Open Blogging
Today is the day after Christmas and this is usually my favorite day of the year…because Trauma Day is gone for another year.
This year, we moved the holiday gathering to today to accommodate everyones schedule.
So, I’ll celebrate tomorrow…
It’s all yours today…
If you want to see something antichrist, just read the social media messages our president posts each holiday of the year, including Christian Holidays: they read like notes on the margins of the Satanic Bible.
Kind of the opposite for me today. I got to play piano and lead singing for our Christmas Eve service, then yesterday was filled with family and way too much food. Today it’s just me and the dogs that I’m sitting, and I feel a bit depressed.
Robert F,
That man is vile.
I had a “sickmas”-I think I brought home something from school. Three days in bed haven’t hurt me, and I think I’ll be up and about after lunch. I did give my cat a great holiday!
RobertF,
Trump has the spirit of anti-Christ…but this means we have an opportunity to be faithful in showing the real Christ…
CK,
Prayers for you …
these seasons are rough, but they pass…
Linn,
I hope you’re feeling better and your cat is doing some caretaking…he has you right where he wants you!
Yes, you’re right, Michael.
Bonhoeffer showed the spirit of the real Christ right over the threshold of death, and I know that his showing-forth certainly did not involve anything like the slactivism of my comment above. It’s just very hard to hold my tongue when my tongue seems like the only power, however slight, that I have in the situation — I mean, besides prayer. I feel powerless, and running my mouth makes me forget ever so briefly just how powerless I am; whereas prayer brings me right up against the enormity of my powerlessness, and won’t let me forget it.
Bonhoeffer showed real courage too, the real stuff,
and not the fake stuff of today.
He stood up to a brutal tyrant.
Unfortunately my Christmas wish to see Trump, Vance, and Hegseth do the Spandau Ballet for war crimes did not happen.
Yes. But he stood up to Hitler by joining the Abwehr, the German military intelligence, and pretending to support the German war effort while secretly acting as a double agent, bringing messages back and forth between those plotting to assassinate Hitler and the Allies. He likely knew nothing about the actual plot; he wouldn’t have needed to, and it would have been risky for the plotters to inform him of details, in the event that he was caught, as he indeed was. That is, he stood up to Hitler by adopting a strategic facade of pretending to support him, and by participating in a plot about which he knew next to nothing, except that he trusted the plotters, one of which was his brother-in-law. Though he was strongly opposed to the practice of deception on deep theological grounds, he felt compelled to be responsible in the situation he found himself in by participating in the conspiracy of deception, believing he would be judged for his deception, but that God’s grace would abound more powerfully than God’s judgment. Quite a man, quite a Christian.
Then there was Franz Jagerstatter, the Austrian peasant who, on the basis of his Catholic religious beliefs, and his experience of personal religious revelations that the Nazi regime was satanic, refused to serve in the military or take the oath to Hitler, and was ultimately executed, beheaded, for his refusal. He took his stand singly, alone, without support of friends or neighbors, without support of the priest of his parish, with only the love of his wife and his faith in God to carry him to and through his martyrdom. He was eventually Beatified by Pope Benedict, despite decades of resistance to that step on the part of ecclesial authorities and his countrymen, who said he should have served in the military, and taken the oath to Hitler, like other Catholic Austrian peasants. There is a very good biography about him, “In Solitary Witness,”and a more recent dramatic film, “A Hidden Life”; I can personally recommend the book, having read it; I have not seen the film, but film critics I trust commend it highly.
Pastor Niemoller was also the real McCoy.
He wound up in Dachau.
And today in the ‘Evangelical’ circuit?
All we have is dandies and dilettantes.
Bonhoeffer and Jagerstatter were both incarcerated in Tegel prison for a period of several months at the same time during spring to summer 1943, though there is no evidence they ever met. Because of family military connections and the sympathy of guards, Bonhoeffer received special, better treatment at the beginning of his Tegel incarceration, in May 1943, but that ended later when his name was connected to the plot against Hitler’s life; Jagerstatter was kept in a separate section of the prison from Bonhoeffer, and received no special treatment at any time. Jagerstatter was executed about 2 years before Bonhoeffer, after several months in Tegel.
a cold wind
stings my face
my eyes tear
for the last time
this year the
last time
this year
The U.S. has just made a wanton and unprovoked military attack against the territory of another sovereign country and its leader, detaining its leader and his wife. The U.S. has done plenty of vile things not completely unlike this in the past, for instance the invasion of Panama and detention of Noriega, but never with this level of contempt for justification for its actions, without debate or inclusion of allies, without going through a process of authorization from Congress. It’s obvious to anyone who has eyes to see that this war of aggression is not over drugs, but oil and territorial hegemony and presidential aggrandizement; China is watching and the likelihood of an invasion of Taiwan by China has just been given a tremendous nudge. This is a day that should go down in infamy. It is a disgrace to every American, it is a crime against humanity. And there is more to come. God save innocents around the world from America; God save America from itself.
America’s president is a lawless man, and he, with his government enablers, has moved the U.S. into the same international category of lawlessness as China and Russia.