Egregious Reader

I love going to Barnes and Nobles. The books are fine, but they have toys and games and its so big and nice. My mom goes to the table around the cafe and sits down and I wander and wander. Oh this and this and this and this whole aisle. I see my mommy again and I want to tell her something. When I walk up she is sitting with a man. I hear her talking. I know I am supposed to look directly in her eyes, but I am also trying to remember what it was I wanted to ask her so I don't hear what she is saying. Now I have to do something. I hear the words "Shake his hand," firm but kind. I take his hand and he smiles at me and laughs a little. Another of my mommy's nodaddys. Ok, back to the toys. I find a game that has green slime and another one that involves a dvd. I am going to grab both of them. And this box of wooden food that looks so real. When I come back the man stands up and says: "Why don't you pick one out and I'll buy it for you?" I am gla...

A dead thought has been compared to a stone which one may plant in the soil. Nothing will come out. A living thought is like a seed.  ---Abraham Joshua Heschel all around lay quiet at first light, gray of lidded sky winter trees and swelling black birds eager for scarecrow pie flash of lightening and onion peels the sky makes me cry but I sit and wait fear is coiled but steadfast (braced) is this little light o mine the ground is shaking and into a hole my legs scramble beaks all around, but I was buried deep time to wait full of earth and water a wet fire burns and swells until I burst and limbs tumble forth in all directions

The German Christians (at this time a term for Lutherans who enthusiastically supported the National Socialist Party) were able to take leadership at all levels, including the highest office of Reich Bishop. Bonhoeffer and others fought against this even starting something called the Pastors' Emergency League which by year end (1933) rose to six thousand members. Bonhoeffer and a colleague were put in charge of drafting a theological confession which ultimately became so watered down as it was passed around that he refused to work on the final edition. But in this time he wrote to his grandmother stating his concern for the movements among the German church: It is becoming increasingly clear to me that what we're going to get is a big, popular, national church whose nature cannot any longer be reconciled with Christianity and that we must be prepared to enter upon entirely new paths which we will have to tread. The question really is: Germanism or Christianity? The sooner...

With Hitler in power the first attack was on Communism, much violence erupted along these lines and many presses were closed and 4,000 Communists were taken from their homes. All of this culminated in the Reichstag fire which paved the way for Hitler to declare, on Feb 27, 1933, the "Reich President's Edict for the Protection of the People and State" to remain in force until further notice. Bethge writes "it abolished virtually all personal rights protected by the constitution." It remained in force until May 8, 1945. This led to increasing anti-Communist and anti-Semitic measures. On April 1, there was the first boycott of Jewish firms and the first "non-Aryan law" for the "reconstruction of the professional civil service." In the Bonhoeffer family this day involved, Dietrich's 91 year old grandmother calmly walking through the S.A. cordon to shop at the Jewish-owned department store and Dietrich and Klaus discussing the days events ...

Part 1 here Part 2 One memory and it felt like I had woken from the dead. I seemed able to see again, to notice what before me was invisible and without meaning. There are three parts to human knowledge of the world: the human (me); the object and the name of the object. By forgetting the names, the connectors, we had lost understanding of all parts. By regaining this one memory, filled with connectors like ditchwater and father, I was given back the possibility of seeing and knowing the world around me again. Father and my memories of his face in his silence before speaking, the inner action you could all be see upon his face, seemed to lift me up. I thought of the nobility of human beings and felt a great love for him and then for all those around me in their filthy rags and animal wanderings. But my feet caught and tripped as I remembered again the muddy ditch, before it held the sky. Its ugly color and slimy look seemed to catch my feet and pull me down ... I began to si...

The past      pesters like a moan   in the city. Worlds gone by      yields packed earth      cow path    through       barbed wire. At night     or quiet you feel   like packed        earth, from pain       paths. And the animal    fence           becomes       razor wire    prison        trap.    The swallowed    sadness screams      to topple         towers. Heart       refuses.    Cuts wires   to          black earth              and green               grass.