Bonhoeffer Talk

Today we are discussing chapters five and six from Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Metaxas relates Bonhoeffer's time in Barcelona, where he lived for about a year just after his twenty-second birthday, and then the following year back in Berlin. There were many details about his time during this year that helped bring both Dietrich and his experience in Barcelona to life. Metaxas says that the Spanish women who ran his boarding house "made an impressive effort to pronounce 'Dietrich.' They failed." I laughed out loud at that. I can picture them trying so very hard, him correcting them with a smile, them trying again. He had to have laughed. Again and again, his sense of humor is referenced. That is a huge draw for me. I picture him smiling a lot, even as serious and intense as he was. 

This was a clever turn of a paragraph (and maybe it was an accidental cleverness...I have no idea): "He wanted to be effective in his role as pastor, and he knew he must enter the lives and, to some extent, the lifestyles of the people he was charged with serving. [New paragraph] As in Rome,..." "As in Rome," hahaha! It seems that he was able to strike a balance and enter their lives/lifestyles in order to serve without entering their lifestyles such that who he fundamentally was changed. He seems so wise for someone who is so young, at this point. When I think of myself at age 22, I remember someone who was earnest, but very silly in many ways. His self-awareness and theological bearings testify to his upbringing, yes, but also to what seems to me almost a supernatural ability to discern well. His work with children is especially endearing. 

One of my favorite quotes from the book is at the beginning of chapter five, from Bonhoeffer's diary, January 22: "Where a people prays, there is the church; and where the church is, there is never loneliness."