a story in n parts:

Everyone was always watching him. Eight months old and not a minute of privacy. Everyone was always excited too. The doctors observed him as if he were made of radio waves. His parents were afraid of him, though they would have been shocked and ashamed to know that he knew it. His parents were both intelligent people too. His mother's IQ, hovering between 165 and 169, and his fathers less than ten points behind, put them both in a small percentile of the population, but that was by no means enough to explain how his IQ was (estimated, but still unproven) more than both theirs put together. His first word was, "I", his second, "guess", followed by four more consecutively: "I'll start talking now."

That was three weeks ago, 221 days after birth, said in a moment of exasperation to get them to go away. He had talked before but was always careful to disguise it with "goo goo's" and "gah gah's". Exercising his mouth. The doctors didn't know that. The press said he was from Krypton. He just wanted to be alone. He told them that. That was his second sentence: "Leave me alone." He refused to speak anymore until they did. But the cameras and recording machines bothered him too. He began to devise a plan.

Bonhoeffer on Hillsdale
(for my Bonhoeffer Seminar's midterm, I wrote a story.)



On October 14, 2004, a prayer flew from the mind of an undergraduate student named Luke Heyman. The prayer was spoken as follows:

O, Lord, My God, Father in heaven, blessed be Thy Name. I know Thou art busy, with that war in Iraq and all, but, well, I’ve got this midterm, from this professor named Reist. Well, do you think you could send down Bonhoeffer to Hillsdale, so I can see how he would (re)act? Thank You, O, most merciful God. Glory be to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. As it was in the big inning of the Yankees v. Red Sox Game, now, and ever shall be. Amen

That was all, a simple, beautiful prayer. God was in a pleasant mood then, laughing about the outcome of the 2004 American presidential election, so he asked me if I was up to it. I responded, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” So…

I hanged by the neck until dead on April 9, 1945. I spent but a moment and eternity in infinite paradise. After that second and forever and eternal light of God, my eyes adjusted back to the darkness of earth and on October 21, 2004 I awoke to a digital alarm clock in room 102, Dow Center, Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, United States of America, Earth, Milky Way, Material Universe. This information I sensed from short-term memory, a sort of intuition, as if from a dream. I knew nothing about the history of earth from the sixty or so years between my death and reincarnation as it were.
I found a course catalogue on the nightstand; I took it up and began to read the lists of classes inside. Inside the course catalogue of Hillsdale College I found many classes that seemed as though they could be edifying, but I was a little disheartened by how few course titles mentioned Christ. One caught my eye though, they included: REL 422 with Reist(1), and most of the Christian Studies department didn’t seem all that bad. However, they seemed a bit preoccupied with that English fellow, C.S. Lewis. He did have some nice little writings as I recalled, but surely not enough to warrant two seminar classes. I quickly became bored with the coarse catalogue and decided to begin an existential exploration of Hillsdale College.

It was now already early afternoon. I was quite famished and wanted a snack so I wandered toward the Snack bar. Inside I found about a dozen students, most of them smoking, chatting, studying, and/or playing with computers. I was struck by their sloppy dress and posture and their apparent complacency, what seemed like an un-thought-out carelessness, not the simplicity and carelessness of a disciple(2), but instead a complacency of the world. There was a young woman sitting alone by the windows with eyes reddened by tears. Immediately I was struck with pastoral compassion for her. She had cried all night upon discovering that her boyfriend had given her a venereal disease(3). Her crying had kept awake her roommate who was trying to rest up for an economics midterm. At three in the morning, her roommate couldn’t take it anymore and yelled across the room, “Shut the hell up already; I shouldn’t have to lose sleep and therefore a pristine GPA, just because you’re a whore.”(4) I did not know this at the time, but I could tell something was wrong so I asked the girl,
“A cigarette for some friendly conversation?”
“Sure.”
“So, do you like it here?”
“It’s ok.” She said with a sniff.
“Something wrong?” I was happily surprised that my conversational English was flawless.
“Nothin’…well, my roommate bitched at me last night, and…it wasn’t my fault…I couldn’t help it.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, remember that Christ, too, suffered undeservedly the accusations of others”(5)
I noticed some signs in the Snack Bar for a, “Fairfield presentation” at 5:30 on the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues. The presentation was held in the Knorr memorial room, a queerly decorated room, with display cases obviously unchanged for a decade. Carrying cafeteria trays, students filed in, most of them were dressed a little neater than their counterparts in the Snack Bar were. They held themselves a little better too, but many of their rigid backs were not an evidence of reliance in Christ, but rather a sign of personal piety(6). Some of these young people were not interested in better serving Christ; they were instead interested in better developing arguments to defend their preferred brand of Christian piety. Please note that I am not describing all of the students present, merely a handful of quiet ones with subtly distressed faces, distressed by the false conviction of healthy doubt.(7)

The topic of speaking in tongues was presented by two young women. They covered all the directly relevant verses, many of them without proper context(8). They seemed to be longing for an explanation of the spiritual gift as practiced in their prepackaged brand of Christianity more than an explanation of its usefulness in serving Christ in a certain historical context, yet they were wonderfully sincere throughout. Truthfulness(9), in fact, is the modifier I would choose to describe the entire atmosphere of the Fairfield society. During the question and answer session, most revealed themselves to be honestly seeking a real understanding of Christ. Subsequently, Fairfield left a fair taste in my mouth concerning the youth of 2004. It was also during the Q. and A. that a funny looking man seedily seated in the corner caught my eye, he looked to be a professor, but from his rambling and incoherent “questions”, I was unable to ascertain what, other than Jesus Christ, he professed.
I read some signs on the bulletin board outside the Knorr Memorial room for “Intervarsity Christian Fellowship”, and thought there could be no better way to learn more about the community of Christ on this campus. My first suspicion of the accuracy of this thought came when I read where the “Intervarsity Christian Fellowship Meeting” was held: an auditorium. An auditorium is certainly no place to have intimate discipling conversations, but I figured I’d attend anyway. I found my way to the “Philips Auditorium” with help from my trusty campus map, and discovered clumps of clean faced students standing talking outside the doors, from inside the doors came not only the horrible sounds of bongo drums and electric guitars, but also a hot darkness, the flashing of colored lights, and even smoke. Not the pungent smelling smoke of tobacco, that would be no surprise, but instead the steamed smoke of smoke machines. I thought that there must have been some horrible accident, so I asked one of the students, a tight clothed blonde girl with Greek characters scrolled across her bosom,
“Do you know where the ‘Intervarsity Christian Fellowship’ meets?”
“aaaa, ya mean I.V.?”
“Possibly...”
“yeah, aaaa, it’s like right in there.” And she pointed her painted nail at the smoking doorway. So I thought to myself, “It can’t be as bad as Nazi prison,” and entered, but did not abandon all hope. I found my way to a dark corner, in order to be inconspicuous. (It was not hard; the whole place was dark.) Once the Ivy concert began, I positively knew that “I.V.” was not intervarsity Christian fellowship. Most of Ivy’s songs did use religious terms or were even explicitly about a Gnostic Christian relationship. This “Ivy concert” hidden in a dark basement auditorium is a perfect counterexample of a visible community(10).

My earthly body, being over ninety-eight and a half years old and already killed once, became quite drowsy. The lulling of Ivy’s “praise songs” put me right to sleep. I awakened to a much brighter and smokeless Philips Auditorium filling with suited men and random students. I decided to stay where I was to see if this was another phase of Ivy’s concert. I shortly found out, though, that I was seated in the audience for a lecture presented by the Center for Constructive Alternatives on the Hollywood movie star Ronald Reagan and the sesquicentennial of the American Republican Party. I was quite interested in how these two were connected, so I stayed in my seat. Behind the podium was a large red curtain, a screen with the images of a large American flag, the movie star much more decrepit than I vaguely remembered him, and a large, cartoonish blue elephant, rotationally projected upon it. The familiar décor caused me to half expect the speaker to be wearing the military uniform of the Third Reich, and I subconsciously reacted by gripping tightly the armrests to bolt for the door. However, he was not; instead, he wore an expensive Italian suit and silk tie hand-woven by a sweatshop worker in China. As the lecture began, and I saw more intense political and national idealism than I had seen in sixty years (given I was in heaven most of that time), I began to suspect much to my horror that the Nazis had won the war, or at least conquered America. So I rapidly searched my mind for any Jewish face seen in the last few hours. There were a few candidates including the funny-looking professor in the corner of the Knorr Memorial room, but I could not be sure. I began to squirm in my seat. As the Nationalistic frenzy war(11) on, I suddenly realized that my suspicions must be true, and the National Socialists played into the weakness(12) of American culture by promising them a Hollywood movie star to be always America’s president and Hitler’s puppet!(13)

With righteous indignation I strode out of the auditorium, I was astonished that no guards were waiting to grab me at the door. I headed back to my room in the Dow Center; the halls were full of old well-dressed people. In my room, on my pillow, next to the GOP mints, I found an invitation to “The Gala Dinner” in the “Tent on the quad.” I knew exactly where the dinner was because all day I had seen a carnival-like tent in the middle of this so-called college campus. I followed a herd of well-dressed deep pockets adorned with precious stones, medals, and Bush Cheney ’04 bumper stickers. We filed past the Snack Bar, but I could not see if the young woman was still there because black curtains hung to hide the degenerates, poor, and non-conformists inside. I entered the “tent” with the herd and heard the first beautiful music since my arrival back to earth: a string quartet set on a hardwood floor played Bach only feet from a giant gaudy ice sculpture of a building on campus. Most of the deep pockets were mingling around the room in a cocktail- and we’re-saving-the-world-by-paying-for-the-indoctrination-of-young-impressionable-minds-induced daze. I pushed my way through the crowd around one of the open bars. If I was going to suffer a Bacchanalia, I was going to need a cognac. I was surrounded by money, and struck once again with the conviction that political parties, politics, the state, will not save man.(14)
We were all herded into the main tent for dinner, garish gold painted chandeliers and wooden chairs almost replicated majesty, but no cigar. I was seated at the head table; I guess a time traveler is a prestigious guest at any event. The food and drink flowed in high quantity and quality, though the conversation seemed to be limited only to quantity and was directed at relieving the guilt of laying up treasures, both treasures of cold hard cash(15), and treasures stored up in the ability of this alleged liberal arts college to “save” the world. Christ has already saved the world; he is the only one who can, could, and did. I had to peacefully remove myself from the dinner just before dessert when all were asked to salute the flag of the United States of America. Like Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Polycarp, the confessing church under the Third Reich, and many others, I would not, and will not, bow down to any save Jesus the Christ.
Outside the gala tent, I came upon a modestly well-dressed longhaired student violently sucking nicotine and tar through a fiberglass mesh in order to steady his shaking hands. He seemed obviously disturbed by what he had witnessed in the tent. He wore a large nametag that read, “Luke Heyman/Monroeville, Oh/Student.” I felt both disgust and a queer camaraderie, so I introduced myself,
“Hello, I’m Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
“Are you serious!”
“Yes”
“Holy shit, I guess I should have prayed for world peace.”
“You should.”
“Umm, so you wanna go to a class on… you?”
“I don’t know; I’m becoming quite exhausted. Who’s teaching it?” I asked.
“The Reverend Dr. John Reist, DD, MD, PHD etc”
“Oh, I’ve heard of him, ok, I’ll come learn about myself.” We walked in silence to a darkened office building. The winds were frigid, the walks empty, the air wet. The door was propped open by a little rubber doorstop. Before opening the door, Luke looked over his shoulder in both directions as if he feared being seen. This action reminded me of the underground church meetings back in Nazi Germany. We found our way to a conference room packed with solemn and hungry souls. Seedily seated at the head was that funny-looking professor. He did not seem at all surprised to see me, he only winked and barked, “Heyman, sit on the floor.” I intuitively brought two typed questions to earth about my writings, well, just because, you never know. I passed these around to the sleepy humble students. The questions appeared on heavenly paper as follows:

1) Did my writings help you to understand why I had to betray my native land to the point of death?
2) Why are you wasting your precious vapor of a life reading, of all people, me? Do you not think your short lives would be better spent in self-discipline, action, suffering, and death?

After class, I went back to heaven and Luke Heyman asked Dr. Reist if he could be excused from the midterm because he brought me to class, to which Dr. Reist replied, “No.”



-------------------------------------------------------
1. That name seemed vaguely familiar; it felt as though I must have seen it many times spelled out in those bowls of alphabet soup up in heaven, that is, the vessels containing the prayers of the saints to be poured out one glorious day.
2. “The life of the disciple can only be maintained so long as nothing is allowed to come between Christ and ourselves—neither the law, nor personal piety, nor even the world” (COD, p. 173) Here in the Snack Bar the world, the best of the distractions, yet still a distraction from Christ, had a stronghold.
3. “The disciples are not to judge. If they do so, they will themselves be judged by God.” (COD, p. 183)
4. see previous note
5. --“…genuine obedience and humility are only to be found in the ordinary, the commonplace, and the hidden. Had Jesus urged his disciples to return to their own kith and kin, back to duty and calling, back to the obedience of the law as the scribes expounded it, they would then have known that he was devout, humble and obedient.” (COD. P.157)
6. Again, “The life of the disciple can only be maintained so long as nothing is allowed to come between Christ and ourselves—neither the law, nor personal piety, nor even the world” (COD, p. 173)
7. “Whether I do or do not believe is therefore something I cannot learn from any reflexion on my religious acts, but it is equally impossible, while I am in the process of believing, to center my attention on my belief in such a way that I would have to believe in my belief. Belief is never directed to itself, but only on Christ, on something extrinsic.” (Act and Being, p. 113)
8.Editor’s note: Here it is commonly held that Bonhoeffer quoted an obscure reference to an unpublished writing by Luther on the historical context of spiritual gifts; unfortunately, this section of the manuscript was used for fuel in the event of a failed Bunsen burner in the Strosacker building.
9.“The commandment of complete truthfulness is really only another name for the totality of discipleship. Only those who follow Jesus and cleave to him are living in complete truthfulness. Such men have nothing to hide from their Lord. Their life is revealed before him, Jesus has recognized them and led them into the way of truth. They cannot hide their sinfulness from Jesus, for they have not revealed themselves to Jesus, but he has revealed himself to them by call them to follow him.” (COD, p.138)
10. “The call of Jesus makes the disciple community not only the salt but also the light of the world; their activity is visible, as well as imperceptible. “Ye are the light.” Once again it is not: “You are to be the light,” they are already the light because Christ has called them, they are a light which is seen of men, they cannot be otherwise , and if they were it would be a sign that they had not been called. How impossible, how utterly absurd it would be for the disciples—these disciples, such men as these!—to try and become the light of the world!” (COD, p.117) And, “The isolation of the person from the world of things is idealistic and not Christian.” (Ethics, p.322)
11. Editor’s note: Some critics think this is a simple typo, but those friendlier to Bonhoeffer’s critique believe it was intentional.
12.Vanity: I noticed during my study in New York that not only did America suffer from vanity, but, even worse, a vain lust for cheap things.
13. I now know that I reacted in fear, and should I have listened to the “arguments” of the lecturer I would have found that Ronald Reagan was as honest of a politician as a politician can be, and that the idolatry in Philips Auditorium did have subtle differences from the Third Reich’s, but, “All the possible Christianities, whether they be nationalist, socialist, rationalist or mystical, ...turn against the living God of the Bible, against Christ.”(Ethics)
14. But I also remembered that, “Like all existing things, government, too, stands in a certain sense beyond good and evil” (Ethics, p.334) So I suffered myself to at least enjoy the dinner.
15.“Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected.” (COD, p. 175)

overheard outside the tent in the quad:

“I’m not fond of speaking, so you do the talking. What do you do? Tell me about yourself.” She said then he lit her cigarette with a ninety-nine cent lighter he pulled out of a tuxedo pocket. It was obvious that they had been flirting over their cocktails; it would have been awkward for them not to.
“That’s what I do for a living, talk;” he said, “I don’t really feel like speaking either.” So they stood there in the frigid winds under a dripping maple tree and silently smoked their cigarettes.

take it: PresidencyMatch 2004

My Ranking

Below is a ranking of candidates based on the closeness of their views to mine.
2004 Presidential Candidates
Scores

Candidate

Total 58%
Personal 50%
Economic 65%
Ralph Nader

Reform Party nominee for President

Total 55%
Personal 50%
Economic 60%
Carol Moseley-Braun

Senator (D, IL)-withdrew from Primary Jan.'04


Total 55%
Personal 60%
Economic 50%
John Edwards

Senator (D, NC) and Democratic V.P. nominee


Total 53%
Personal 45%
Economic 60%
Peter Camejo

Reform Party nominee for Vice President


Total 50%
Personal 45%
Economic 55%
Dennis Kucinich

Representative (D, OH)-lost nomination July 2004


Total 50%
Personal 45%
Economic 55%
John Kerry

Senator (D, MA) and Presidential nominee


Total 48%
Personal 45%
Economic 50%
David Cobb

Green Party nominee for President


Total 48%
Personal 50%
Economic 45%
Al Sharpton

Reverend-lost nomination July 2004


Total 45%
Personal 50%
Economic 40%
Dick Gephardt

Representative(D,MO)-withdrew from Primary Jan.'04


Total 43%
Personal 45%
Economic 40%
Bob Graham

Senator & Governor (D, FL)-withdrew Oct.2003


Total 40%
Personal 45%
Economic 35%
Howard Dean

Governor (D,VT)-withdrew from Dem. Primary Feb.'04


Total 38%
Personal 35%
Economic 40%
Michael Badnarik

Libertarian Party nominee for President


Total 38%
Personal 35%
Economic 40%
Joe Lieberman

Senator (D, CT)-withdrew from Dem. Primary Feb.'04


Total 30%
Personal 30%
Economic 30%
Michael Peroutka

Constitution Party nominee for President


Total 30%
Personal 25%
Economic 35%
Dick Cheney

Vice President and Republican nominee


Total 28%
Personal 30%
Economic 25%
George W. Bush

President and Republican nominee



umm...aren't these people funny looking?

I just found a half full pack of cigarettes in the back of my desk drawer.




Manna.

The point of human existence is:

a. to love God and others in whatever way comes to you
b. to love God and others by making the world a better place
c. to love God and others by making yourself a better person
d. to love God through vigorous religious devotion, and by extension others
e. to love others through peace, tolerance, love, and charity, and by extension God
f. to know yourself
g. to have fun
h. to refuse to ask or answer this question
i. to constantly ask and try to answer this question
j. stupid
k. all of the above
l. a combination of some of the above
m. other

scrawled on my arm: It's not a sacrifice to love something you need.

Careless Christianity?



Dan and the author formerly known as gauche have been talking about subtle Christianity

The biggest criticism of me from me and from loved ones over the last year or so, is always that I don't take anything seriously, that I don't get upset by the things that ought to upset me, that I don't get mad when I ought to, that I don't feel anything until I have decided what to feel about it, that I don't care.I like to think that my "careless" attitude is a feeble attempt to answer gauche's question about Thursday morning Christianity. If there's no burning house to charge into should we then start setting houses on fire? Of course not. When I first posed the question of how to be a subtle Christian to myself a year ago or so, all I could come up with was the sweet simple stuff, the golden rule, and self-control. So where did the "apathy", the "carelessness", or even "desirelessness" come from? Well, we all know better than to set houses on fire in order to provide ourselves with a way to reassure ourselves that our Christianity is active, but do we, and especially do I, know better than to imagine, or pretend that a house is on fire? Um, probably not. So as a result I have decided to wander through houses, lives, and life, suffering with others until I feel the heat of a fire, until I smell my hair and flesh begin to burn, and then I'll know that it is time for heroism. Because the Christ, the Christianity (the burning house), that one looks for one will find. Until that time, until I begin to burn with others I will continue suffering carelessly.Is this ok? Am I lying to myself?