"To talk of going down fighting like heroes in the face of certain defeat is not really heroic at all, but merely a refusal to face the future. The ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation is to live. It is only from this question, with its responsibility towards history, that fruitful solutions can come, even if for the time being they are very humiliating. In short, it is much easier to see a thing through from the point of view of abstract principle than from that of concrete responsibility. The rising generation will always instinctively discern which of these we make the basis of our actions, for it is their own future that is at stake."
"We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer. The only profitable relationship to others - and especially to our weakest brethren - is one of love, and that means the will to hold fellowship with them. God himself did not despise humanity, but became man for men's sake."
"Trust will always be one of the greatest, rarest, and happiest blessings of our life in community, though it can emerge only on the dark background of a necessary mistrust."
"Quantities are competitive, qualities are complementary."
"It may be that the day of judgment will dawn tomorrow; in that case, we shall gladly stop working for a better future. But not before."
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer I've been holed up in an old, creaky, (possibly, mildly) haunted house that smells of old cigarettes and lingering must in Bolton Landing, New York for the past three days with three kindly gentlemen. Yesterday was the only sunny day since we've been here, so Danny and I went for a swim in Lake George under the painted clouds and I wished it were the 1950's. (but don't I always?) It's a rough, hilly mile from the town to our "cabin", and the people here aren't kindly towards young, scraggly hitchhikers. So we stay in the house out of laziness, reading, and talking of reading and books, listening to operas and "claire de lune" and Billie Holiday on repeat, and doing crossword puzzles, and watching the four movies("Frida", "Psycho", "Raising Arizona", and "Trainspotting") we rented for free from the library ("You make take as many as you wish for as long as you wish" is their policy, which the librarian recited for me with a laugh), and drinking the Whiskey and Gin that we purchased from the two old ladies that run the one and only liquor store, and watching the fireflies dance above the fields and through the trees at dusk, and toting around the Michael Jackson doll who was the house's only residence upon our arrival (besides "The Voice", who is the ghost we've somewhat fabricated. Danny heard a deep voice talking in the living room the first night while the rest of us were sleeping, and the next day every time Laurence and Jake would pass a certain lamp it would turn either on or off. It happened three consecutive times as they were moving a table out to the porch, and when they came and sat in the room I made mention that it happened only when the two of them passed it together. They decided to test my theory that it was they who were causing it, so they stood up at the end of the room and Jake said, "okay, on the count of three, we'll walk back past the lamp. One. Two. Three" and no sooner had he said three than the lamp turned back on! I jumped up from the chair I was sitting in right next to the lamp and ran into the kitchen. So far, this is all the proof we have that this place is actually haunted.).
This morning I awoke an hour before the boys, put on the kettle and some hymns and started reading Letters and Papers from Prison by Dierich Bonhoeffer, which I acquired for five dollars at a bookstore in Manhattan. This is what the above quotes are from. Sorry for not doing an lj cut, but I can't remember the html for it, and it won't let me switch to the easy mode for some reason (maybe it's the Voice!).
Anyway, these quotes were of great inspiration to me this morning (as Bonhoeffer's words usually are), so I decided to jot them down here.
Tomorrow we take the bus from here, back to Manhattan, and from there we take the chinatown bus back to Philly. I fly out of Philly on Wednesday evening and get in to John Wayne at 10.30pm that night. The next morning I will be driving Danny to San Luis. His grandmother passed this weekend, and her funeral is on Thursday, so he's flying home early and since he doesn't have a car, I'll be driving him north. I figure I'll stay through the weekend (Hey, Sierra, can I perch in your nest? I'd call you, but I have no cellular service in these parts.)
Danny and I were talking that we should get a group together to go to the old silo on Friday night to play some music and pass a bottle of wine in it's echoing vastness. So. Let's do that.
I won't get into my stay in New York. How do you describe it's nooks and crannies and hustle and bustle, it's shores that gaze only upon not-so-distant shores, and the trio of ladies singing bulgarian folk hymns in the back of a bar, and sleeping on the steps of a church (if only for 15 minutes), and the stuffy, stuffed bookstores, and the crazy homeless dude that tells you you're "phenomenally gorgeous" and the little old lady that told Jona he looks like Brad Pitt, and the big, booming fireworks, and the rusty fire escapes in Harlem with their muddled rain drops, and the church bells that sing songs on end, and the sweaty, sordid subway stations, and the Gin and Tonics and Atlantis harmonies all the way to the $19 top of the empire state building, and the boat rowing on central park lake beneath a blue sky framed by the buildings that reach for it's escape, and the hudson river on old, wooden pillars at dusk, and lady liberty waving as you pass?
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
Oh, Lady Liberty, if only we still loved you; still sang your song over the seas.