[December 2001 journal entry]
While on a wine tasting outing with friends after I had delivered a lecture at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (sponsored by the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department), a physician friend contrasted his eventual professional anonymity with the generations of students/physicians who will be aware of a colleague whose anatomy research has secured his place as a referenced authority in his speciality. He then observed that virtually all individuals are forgotten -- even by descendents -- within three generations. Since this conversation, I have returned several times to the question implicit in my friend’s observations – i.e., “Why then do we choose to live sacrificial and altruistic lives?”
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About the Title of This Blog
[December 1942, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote an essay for his parents, his siblings (and their children), his closest friend (Eberhard Bethge), and his fellow covert resisters imbedded in the Abwehr. I have been privileged to have the assistance of Renate Bethge -- Eberhard’s wife and Dietrich’s favored niece by his older sister Ursala -- as I revised and finalized my translation. Words/phrases in parentheses offer additional nuances, add implied ideas, or indicate alternative translations. ]
The View from Below
"It remains an experience of unparalleled (incomparable) value that we have learned to see for once the great events of world history from below – through the perspective of the barred (put out, cut out, blocked), the suspects, the badly treated, the powerless, the oppressed (restrained), the scoffed (derided, mocked), in short the perspective of those who suffer. (It is) only in this time when neither bitterness nor envy (jealousy) has cauterized (corroded, gnawed away) the heart that we see with new eyes great and small, fortunate and unfortunate, strong and weak; that our view of greatness, humaneness, justice, and compassion has become clearer, more free, more incorruptible (not subject to bribes); indeed, (that we see) that personal suffering is a more suitable (qualified) key (code, cipher), a more fruitful principle, than is personal good fortune for exploring the world by observation and action. It follows that this perspective from below will not be the partisan claim of those forever discontent, but that we are just in all life’s dimensions out of a higher contentment that is grounded properly beyond ‘from below’ and ‘from above’. And so it is affirmed." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Ten Years Later"