life.together.

i'm reading Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for a class, but it's more like a discussion group and prayer group than a class. and i'm reading my mom's old copy that she must have had in high school or college because it has her maiden name written in the front. it's kind of funny discovering her notes in the margins, and realizing that i tend to react in similar ways to some of his ideas, especially agreeing with things like recognizing the presence of Christ in a special way in people who are poor, hungry, weak, or seem insignificant, and emphatically disagreeing with the assertion that God is not a God of the emotions - he Is, too! he must be, otherwise i'd be a hopeless wreck! (well, i'm still kind of a wreck. but now i have hope! ;-)

we just finished reading and talking about chapter 2. Bonhoeffer insists on some pretty strong ideas about how Christians should go about living in community and having common devotions - rising early every morning, praying the Psalms, singing hymns in unison only, and then having a longer reading from the Old or New Testament. even the suggestions that seem a little extreme for our context today, he has some pretty solid and convicting reasoning to back them up.

also, he liked Gandhi a lot (or his nonviolent ideas, anyway), so much that he almost went and visited him in India. but instead he stayed in Germany and helped found an underground/secret seminary, which is where he wrote this book living in community with the pastor-students. and he was a double agent working for the Nazis but helping Jews. and he was part of a plot to assassinate Hitler...i don't know about the rightness of that, but he was in a tough position and he did not take the decision lightly, and he never made the claim that it was absolutely the right thing to do, and ultimately he didn't go through with it. well, i guess that was because they arrested him and eventually sent him to be killed in one of the death camps. people who knew him in the prison camps said he was someone "for whom God was real and always near." wow. i know maybe one or two people like that, who you can just tell that they are constantly aware of God's presence within them, and everything they say and do just exudes genuine love and beauty. how does one become that person??? i guess i should read on!