I. The Empty Cream
I'm at the coffee shop where I usually do my editing work.
Just now I went to pour cream into my coffee, and the cream-thermos was empty.
Sometime in my early thirties, I consciously chose not to be the person who uses up the cream and doesn't let the barista know.
I mention that I was in my thirties because it seems important:
making a choice about this sort of thing––even seeing that it is a choice–– can take a long time.
I was not a selfish beast before that, not at all:
I'm sure I mostly attended to the empty cream (or the empty toilet paper roll)---but I acted more by intuition than on a chosen policy.
II. [digression] Tales from the Thrift: Policy FAIL
Not to claim I always follow my policy now, either;
ohgodno, sometimes I really fail.
Like, the other day I was cashiering at the Thrift Store and a rather bothersome customer, a regular, was complaining about how disgustingly dirty the counter was;
so I took out a bottle of Windex, and –– just as the thought crossed my mind, "I bet this customer has environmental sensitivities" –– I sprayed it all over the counter.
And sure enough, they backed up like it was mustard gas, saying, "I'm scent sensitive!"
And I felt really sorry, but also, I confess, a small sense of satisfaction.
[end digression]
Anyway, choosing a policy of How to Be in This World really matters when the problems get more complex than empty creamers.
And yet I think they're related.
If we choose to risk small discomforts (a moment of physical, intellectual, or social effort), might we be more ready to take risks in the bigger matters?
(I'm actually not sure of the answer. Maybe not? )
III. Dietrich's Choice
Along these lines, this morning, Veterans Day, I happened across a letter written in a Nazi prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, about choosing how to be in This World.
Bonhoeffer was, as you probably know, a Lutheran pastor and theologian who agonized over what it meant/how to be a peacemaker (as Christ calls his followers to be), if one lived in Nazi Germany, as Bonhoeffer did.
(In fact he'd chosen to return to Germany *, when he could have stayed safely in the US).
The Christian churches in Germany had mostly capitulated to Hitler, so Bonhoeffer was having to figure out how to be a freelance Christian.
Which, to some small extent, I feel I am.
My position is different in that I don't believe in God, but it's similar in that I believe in many of the things people mean when they say God--well, the things liberal social-justice–minded Catholic people I know mean, anyway, like, feed the hungry, clothe the naked--that stuff, where Jesus says,
"since you did it for one of the least important of these brothers of mine, you did it for me." --Matthew 25:40.
And then, I'm nothing like Bonhoeffer in temperament!
I expect that if I'd lived in Nazi Germany I'd have done something tiny and ineffectual--like, maybe sneak someone a piece of bread (I like to think I'd do at least that much, but perhaps I'm flattering myself I'd even be that brave).)
^ via NYRB: "The Tragedy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi"
Back to our tale...
Finally, Bonhoeffer decided that killing a man such as Hitler was justified for a Christian:
The church must “not only bind up the wounds of those who have fallen beneath the wheel” of the state “but at times halt the wheel itself.” [Ibid.]
Bonhoeffer wrote this letter from prison [excerpt below, to his friend and former student Ebergard Bethge], eight months before the Nazi regime executed him on April 9, 1945, for plotting to assassinate Hitler.
"Letter from Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Ebergard Bethge"
21 July [1944]
* IV. Bonhoeffer, on choosing to return to Germany after war broke out in 1939 (this comes to mind when I hear fellow Americans say they will "move to Canada if ______ [name of candidate] becomes president"):
I'm at the coffee shop where I usually do my editing work.
Just now I went to pour cream into my coffee, and the cream-thermos was empty.
Sometime in my early thirties, I consciously chose not to be the person who uses up the cream and doesn't let the barista know.
I mention that I was in my thirties because it seems important:
making a choice about this sort of thing––even seeing that it is a choice–– can take a long time.
I was not a selfish beast before that, not at all:
I'm sure I mostly attended to the empty cream (or the empty toilet paper roll)---but I acted more by intuition than on a chosen policy.
II. [digression] Tales from the Thrift: Policy FAIL
Not to claim I always follow my policy now, either;
ohgodno, sometimes I really fail.
Like, the other day I was cashiering at the Thrift Store and a rather bothersome customer, a regular, was complaining about how disgustingly dirty the counter was;
so I took out a bottle of Windex, and –– just as the thought crossed my mind, "I bet this customer has environmental sensitivities" –– I sprayed it all over the counter.
And sure enough, they backed up like it was mustard gas, saying, "I'm scent sensitive!"
And I felt really sorry, but also, I confess, a small sense of satisfaction.
[end digression]
Anyway, choosing a policy of How to Be in This World really matters when the problems get more complex than empty creamers.
And yet I think they're related.
If we choose to risk small discomforts (a moment of physical, intellectual, or social effort), might we be more ready to take risks in the bigger matters?
(I'm actually not sure of the answer. Maybe not? )
III. Dietrich's Choice
Along these lines, this morning, Veterans Day, I happened across a letter written in a Nazi prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, about choosing how to be in This World.
Bonhoeffer was, as you probably know, a Lutheran pastor and theologian who agonized over what it meant/how to be a peacemaker (as Christ calls his followers to be), if one lived in Nazi Germany, as Bonhoeffer did.
(In fact he'd chosen to return to Germany *, when he could have stayed safely in the US).
The Christian churches in Germany had mostly capitulated to Hitler, so Bonhoeffer was having to figure out how to be a freelance Christian.
Which, to some small extent, I feel I am.
My position is different in that I don't believe in God, but it's similar in that I believe in many of the things people mean when they say God--well, the things liberal social-justice–minded Catholic people I know mean, anyway, like, feed the hungry, clothe the naked--that stuff, where Jesus says,
"since you did it for one of the least important of these brothers of mine, you did it for me." --Matthew 25:40.
And then, I'm nothing like Bonhoeffer in temperament!
I expect that if I'd lived in Nazi Germany I'd have done something tiny and ineffectual--like, maybe sneak someone a piece of bread (I like to think I'd do at least that much, but perhaps I'm flattering myself I'd even be that brave).)
Back to our tale...
Finally, Bonhoeffer decided that killing a man such as Hitler was justified for a Christian:
The church must “not only bind up the wounds of those who have fallen beneath the wheel” of the state “but at times halt the wheel itself.” [Ibid.]
Bonhoeffer wrote this letter from prison [excerpt below, to his friend and former student Ebergard Bethge], eight months before the Nazi regime executed him on April 9, 1945, for plotting to assassinate Hitler.
"Letter from Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Ebergard Bethge"
21 July [1944]
During the last year or so I've come to know and understand more and more the profound this-worldliness of Christianity. ... I don't mean the shallow and banal this-worldliness of the enlightened, the busy, the comfortable, or the lascivious, but the profound this-worldliness, characterized by discipline and the constant knowledge of death and resurrection...._______________
I remember a conversation that I had in America thirteen years ago with a young French pastor [pacifist Jean Lassere]. We were asking ourselves quite simply what we wanted to do with our lives.
He said he would like to become a saint (and I think it's quite likely that he did become one). At the time I was very impressed, but I disagreed with him, and said, in effect, that I should like to learn to have faith. For a long time I didn't realize the depth of the contrast. I thought I could acquire faith by trying to live a holy life, or something like it.
...
I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!), a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one.
By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world — watching with Christ in Gethsemane.
That, I think, is faith; ... and that is how one becomes a man....
* IV. Bonhoeffer, on choosing to return to Germany after war broke out in 1939 (this comes to mind when I hear fellow Americans say they will "move to Canada if ______ [name of candidate] becomes president"):
"I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people...
Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose but I cannot make that choice from security."[24]
