‘Pivotal’ – an oft-used word with an ambiguous etymology. Some linguists trace the term to pungere (L.) which means to prick or sting so as to penetrate and cause a piercing, even acrid, sensation. A pivot is a short shaft or pin whose pointed end forms the fulcrum or center on which something turns about, oscillates, or balances – e.g., the axle on which a wheel turns, the shaft on which the hands of a clock circle, or the pin on which a compass pointer is balanced. An army wheels around its pivot troops when making a tactical maneuver. Athletic teams have pivot or centering positions. Basketball players plant a pivot foot while stepping with the other foot toward teammates to whom to pass the ball. Dancers rotate on a pivot foot while shifting their weight to the other foot.
I reflected at length during the months after my first wife’s death (1987) about what ideas had held as pivotal through the attempt to be truly present with her to the end. We were twenty and nineteen years old when we married. Except for the first eighteen months of our marriage, to be with her was to see multiple sclerosis -- without the mercy of remissions -- completely incapacitate her over fourteen years before finishing with her.
What did it mean to return, after her death, from such an extreme and prolonged experience? Would I try to forget the humiliation, the offense, the stench, the struggle, the isolation, the tragedy of a human being utterly devastated by an insidious chronic disease? No. I would instead look for ways to stay near to and vulnerable before individuals trapped in extreme experiences. Should my thoughts about ethics and spirituality -- born when I had been so fatigued and alone -- be trusted? Yes. I resolved always to see from ‘below’, from ‘the scrap heap’, keenly attentive to the breadth and depth of human misery. Would I tailor my comments to insure approval from extended family members? approval from acquaintances who lived distant from the brutal realities of illness my wife symbolized? approval from communities of faith for which I had become a stranger? approval from fellow faculty members, pastors, and students who had given me the benefit of the theological doubt during the years before my wife’s death? No. I would instead speak carefully, but openly, with them from the perspective of individuals rendered voiceless and harshly diminished. Or I would not speak at all.
I saw clearly that no life or set of ideas had been more pivotal for me than Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his prison correspondence. I remember carefully opening the 16 November 1993 letter I received from Eberhard and Renate Bethge. I had met them the previous April when this still vigorous couple made presentations for a Boston University symposium on the theme of friendship. I had subsequently spent several delightful October days with them at their home in Wachtberg, a few kilometers south of Bonn in Germany.
Renate was the favorite niece of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a controversial German theologian and conspirator against the Nazis who was executed (along with several other political prisoners) by the Gestapo at Flossenburg concentration camp just days before the European war ended. The Gestapo also executed Renate’s father and two uncles – in addition to her ‘Uncle Dietrich’ -- in those last days. Her husband Eberhard was Dietrich’s closest friend during the war years. A sympathetic prison guard smuggled to Eberhard and Renate letters Dietrich wrote during his two years in Berlin’s Tegel Prison. They devoted the balance of their lives to making Dietrich’s life accessible to subsequent generations.
I had not ceased examining Dietrich’s life and thought since a 1976 graduate course assignment to read his prison correspondence. In that assignment, I had found what soon became the most reliable point of reference as I searched for a ‘face to face with the world’ approach to ethics, spirituality, and theology. Dietrich’s courageous decisions and radical ideas were never eclipsed as I tested – first during doctoral studies and then for twelve years as a history professor -- the existential strength of the ideas of the most seminal thinkers in the story of western civilization.
Still, when I first met the Bethges in Boston, I was prepared to sever my ties to Dietrich if they thought I was violating his story or misappropriating his ideas. My heart still races when I recall Renate’s observation in her 16 November 1993 letter to me -- “I felt and feel an understanding between us, which I don’t often feel, even with people quite near to us. One feels that you have not ‘learned’ Bonhoeffer, but that you have lived with him and so can sovereignly integrate him into your own thoughts.”
I reflected at length during the months after my first wife’s death (1987) about what ideas had held as pivotal through the attempt to be truly present with her to the end. We were twenty and nineteen years old when we married. Except for the first eighteen months of our marriage, to be with her was to see multiple sclerosis -- without the mercy of remissions -- completely incapacitate her over fourteen years before finishing with her.
What did it mean to return, after her death, from such an extreme and prolonged experience? Would I try to forget the humiliation, the offense, the stench, the struggle, the isolation, the tragedy of a human being utterly devastated by an insidious chronic disease? No. I would instead look for ways to stay near to and vulnerable before individuals trapped in extreme experiences. Should my thoughts about ethics and spirituality -- born when I had been so fatigued and alone -- be trusted? Yes. I resolved always to see from ‘below’, from ‘the scrap heap’, keenly attentive to the breadth and depth of human misery. Would I tailor my comments to insure approval from extended family members? approval from acquaintances who lived distant from the brutal realities of illness my wife symbolized? approval from communities of faith for which I had become a stranger? approval from fellow faculty members, pastors, and students who had given me the benefit of the theological doubt during the years before my wife’s death? No. I would instead speak carefully, but openly, with them from the perspective of individuals rendered voiceless and harshly diminished. Or I would not speak at all.
I saw clearly that no life or set of ideas had been more pivotal for me than Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his prison correspondence. I remember carefully opening the 16 November 1993 letter I received from Eberhard and Renate Bethge. I had met them the previous April when this still vigorous couple made presentations for a Boston University symposium on the theme of friendship. I had subsequently spent several delightful October days with them at their home in Wachtberg, a few kilometers south of Bonn in Germany.
Renate was the favorite niece of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a controversial German theologian and conspirator against the Nazis who was executed (along with several other political prisoners) by the Gestapo at Flossenburg concentration camp just days before the European war ended. The Gestapo also executed Renate’s father and two uncles – in addition to her ‘Uncle Dietrich’ -- in those last days. Her husband Eberhard was Dietrich’s closest friend during the war years. A sympathetic prison guard smuggled to Eberhard and Renate letters Dietrich wrote during his two years in Berlin’s Tegel Prison. They devoted the balance of their lives to making Dietrich’s life accessible to subsequent generations.
I had not ceased examining Dietrich’s life and thought since a 1976 graduate course assignment to read his prison correspondence. In that assignment, I had found what soon became the most reliable point of reference as I searched for a ‘face to face with the world’ approach to ethics, spirituality, and theology. Dietrich’s courageous decisions and radical ideas were never eclipsed as I tested – first during doctoral studies and then for twelve years as a history professor -- the existential strength of the ideas of the most seminal thinkers in the story of western civilization.
Still, when I first met the Bethges in Boston, I was prepared to sever my ties to Dietrich if they thought I was violating his story or misappropriating his ideas. My heart still races when I recall Renate’s observation in her 16 November 1993 letter to me -- “I felt and feel an understanding between us, which I don’t often feel, even with people quite near to us. One feels that you have not ‘learned’ Bonhoeffer, but that you have lived with him and so can sovereignly integrate him into your own thoughts.”
