Bonhoeffing

Here's my first go at this. I hope its not too lame, but just lame enough.

I just watched a documentary with a few folks from my church on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Man, is that guy cool or what? but afterwards, we sat around and instead of talking about the implications of his life on our life in a place that is full of violence (let us ideological pacifists take a moment to recognize that the Diet's plot to kill Hitler was actually an expression of his commitment to Christian nonviolence, not a lapse in his theology) or see where his life could match up to and challenge ours, we compared Hitler's regime with "the terrorists" (and somehow made the jump to Saddam Hussein), and eventually ended up in Africa where "those people" and "those countries" are more corrupt and messed up than us and it is just so sad.

we didn't make the connection to learning to suffer with Iraqi Christians and Muslims and being willing to die for the cause of life and commitment to the Word of God.

I go to a church that (i think) is fairly good at walking with those who suffer and living a life that is in solidarity with those the world would rather toss out. it just saddens me.

we went backpacking yesterday and today with a bunch of the youth and most of them (against my wishes) brought their cell phones. my church is in the ghetto and those kids couldn't live without their cell phones for a day and a half. we could talk about the sociology of this until we're blue in the face, but my point is that it doesn't seem like we can get away from this incredibly pervasive need to not let things shake what the way we act and live (whether that is Bonny's life or the quasi-wilderness). We can't get away from our own wealth, even if we want to. its on every side of us and even when we try to run from it--without forsaking the community (just to overuse that word again)--someone brings it with them. so how do we do this? how do we stand as a symbol of poverty? where are the poor we can even stand with?

I'm confronted by Jean Vanier's lucid phrase that those in poverty are those who have an inability to cope with their life. under that paradigm, i'm left to realize that my conception of poverty is entirely material. yes, we are called to the suffering, as they are more often unable to cope, but what this shows me is that the more pertinent question is a) how do i become poor and b) how do i help others to become poor? it is a poverty of spirit that we read about in Jesus' most important teaching. lepers are poor. prostitutes are poor. but so were tax collectors (and they were rich!). This is not about physical lack, but about poverty. Spiritual poverty is an equal opportunity reality. It is not concerned about class or continent or race. in fact, it is not even concerned about whether or not you have been poor in the past! it will take whoever it can, when it can, for as long as it can. But now I'm making poverty sound like a bad thing. But Jesus says it isn't.

Matthew 16. "Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. to be poor, incapable of coping with one's life, is a loss of control. it is a loss of the ability to hold and put boundaries around one's life. but it is in the hope of Christ that life is found. losing one's life is easy. simply do everything that you think will bring you life and then, 1, 2, or 5 years from now, analyze whether you have more life now or then. it is Christ that brings life, that puts a bottom to our abyss and gives us meaning. It is in Christ's life that we find our own path. It is in Christ's death that we find a resurrection.

So the question is, how do we find poverty? how do we help the everyone to realize that they are poor and then how do we stand with the poor in our own poverty?

i cannot cope with my life. i am unable. every bit of celebrity in my veins is false and pretentious and hideously ugly. i want to be on the side of the God who suffers because that God was on my side but i fail. i continue to try to cope with my own life. my prayer is that we are able to lean on the Christ, on the one who saves us even though we have no reason to be saved. That is my hope and prayer for this world, for my own life and for the life of the church. But that is going to look like maybe throwing a spoke into the wheel of an evil regime at times. if may even look like becoming an outcast. but it is good and true and I see no other options.

that's all for now.