Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

This book. I can't say enough about it right now. I just finished it last night in bed, and may turn around and read it again this week.

I've read only a few things by Deitrich Bonhoeffer (mostly Life Together and his Prison Poems) and a little about him, but his faith impresses me deeper every time I come across him.

Life Together would make a fabulous Bible study book, personal devotional (about as close as I get to that is reading a couple pages or chapters in something late at night just before sleeping, when the words can sink into me as I drift off to sleep moments later), or I don't know, just something to give as a gift or read on a plane. So many encouraging words for how to deal as a Christian with other people. Encouraging and challenging and convicting and then encouraging again. The best kinds of teaching words. His style sometimes is a bit stifling, ancient, or preachy; but he IS preaching, and it I DID only say sometimes, and you can definitely get past that to find much good.

Often I think of books on this topic (the Christian life) only in the vein of Christian-to-Christian interaction, but while reading this I was struck by how much of it can be used in every area of life, even Christian-to-nonbeliever.


* * * * * 

"The Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's Word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged... He needs his brother man as a bearer and proclaimer of the divine word of salvation. He needs his brother solely because of Jesus Christ. The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother's is sure." (from the chapter Community)

 "For Christians the beginning of the day should not be burdened and oppressed with besetting concerns for the day's work. At the threshold of the new day stands The Lord who made it." (from The Day With Others)

"Word plunges men into the world of things. The Christian steps out of the world of brotherly encounter into the world of impersonal things... an instrument in the hand of God for the purification of Christians from all self-centeredness and self-seeking. The work of the world can be done only where a person forgets himself, where he loses  himself in a cause, in reality, the task, the 'it.'" (The Day With Others)

"Each by itself has profound pitfalls and perils. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair. Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone." (The Day Alone)

"To make intercession means to grant our brother the same right that we have received, namely, to stand before Christ and share in His mercy." (The Day Alone)

"I can never know beforehand how God's image should appear in others. That image always manifests a completely new and unique form that comes solely from God's free and sovereign creation. To me the sight may seem strange, even ungodly. But God creates every man in the likeness of His Son, the Crucified. After all, even that image certainly looked strange and ungodly to me before I grasped it." (Ministry)

Boys and Men

This links to something written by Pastor Joost Nixon of Spokane, WA. Good words.

"One of the deficiencies of Western culture is that there is no objective marker for young men to know when they have passed from "boy" to "man." . . . But what this ambiguity about adulthood does, practically, is leave our mature males to be "boys-in-men's-bodies"; irresponsible, piddling around with follies, instead of moving the football of cultural dominion down the field and into the end zone."

Read it. http://biblicalchildrearing.blogspot.com/2012/10/piddling-with-follies.html?spref=fb

Fallen Hearts

Bohun staggered back against the wall, and stared at him with frightful eyes.
"How do you know all this?" he cried. "Are you a devil?"
"I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have all devils in my heart."

- G. K. Chesterton, The Hammer of God




The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked.

- Jeremiah 17:9




For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness.  All these evil things come from within and defile a man.

- Mark 7:21-23

Annie Dillard: when she's optimistic in spite of it all

"I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not *in* its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down. Simone Weil says simply, 'Let us love the country of here below. It is real; it offers resistance to love.'

I am a sacrifice bound with cords to the horns of the world's rock altar, waiting for worms. I take a deep breath, I open my eyes. Looking, I see there are worms in the horns of the altar like live maggots in amber, there are shells of worms in the rock and moths flapping at my eyes. A wind from noplace rises. A sense of the real exults me; the cords loose; I walk on my way."

-Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, p242

Gilead (a novel)

This is one beautiful book. Marilynn Robinson, where have you been all my life? Here are a few quotes from this afternoon's reading.

"I could never have imaged this world if I hadn't spent almost eight decades walking around in it. People talk about how wonderful the world seems to children, and that's true enough. But children think they will grow into it and understand it, and I know very well that I will not, and would not if I had a dozen lives. That's clearer to me every day. Each morning I'm like Adam waking up in Eden, amazed at the cleverness of my hands and at the brilliance pouring into my mind through my eyes - old hands, old eyes, old mind, a very diminished Adam altogether, and still it is just as remarkable." (p66)

"In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don't imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try." (p57)

"You and Tobias are hopping around in the sprinkler. The sprinkler is a magnificent invention because it exposes raindrops to sunshine. That does occur in nature, but it is rare. When I was in seminary I used to go sometimes to watch the Baptists down at the river. It was something to see the preacher lifting the one who was being baptized up out of the water and the water pouring off the garments and the hair. It did look like a birth or a resurrection." (p63)

"...There is nothing more astonishing than a human face. . . It has something to do with incarnation. You feel your obligation to a child when you have seen it and held it. Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant." (p66)

To Wake Up

Reading Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk. Wow.

"We teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up. We teach our children to look alive there, to join by words and activities the life of human culture on the planet's crust. As adults we are almost all adept at waking up. We have so mastered the transition we have forgotten we ever learned it. Yet it is a transition we make a hundred times a day, as, like so many will-less dolphins, we plunge and surface, lapse and emerge. We live half our waking lives and all of our sleeping lives in some private, useless, and insensible waters we never mention or recall. Useless, I say. Valueless, I might add - until someone hauls their wealth up to the surface and into the wide-awake city, in a form that people can use." (pp22-3)

All the world is yours

That all the World is yours, your very senses and the inclinations of your mind declare. The Works of God manifest, His laws testify, and His word Both prove it. His attributes most sweetly make it evident. The powers of your soul confirm it. So that in the midst of such rich demonstrations, you may infinitely delight in God as your Father, Friend and Benefactor, in yourself as His Heir, Child and Bride, in the whole World, as the Gift and Token of His love; neither can anything but Ignorance destroy your joys. For if you know yourself, or God, or the World, you must of necessity enjoy it.

-Thomas Traherne

God's Providence

The providence of God is like Hebrew words—it can be read only backwards.

-John Flavel

Poverty and riches

"Poverty is not primarily about money. It is about having no idea what to do and/or having no one with whom to do it."
-Sam Wells

Most of my younger siblings and I on Hoodoo Mountain a couple weeks ago. (Me, Naomi, Seth, Lydia, Abbi, Abel, Silas, Elsi, Becki) This is after several hours and much cold and wet happened, after monster cookies and target shooting, after reeses peanut butter cups and movie quoting and piggy back rides and using binoculars and cameras a lot.

Chesterton, Faulkner, Roosevelt

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. - G. K. Chesterton
Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all. - William Faulkner
Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds.
- Theodore Roosevelt

264-277 giving thanks
- I have a job. It pays me, it occupies me, it blesses me, it supports me, and it allows me to do some of the same to others in return.
- My grown-up little sister still comes to me to ask for advice and thoughts on her outfits, her hair, her college papers, her life. I love her.
- God's written word lives in my home. Through it, He spoke to me at breakfast, word by word, line by line.
- Tortillas are a wonderful thing.
- Scrabble breaks online with friends hundreds of miles from here
- The old ladies in my Madeleine L'Engle's novel
- Bucer's coffee
- Hearing my sister's voice from the next room as she works
- Classic rock stations on my car radio
- Warm sweaters with sleeves that come half-way over my hands
- A weekend of good movies: the fun and funky, the rough and action-filled
- My faithful pastor and his good words
- Reeses MnMs
- The luxury of leisure time. May I learn to use it more and more profitably.
- Enjoying Moscow Mountain yesterday with friends. This is a beautiful place.
picture by Andreas Leidenfrost

Leithart: enlightenment gratitude

Peter Leithart's most recent blog post: read it here.

In which he quotes various people including Descartes: Gratitude is “a sort of love, excited in us by some action of him to whom we offer it, and whereby we believe he has done us some good, or at least had an intention to do us some. So it includes all that goodwill does, and this besides, that it is grounded on an action we are very sensible of, and whereof we have a desire to make a requital.

Happy New Year

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
2 Corinthians 5:17

It's a Wonderful Life

George Bailey: What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon, Mary.
Mary: I'll take it. Then what?
George: Well, then you can swallow it, and it'll all dissolve, see... and the moonbeams would shoot out of your fingers and your toes and the ends of your hair... am I talking too much?

Man on Porch: Why don't you kiss her instead of talking her to death?
George: You want me to kiss her, huh?
Man on Porch: Ah, youth is wasted on the wrong people.

George: This is a very interesting situation!
Mary: Please give me my robe.
George: A man doesn't get in a situation like this every day.
Mary: I'd like to have my robe.
George: Not in Bedford Falls anyway.

George: Mary Hatch, why in the world did you ever marry a guy like me?
Mary: To keep from being an old maid!
George: You could have married Sam Wainright, or anybody else in town...
Mary: I didn't want to marry anybody else in town. I want my baby to look like you.
George: You didn't even have a honeymoon. I promised you...
[stops]
George: Your what?
Mary: My baby!
George: [stuttering] Your, your, your, ba- Mary, you on the nest?
Mary: George Bailey Lassos Stork!

Senior Angel: A man down on earth needs our help.
Clarence: Splendid. Is he sick?
Senior Angel: No, worse. He's discouraged.


George: Well, you look about the kind of angel I'd get.

George: Now, come on, get your clothes on, and we'll stroll up to my car and get... Oh, I'm sorry. I'll stroll. You fly.
Clarence: I can't fly! I haven't got my wings.
George: You haven't got your wings. Yeah, that's right.

Clarence: Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?

A friend just shared this...

I had to do the same. Later tonight, I plan to go look it up in Orthodoxy and read the context.

‎"The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children, and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom. But in the modern philosophy the case is opposite; it is its outer ring that is obviously artistic and emancipated; its despair is within."

-Chesterton

(As always, clicking on the photos will enlarge them to full size)





















Giving thanks 206-219
206. Christmas lights draped over and around the windows
207. a pile of clean dishes in the sink and on the counter
208. Tali's guitar - when she plays it, when Maria plays it, and when I try to play it
209. Adele
210. balls and skeins and tangles of yarn of various colors
211. sitting around the house Sunday afternoon with roomies, crafting Christmas gifts and listening to Wodehouse on audiobook
212. a clear windshield on an icy cold morning
213. wire whisks in the kitchen
214. central heating
215. the old jacket I found at home - dark blue, too large for me, pocketed and collared, and (once again) very boyish
216. laughs and funny moments with my student that are deep and real and distract us from school for a few minutes at least
217. Adam's old fashioned crunchy peanut butter, sitting in my cupboard right now
218. Gilbert Keith Chesterton
219. Thanksgiving week and the good times and great foods I shared with family

Thanksgiving Monday

"Never seek to define your identity apart from your relationships. When did we become sons of God? We were generated in His image when He breathed the breath of life into our first father. When did we become objects of wrath, children of the devil? When our first father took the fruit that had been forbidden to him, but which he coveted anyway (Gen. 3:6; 1 Jn. 2:16). When were we born again, when were we regenerated? When we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ in truth, moved by the Spirit to do so, and God the Father became our Father once again. In short, it happened when the central covetousness died, and the central thanksgiving was born. What is it to be born again? It is the death of covetous wanting, and the birth of thankful wanting."
From The Gospel and Thanksgiving, sermon by Douglas Wilson












Giving thanks-

191. the big man's coat found in our basement and how comfy it can be to wear something so utterly unfeminine, huge and warm.
192. gold and green and neon leaves against the snow
193. building a snowman where no one else will ever see it
194. corn chip crumbles in the bottom of a bag
195. homemade cranberry sauce
196. laughing at games we are playing until our eyes water and our stomachs ache
197. Maria's hot orange juice
198. reading through an entire Shakespeare play (that I've never read before) in one sitting with so many of my friends
199. someone giving up a seat for you
200. someone else who always remembers to thank you for the food you have made or served
201. guitars and co: the picks, the slides, the capos, the strong fingers, the head that nods in time to the music, the foot tapping and the singing
202. lounging around at midnight with roomies chatting for a few minutes before bed
203. cheese
204. the wave - across streets, through windows, across the room, in meeting and in parting the motion of friendship and salutation
205. a God who supplies all my needs - and then so much more. Abundance and grace.

Giving

"We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give."
Sir Winston Churchill

One of my favorite 13 year olds just returned from a week in Florida with her family. They were sent there per her Wish from the Make-A-Wish Foundation which gave them the trip of a lifetime and the memories to last several.

We spent over an hour this morning looking at the pictures captured - the sunshine, the theme parks, water rides and dolphin-feedings, happy faces under hat brims and bare feet in amazing blue water, sweet horses giving rides, carousels, cartoon characters giving hugs, elaborate villas, ice cream shops - and took school this morning very slow and relaxed. She had so much fun. She wants to go back to Florida and stay there - presumably with all the wonderful gifts of the last week continuing into the unforeseeable future.


Grateful for gifts: #123-134

123. Henri Landwirth, founder of Give the Kids the World, and his miraculous life, whose survival of the Holocaust contributed to his desire to bless the kind of children who did not survive things like that.

124. safety through a lot of car and plane travel, and being across the country for a week

125. Renee and Laurie, the ladies here who gave so much time to make this wish come true

126. a week of relaxation away from the daily schedule

127. four days in my own little Valley of Elwy with my family

128. the happy little blid-ip my phone says when a text comes in

129. how warm a laptop feels on a super-cold morning

130. my mom's boxes of food she donates to our little house of girls

131. pasta with homemade cheese sauce

132. fog in the morning

133. sun in the afternoon

134. tea with honey and raw milk

planks of thanks

"Trust is the bridge from yesterday to tomorrow, built with planks of thanks. Remembering frames up gratitude. Gratitude lays out the planks of trust. I can walk the planks - from known to unknown - and know: He holds."

from One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp

#110-122

110. a sister who comes and wakes me up if I oversleep in the morning
111. the bliss of sleep after insomnia
112. a wedding and its attendant gladness, tears and bittersweet memories
113. Luke and Theresa's smiles as they turned to face one another over the rings
114. my mom putting a check into my hand
115. fresh cow's milk
116. latin conversations all the way from Bucer's to Garfield Street
117. tortillas fried
118. Billy Collins
119. reading someone else's poetry and being lifted by it
120. old computers that still run
121. a zip-up hoodie with long enough sleeves
122. the satisfaction of paying rent on the exact day it is due

reggae night

Sometimes you just need to get a bit of swing in your soul.

Sometimes you need to feel anything but white, and pretend you have the do-wop rhythm and dreads.

Sometimes you just need Bob Marley to tell you everything's gonna be alright.

On 21 May 1981, Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga delivered the final funeral eulogy to Marley, declaring:
"His voice was an omnipresent cry in our electronic world. His sharp features, majestic looks, and prancing style a vivid etching on the landscape of our minds. Bob Marley was never seen. He was an experience which left an indelible imprint with each encounter. Such a man cannot be erased from the mind. He is part of the collective consciousness of the nation."

All Grace

He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.

As it is written:
'He has dispersed abroad,
He has given to the poor;
His righteousness endures forever.'

Now may He who supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness,
while you are enriched in everything for all liberality, which causes thanksgiving through us to God.

2 Corinthians 9:6-11


27. the cool morning air during my run when I know that mid-day will be close to 90
28. my roommate Tali's cheery good-morning
29. cantaloupe
30. forgiveness, not only for the big things, but for the very petty as well
31. the faithfulness of my pastor and what I've learned from him in 15 years
32. Psalm sing held in Friendship Square downtown
33. our capable music leader, complete with shades and baseball cap
34. text message from a friend who lives just down the street
35. the luxury of lotion
36. coffee, even without cream
37. the possibilities of an early Monday morning
38. the amazing little girl I get to work with every day

reminders

Some very good posts on journal-keeping, and writing in general, over at Femina.

"Life is short. Write good words."