Celebration, commemoration day

Today is my baptism birthday. It is also the commemoration date (that is to say the anniversary of his death) of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor who was martyred by the Nazis in WWII for participating in a plot to kill Hitler -- and that alone makes him my hero. There were a lot of others caught up in the plot -- this was part of the July 20 plot that failed -- so he was in good company with the resistance movement. (The photo at the left shows him in the courtyard at Tegel Prison. He was later transferred to Buchenwald, then to Flossenburg, where he was killed.)

I have always loved Bonhoeffer, and it wasn't until long after I had read most of his work that I found out I was baptized on his commemoration date. (The date wasn't selected for that reason ... just a happy coincidence.) I was looking back through the church records and saw the entry and the date. Since then, when I think of my baptism, I think about Bonhoeffer and his works.

There are a lot of famous quotes of his -- he was a prolific writer, an articulate speaker and a brilliant theologian -- and here are a few of my favorites:

To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depth of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom.

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And:

I am still discovering up to this very moment that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to believe. One must attempt to abandon every attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, a churchman (the priestly type, so called!) a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. This is what I mean by worldliness - taking life in one's stride, with all its duties and problems, its successes and failures, its experiences and helplessness. It is in such a life that we throw ourselves into the arms of God and participate in his sufferings in the world and watch with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith, that is metonoia and that is what makes a man and a Christian. How can success make us arrogant or failure lead us astray, when we participate in the sufferings of God by living in this world?

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The world lost a great soul when he was killed. Thank God his written work survived to enlighten, comfort and inspire us.

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