any student who got so intoxicated they had to spend part of the weekend in the emergency room.  Alcohol poisonings are distressingly common on all college campuses, and ours is no exception.   What I do during our morning-after visit is review the records with the student so they have some idea what took place before they woke up hours later on a gurney in a noisy smelly emergency room– alcohol is an effective amnesia-producing anesthetic when it doesn’t manage to outright kill its consumer.   It is a humbling experience to read about what one said and did while one was under the influence of intoxicants and yet have no memory of any of it.   That is why my time is well spent with the recovering and remorseful.   Not only does their stomach lining still burn from all the vomiting, but their head hurts from acknowledging the risks they took in the name of having a good time.  It is rare that I ever need to meet again with the same student about similar behavior.

This, in reality,  is a very effective kind of hurting, one that is crucial to future decision-making: dangerous behavior is far less appealing when one still carries the scars.  Priorities change for the better.

Today I won’t be able to work in several hundred now-sober students into this morning’s clinic schedule after the unfortunate and widely publicized events that happened just a couple blocks off our college campus a little over 24 hours ago.  I suspect most of the students involved remember more than they wish to about their participation in a big-block-party-gone-terribly-wrong.  They were part of an aggressive mob mentality threatening law enforcement personnel trying to disperse an increasingly rowdy and obnoxious crowd.  Some are finding themselves in video and Instagram/Facebook documentation of their profane words and gestures, throwing potentially lethal objects, vandalizing private and city property as well as causing thousands of dollars of city resources to confront out of control drunk rioters.   These students can try to lay low but there is no place to hide from their inner knowledge of what they have done, the part they played and the irreparable damage they caused to individuals, relationships, property and as well as the reputations of the city and the university.  There is no comforting alcohol amnesia to hide within this time.

The only possible healing from an event like this is to come clean about what one has done, admit the mistakes made and work to make it right no matter the cost — to dare to acknowledge the sins committed and accept the consequences of one’s actions.

Hiding is cheap — guilt and shame remain behind the mask.
Grace and forgiveness is costly but there is no longer need to hide and be eaten away by a continually hurting soul.

My prescription for this day and in the days to come:  changed priorities ahead.  College is about obtaining a valuable and precious education, not about finding the biggest and best party of intoxicants.

Take with food and a large dose of humility.

Lenten Grace — Plunge into Deep Waters

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photo by Kathy Yates
photo by Kathy Yates

Discipleship is not limited to what you can understand – it must transcend all comprehension. Plunge into the deep waters beyond your own understanding, and I will help you to comprehend.

Bewilderment is the true comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge. In this way Abraham went forth from his father, not knowing where he was going. That is the way of the cross. You cannot find it in yourself, so you must let me lead you as though you were a blind man.

Not the work which you choose, not the suffering you devise, but the road which is contrary to all that you choose or contrive or desire – that is the road you must take. It is to this path that I call you, and in this sense that you must be my disciple.

~Martin Luther, quoted in Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship

Plunging describes the leap of faith into unknown depths when we’d rather choose to remain safely on shore sitting on a comfortable bench. The water wraps around like a sheath and doesn’t let go. It is a shock to the system, it takes our breath away, it is immersion into completely unfamiliar territory.

We aren’t pushed into the deep, we are led. It isn’t where we choose to go, but where we must go, not knowing to where we go.

Bewildering.

Disorienting.

Incomprehensible.

Irresistible.

 

 


Lenten Grace — Great Gaps

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photo by Kathy Yates
photo by Kathy Yates

Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words.
They should remain open.
Our only comfort is the God of the resurrection,
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who also was and is his God.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from “Circular Letters in the Church Struggle”

No greater gap was torn
than when Christ was separated from the Father,
forsaken,
choosing suffering for his brothers and sisters
by paying with his life a ransom we could never satisfy,
so dead broke are we
and captive to our sin.

Only the Word can fill
what remains open and gaping,
until we accept the comfort of his grace
freely given.

Grace great enough
to fill every hole
bridge every gap
bring hope to the hopeless
and restore us wholly to our Father
who was and is our God.

 

 

Transforming Anxiety

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photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

…difficulties are magnified out of all proportion simply by fear and anxiety. From the moment we wake until we fall asleep we must commend other people wholly and unreservedly to God and leave them in his hands, and transform our anxiety for them into prayers on their behalf:
With sorrow and with grief…
God will not be distracted.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Letters from Prison

Every day I see college students who are so consumed by anxiety they become immobilized in their ability to move forward through the midst of life’s inevitable obstacles and difficulties.  They become so stuck in their own overwhelming feelings they can’t sleep or eat or think clearly, so distracted are they by their symptoms.  They self-medicate, self-injure and self-hate.  Being unable to nurture themselves or others, they wither like a young tree without roots deep enough to reach the vast reservoir that lies untapped beneath them.  In epidemic numbers, some decide to die, even before life really has fully begun for them.

I grieve for them in their distress.   My role is to help find healing solutions, whether it is counseling therapy, a break from school, or a medicine that may give some form of relief.  My heart knows the ultimate answer is not as simple as the right prescription.

We who are anxious are not trusting a Creator who does not suffer from attention deficit disorder and who is not distracted from His care for us even when we turn away in worry and sorrow.  We magnify our difficult circumstances by staying so tightly into ourselves, unable to look beyond our own eyelashes.  Instead we are to reach higher and deeper, through prayer, through service to others, through acknowledging there is power greater than ourselves.

So we are called to pray for ourselves and for others,  disabling anxiety and fear and transforming it to gratitude and grace.   No longer withering, we just might bloom.

 

 

Christmas Sings: Joy Bursts Us Open

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Altodorfer Nativity painted in 1511
Altdorfer Nativity painted in 1513

Joy abides with God
and it comes down from God
and embraces spirit, soul, and body;
and where this joy has seized a person,
there it spreads,
there it carries one away,
there it bursts closed doors.

A sort of joy exists
that knows nothing at all
of the heart’s pain, anguish, and dread;
it does not last,
it can only numb a person for the moment.

The joy of God
the poverty of the manger
and the agony of the cross;
that is why it is invincible,
irrefutable.

Excerpted from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s final circular letter
to his friends in November 1942, before his imprisonment and execution by the Nazis

Bonhoeffer also wrote about this particular nativity painting by Albrecht Altdorfer:
The Altdorfer Nativity, which portrays the Holy Family at the manger amidst the ruins of a dilapidated house – whatever made him do that 400 years ago, against all tradition? – is especially on my mind these days. Perhaps Altdorfer meant to tell us, “Christmas can, and should, be celebrated in this way too.”


There is nothing attractive or sweet about Altdorfer’s 500 year old portrayal of the nativity scene.  It expresses the stark truth of the Savior’s coming to us: we are in ruins and He was born within our shattered shell.   We cannot be more broken, more fragile than we are in this moment.  He is born into that unwelcoming falling down mess, bringing to us irrefutable joy.

This is joy that bursts outside the boundaries of our misery.
This is incomparable invincible joy to rebuild us from the inside.

This is Christmas celebrated within our broken hearts:  joy amidst the ruins.

Advent Sings: Departing in Peace

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And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said,

 “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word..”
Luke 2: 26-29 from the Song of Simeon

In my clinical work and in my personal life, I’ve kept vigil while patients or loved ones are dying.  It is quite common that even those who are so ill as to be unresponsive will seem to wait to take their final breath until an absent family member makes it to the bedside.    They seem to be waiting, even unconsciously, for the fulfillment of family around them, a need for the fullness of their life to be acknowledged and celebrated before they depart.   At that point, they can let go and move on.

So Simeon was waiting patiently, day after day, to see the Savior.   He was ready to let go of this life, but not until he knew that salvation was at hand.

The scene in the temple that day must have been touching to witness.
An old man searching the eyes of everyone who entered, wondering which might be the long awaited and expected Messiah.
A father and mother with baby in arms coming in for a customary blessing, carrying a humble sacrifice of two doves.   There was nothing obvious to distinguish them from hundreds of other families.
The old man struck by the Spirit, given incredible words to say and sing, approaches the mother and asks to hold her child, this particular child, just for a minute.
Mary gives Jesus over, as she will, again and again, during His life and death.
Simeon, with the Son of God held fast in his arms, sings his beautiful song, as he cradles the fulfillment of the promise made to him.
Simeon, old and ready for death, sings of the fullness of his life,
the fullness of the rich blessing of promises made and kept,
the fullness of a father and mother willing to share their child,
the fullness of being in the presence of the glory of the Lord.

Simeon in faith meets the Messiah he has longed for.
We wait as well for the next Advent of His coming, not to cradle as Simeon did, but to be cradled.
When it is our time to depart in peace, it will be straight to the arms of Jesus.
And we, like Simeon, will sing as never before.

Advent is a time of waiting.  Our whole life, however if Advent — that is, a time of waiting for the ultimate, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth, when all people are brothers and sisters and one rejoices in the words of the angels: “On earth peace to those on whom God’s favor rests.”  Learn to wait, because he has promised to come.  “I stand at the door…”   We however call to him:  “yes, come soon, Lord Jesus!”  Amen.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Interrupted

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“We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

So I’m sauntering through life, enjoying the view, appreciating each mundane moment, doing what I think I was meant to do and whammo!~clobbered by a cold wave that knocks me off my feet, chills me to the bone and stops me in my tracks wondering what just hit me and why.  It feels like I’m drowning.

I feel rudely interrupted because I was ill prepared to change course, alter expectations, or be transformed by life’s sudden cold shower.

I can’t think of any situation where interruption initially feels good.  It shocks because it seems unexpected but I have chosen to be someone who must be rudely interrupted in order to change direction.

God doesn’t just soak me to the bone–He made my bones and heals my fractures.  He doesn’t just knock me to my feet–He offers His hand to pull me up again.  He doesn’t let me drown–He throws me a life preserver that I must choose to grab and hold on to.  Then He wraps me in His warm embrace like a huge towel to remind me where I come from and where I’m heading.

We interrupt this life for a message from our sponsor. 

I’m ready to pay attention.