an exerpt from Streams of Living Water
STATIONS ON THE ROAD TO FREEDOM
July 21, 1944
DISCIPLINE
If you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all
discipline of soul and senses, so that your passions
and your limbs might not lead you confusedly hither and yon.
Chaste be your spirit and body, subject to your own will,
and obedient to seek out the goal that they have been given.
No one discovers the secret of freedom but through self-control.
ACTION
Dare to do what is just, not what fancy may call for;
Lose no time with what may be, but boldly grasp what is real.
The world of thought is escape; freedom comes only through action.
Step out beyond anxious waiting and into the storm of events,
carried only by God's command and by your own faith;
then will freedom exultantly cry out to welcome your spirit.
SUFFERING
Wondrous transformations! Your strong and active hands
are tied now. Powerless, alone, you see the end of your actions.
Still, you take a deep breath and lay your struggle for justice,
quietly and in faith, into a mightier hand.
Just for one blissful moment, you tasted the sweetness of freedom,
then you handed it over to God, that he might make it whole.
DEATH
Come now, highest moment on the road to freedom eternal,
Death, put down the ponderous chains and demolish the walls
of our mortal bodies, the walls of our blinded souls,
that we might finally see what mortals have kept us from seeing.
Freedom, how long we have sought you through discipline, actions, and suffering.
Dying, now we behold your face in the countenance of God.
On the day Dietrich Bonhoeffer heard that the 20 July 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler had failed- the day he knew that his own fate and the fate of his friends was sealed - he wrote an account of his life in a poem entitled "Stations on the Road to Freedom." Brooding in his Tegel prison cell, he set forth the four great dimensions of a spiritual life that lead to freedom in all its facets - freedom from ingrained habits of sin, freedom from cowering inaction and irresponsibility, freedom from fear of a monstrously demonic and immensely powerful nation-state. In the gray dawn of Sunday, 8 April 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer became a martyr, whispering to his fellow prisoners as he left his cell to be hanged on the Flossenburg gallows, "This is the end - for me, the beginning of life."
Found on pgs. 72-74
Yay for interesting reading assignments in Christian Ethics.
July 21, 1944
DISCIPLINE
If you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all
discipline of soul and senses, so that your passions
and your limbs might not lead you confusedly hither and yon.
Chaste be your spirit and body, subject to your own will,
and obedient to seek out the goal that they have been given.
No one discovers the secret of freedom but through self-control.
ACTION
Dare to do what is just, not what fancy may call for;
Lose no time with what may be, but boldly grasp what is real.
The world of thought is escape; freedom comes only through action.
Step out beyond anxious waiting and into the storm of events,
carried only by God's command and by your own faith;
then will freedom exultantly cry out to welcome your spirit.
SUFFERING
Wondrous transformations! Your strong and active hands
are tied now. Powerless, alone, you see the end of your actions.
Still, you take a deep breath and lay your struggle for justice,
quietly and in faith, into a mightier hand.
Just for one blissful moment, you tasted the sweetness of freedom,
then you handed it over to God, that he might make it whole.
DEATH
Come now, highest moment on the road to freedom eternal,
Death, put down the ponderous chains and demolish the walls
of our mortal bodies, the walls of our blinded souls,
that we might finally see what mortals have kept us from seeing.
Freedom, how long we have sought you through discipline, actions, and suffering.
Dying, now we behold your face in the countenance of God.
On the day Dietrich Bonhoeffer heard that the 20 July 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler had failed- the day he knew that his own fate and the fate of his friends was sealed - he wrote an account of his life in a poem entitled "Stations on the Road to Freedom." Brooding in his Tegel prison cell, he set forth the four great dimensions of a spiritual life that lead to freedom in all its facets - freedom from ingrained habits of sin, freedom from cowering inaction and irresponsibility, freedom from fear of a monstrously demonic and immensely powerful nation-state. In the gray dawn of Sunday, 8 April 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer became a martyr, whispering to his fellow prisoners as he left his cell to be hanged on the Flossenburg gallows, "This is the end - for me, the beginning of life."
Found on pgs. 72-74
Yay for interesting reading assignments in Christian Ethics.