Wednesday 11 February 2009

[everything that has breath]

"There is a poem by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian, written in June 1944 while he was imprisoned by the Nazis, which captures this idea. He speaks of the confident smiling outer personality others say that he presents, whilst inside he feels weary, lonely and powerlessly trembling for friends and beauty. But the poem has an ending which speaks of his certainty of belonging to God:

Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.

God indeed knows each one of us better than we know ourselves and knows who we are and where we come from and why we are as we are. It is said that to know all is to forgive all. May we have confidence in God who loves us and claims us for his own."

This was taken from something that my minister wrote in our church magazine (which can be found on one of the links here) this month.
I found it this evening and, given my previous blog, thought that it was amazingly relevant, all the more so because Bonhoeffer was German (and, for those who don't know me, I LOVE german... strange as I am...) and we have actually done a play about Bonhoeffer at Dra-ma. And it probably had this in it as well. Actually, I'm pretty sure it did... I have a memory of Richard doing it.

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