Art of Reading by Samuel Bak

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The Hearth

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"A stove used to furnish more than mere warmth. It was a focus, a hearth, a place that gathered the work and leisure of a family and gave the house a center. Its coldness marked the morning, and the spreading of its warmth the beginning of the day. It assigned to the different family members tasks that defined their place in the household. The mother built the fire, the children kept the firebox filled, and the father cut the firewood. It provided for the entire family a regular and bodily engagement with the rhythm of the seasons that was woven together of the threat of cold and solace of warmth, the smell of wood smoke, the exertion of sawing and of carrying, the teaching of skills and the fidelity to daily tasks." (Albert Borgmann: Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life ) So what is our new center? Warmth is now provided in a completely uniform way requiring no demands on our skill, strength or attention. In fact, the warmth device (central heating system) is c...
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Germany 1932 Politics in Germany mid 1932 were starting to get out of hand. In June Bruning resigned and Franz von Papen became Reich chancellor. “Many Germans expected the new Christian conservative government to restore stability.” At 26, Bonhoeffer preached “against Papan government’s misuse of God’s name: We read that a government has proclaimed that a whole nation is to be saved from collapse--by the Christian worldview. So we, individually and as a nation, are escaping from an inconceivable final catastrophe. 'In the name of God, amen,' is again to be the slogan, religion is again to be cultivated, and the Christian view of life is to be spread. How very meager, weak and pitiful it all sounds: do we believe that we will truly let ourselves be taken in by this 'In the name of God, amen'? That all our actions shall be governed by it? That we, rich and poor, Germans and French, will allow ourselves to be united by the name of God? Or is there not concealed behi...
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