Life Together- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

One of my favorite things in life is the revisiting of a book. I remember reading Life Together in college, quickly, in order to fulfill a requirement for my summer travel band. I remember loving it, and I remember feeling like there was no better book for a group of college students attempting to meld our personalities (and egos) into a mini-bus for the summer. Bonhoeffer's ideas prove just as profound a challenge to my life today: in teaching, family life, and all relationships.

It is, first of all, the freedom of the other person, of which we spoke earlier, that is a burden to the Christian. The other's freedom collides with his own autonomy, yet he must recognize it. He could get rid of this burden by refusing the other person his freedom, by constraining him and thus doing violence to his personality, by stamping his own image upon him. But if he lets God create His image in him, he by this token gives him his freedom and himself bears the burden of this freedom of another creature of God.

This freedom of the other includes all that we mean by a person's nature, individuality, endowment. It also includes his weaknesses and oddities, which are such a trial to our patience, everything that produces frictions, conflicts, and collisions among us. To bear the burden of the other person means involvement with the created reality of the other, to accept and affirm it, and, in bearing with it, to break through to the point where we take joy in it.

I do not want this world

of swimming words, where meaning

hangs contingent

upon mood. As nice as

misspellings are, poetically speaking,

I want you to know how to spell the words

(as I wash up in all their possibilities)

without hesitation.

on the spiritual life...

"I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air."

1 Cor. 9:26

I very much like these images. How often does life feel this way? How often does prayer, worship, attempts to trust, feel this way. I like the image of someone beating air with all the intensity of a fighter. So futile and so zealous.

So that's my prayer this morning: a finish line in sight (or at least a mile marker) and something solid to punch against. Not the most peaceful of metaphors. But still helpful.

yes.

yes

there were days when

everything mattered

but if everything matters

everything burns

everything

so much incineration

to the square inch

it's not

practical

to live like this

even fires

eventually

extinguish

what the body told - raphael campo

I was recently asked to explain what makes a poem 'good'.

I could babble on for hours explaining poetry and finish by simply saying, it's something you know. But that's a cop-out.

I guess it's a clear image. That's the thing in a poem: the image. And beyond that, it's the universal made new. It's a feeling you know, expressed by an image you have not imagined. That's what ramrods you about good poetry. You've already felt it. You just didn't know it, and you've never articulated it or honored the emotion with an image.

So, see, I could babble on forever, but instead I will give you a poem. This one sums up, to me, what good poetry is.

Not long ago, I studied medicine.
It was terrible, what the body told.
I'd look inside another person's mouth
And see the desolation of the world.
I'd see his genitals and think of sin.

Because my body speaks the stranger's language,
I've never understood those nods and stares.
My parents held me in their arms, and still
I think I've disappointed them; they care
And stare, they nod, they make their pilgrimage

To somewhere distant in my heart, they cry.
I look inside their other-person's mouths
And see the wet interior of souls.
It's warm and red in there — like love, with teeth.
I've studied medicine until I cried

All night. Through certain books, a truth unfolds.
Anatomy and physiology,
The tiny sensing organs of the tongue —
Each nameless cell contributing its needs.
It was fabulous, what the body told.

Raphael Campo

Honestly, Joy.

Today we read one of my favorite stories. Then I gave my kids a figurative language scavenger hunt, and I turned it into a race. And oh, my, gosh, all I'm hearing is students shouting at one another: Help me find that simile! Is this a good enough hyperbole? Draw that plot chart! Where does the exposition end?

My teacher-heart is absolutely soaring. It's times like this that I truly, deeply, love what I do.

a l l t h i s

1.

Steep in the steam.

Last night clears

to lukewarm morning.

The vertigo in awakening!

All the shadow-things

hunch in corners

until the next night speaks.

2.

I want to explain all this. But

common sense balks,

pride desiccates thought.

Yet

we're ending up

happy,

most often wordlessly.

3.

Out of grief's grip,

without

the clamp pulled so tight,

maybe the anger

wouldn't fester

or infect.

4.

All guidance

seems ill-fitting.

It seems like cruelty.

God,

You are neither of these.

I wake up craving honesty

Ah, God, honesty.

You are honesty.