Author Archives: Charles

How About Spending Time with Dietrich Bonhoeffer this Lent?

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I noticed that you subscribed to my blog, Common Place Book, in the past and wanted to make you aware of a Lenten mailing list I will be sending. If you do not want to receive the mailing list, please contact me at charles@discipleswalk.org to let me know.

Below I have provided some information on what I will be emailing.

I’ve been thinking about Ash Wednesday and Lent for several weeks and wondering if there was a Lenten practice I wanted to take up this year or maybe share with others.

Several years ago I came across the book 40 Day Journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer and mentioned it on this blog.  The more I think about that small book, the more I have become convinced Lent would be a good time to take up a daily reading from it.

While the selections from Bonhoeffer’s writings were not selected specifically with Lent in mind, I think it is always good to spend time with him and additionally this book offers a great pattern for a Lenten practice (or for that matter a pattern for any time of reflection).

Each day offers the following – 

  • A brief quotation from Bonhoeffer’s books Discipleship or Life Together
  • A verse or two from Scripture
  • Some “Questions to Ponder”
  • A few sentences from a Psalm
  • Suggestions for Journaling
  • A thought or two for prayers of intercession
  • A closing prayer 

What do you think about giving this a try?

I have created a mailing list and around midday (Central Time) each day of Lent will send out an email with the day’s reading.

By the way, the emails will be sent to the list address lent2022@discipleswalk.org and will be sent from my charles@discipleswalk.org email address.

I hope you want to give this a try with me.

Charles

{ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est}

Identity – Thomas Merton

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If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.

From: Thomas Merton

Worship as Silence or Song – St Augustine

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What shall I say, O my God, my life, my holy joy? What can any man say when
he speaks of you? Silence offers the greatest eloquence, yet woe to him who
does not sing your praise.

From: Saint Augustine

Yielded – Walter Brueggemann

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We yield, because you, beyond us, are our God.
We are your creatures met by your holiness,
by your holiness made our true selves.
And we yield. Amen.

From: Walter Brueggemann

 

Highest Joy – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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To go one’s way under the sign of the cross is not misery and desperation, but peace and refreshment for the soul, it is the highest joy.  Then we do not walk under our self-made laws and burdens, but under the yoke of him who knows us and who walks under the yoke with us.  Under his yoke we are certain of his nearness and communion.

From: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Resting in God – Thomas Merton

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. . .  prayer, especially meditation and contemplative prayer, is not so much a way to find God as a way of resting in him whom we have found, who loves us, who is near to us, who comes to us to draw us to himself.

From: Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer

Public Worship – Thomas Merton

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The liturgy cannot fulfill this function if we misunderstand or underestimate the essentially spiritual value of Christian public prayer. If we cling to immature and limited notions of “privacy,” we will never be able to free ourselves from the bonds of individualism. We will never realize how the Church delivers us from ourselves by public worship, the very public character of which tends to hide us “in the secret of God’s face.”

From:  Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration, p. 27.

Very Rest – Julian of Norwich

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For this is the cause why we be not all in ease of heart and soul: that we seek here rest in those things that are so little, wherein is no rest, and know not our God that is All-mighty, All-wise, All-good. For He is the very rest. God willeth to be known, and it pleaseth Him that we rest in Him; for all that is beneath Him sufficeth not us. And this is the cause why that no soul is rested till it is made nought as to all things that are made. When it is willingly made nought, for love, to have Him that is all, then is it able to receive spiritual rest.

from: Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

Sunrise Music – Thomas Merton

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Sunrise is an event that calls forth solemn music in the very depths of our nature, as if one’s whole being had to attune itself to the cosmos and praise God for the new day, praise him in the name of all the creatures that ever were or ever will be. I look at the rising sun and feel that now upon me falls the responsibility of seeing what all my ancestors have seen, in the Stone Age and even before it, praising God before me. Whether or not they praised him then, for themselves, they must praise him now in me. When the sun rises each one of us is summoned by the living and the dead to praise God.

From: Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Sabbath and Culture – Walter Brueggemann

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… Sabbath is a school for our desires, an expose and critique of the false desires that focus on idolatry and greed that have immense power for us. When we do not pause for Sabbath, these false desires take power over us. But Sabbath is the chance for self-embrace of our true identity.

From: Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now