Reflections from Journal Entries
Now for another set of ten reflections. These reflections have been selected/adapted from journal entries written during our years in New Orleans (January 1995-November 1997).
36 [5/1995] My move conceptually and relationally out of the ‘religious’ sphere (the roots of this move reaching back at least to the early-1980s) was completed with our 1992 move to Vermont. Crossing the threshold from ‘religious’ to ‘non-religious’ has been very difficult to explain even to my closest acquaintances within the ‘religious’ sphere. The parallel with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s hesitancy re explaining his covert resistance decisions and actions after 1939 to his Confessing Church associates (especially his Finkenwalde Seminary students) is one of the many reasons his 1939-45 experience (as traced/interpreted in his Ethics, in his December 1942 ‘After Ten Years’ essay, and in his Letters and Papers from Prison) has been pivotal for me since the mid-1970s.
37 [6/1995] Becoming conceptually and in other ways truly ‘outside’ the ‘religious’ sphere, I find the self-consciousness and the insincerity so widespread in that sphere increasingly evident and, as one previously invested there, disturbing. I am troubled by the investment of time, money, attention to buildings, needless duplications, and other ‘high maintenance’ traits of ‘religion’.
[Note: Can this self-consciousness and insincerity be seen from inside the ‘religious’ sphere? My experience and observation still lead me to answer, “To some degree, but not clearly/thoroughly”. I am reminded of the inability of the ‘religious’ leaders, as depicted in the Synoptic Gospels, to see the self-consciousness and insincerity ‘Jesus’ saw in the ‘religion’ of his day. ‘Religion’ – in denominational and congregational forms -- discourages radical (i.e., critical, into the root) questioning, does not value seeing its reflection from ‘outside’, capitalizes on the members’ investment ‘inside’ (e.g., time, resources, friendships, networks, traditions/routines, . . . the accumulation of which makes it increasingly difficult to risk being candid). Inside the ‘religious’ sphere, critical insight increases along the radius to the unorthodox/heretical outer edge of the ‘religious’ sphere. I am admitting in this 1995 journal entry that, though long anxious about the self-consciousness and insincerity characteristic of ‘religion’, I had not seen as clearly/thoroughly ‘inside’ as ‘outside’. I thought I saw more clearly/thoroughly when ‘inside’ than was the case.]
38 [7/1995] I have been thinking about the observation the philosophically educated (USC PhD, as I recall) ‘Toymaker’ in Norwich, VT, made during our last in the series of meetings for coffee and conversation we enjoyed while I lived in Vermont – i.e., “Doug, I think your work within the medical sphere would be considered subversive”. I have come to realize his assessment is accurate.
39 [6/1996] I have been thinking recently of ‘religion’ as analogous to physics’ black hole (i.e., the force pulling inward is so great that even light cannot escape a black hole and what falls into a black hole is distorted/crushed). Becoming ‘religionless’ has to do with breaking out of and away from the ‘religious’ black hole. (Note Hawking’s idea that a few particles do escape from black holes). Continuing this analogy, the necessary resolve/energy to break out and away from the ‘religious’ black hole may come from: (1) ‘religious’ abuse, (2) exposure to the crooked and tragic in the human story in such magnitude that ‘religious’ denials or explanations/justifications for the crooked and tragic collapse (e.g., Ecclesiastes), (3) more immediate/personal experience of tragedy, offense, . . . in such magnitude that integrity is radically challenged (e.g., the extended story/play Job).
40 [6/1996] My use of the term ‘religion’ relates most immediately to the organized/institutionalized ‘religious’ sphere. I would not/do not hesitate to extend the term’s interpretive use to the medical, business, education, political, sports, entertainment, arts, . . . societal spheres. Therefore, to become ‘religionless’ does not mean simply moving one’s place/alignment from the institutionalized ‘religious’ sphere into another societal sphere. Instead, ‘religionless’ has to do with a spiritual death and with an essence/way of being defined by (1) ‘wilderness’ and (2) by genuine/vulnerable ‘community’ with those who are (why are they?) by existential lot outside societal spheres (including but not limited to the organized ‘religious’ sphere). One without the other would be incomplete.
41 [6/1996] Options for relating to ‘the world’ that fall short: (1) being ‘religious’ and withdrawn from ‘the world’, (2) being ‘religious’ and in but not engaged with ‘the world’, (3) being ‘religious’ and selectively engaged with ‘the world’, (4) being ‘religionless’ and withdrawn from ‘the world’, (5) being ‘religionless’ and in but not engaged with ‘the world’, (6) being ‘religionless’ and selectively engaged with ‘the world’.
42 [6/1996] Breaking free from ‘religious’ controls, ‘religious’ filters, ‘religious’ interpretations is leading for me to a radical (i.e., into the root) ‘re-languaging’ experience.
The experience of becoming ‘religionless’ is severe, prolonged. The subtle vestiges of ‘religion’ must be found and laid aside. To do so is to go through a spiritual death/void. Why go through such? By the late 1980s, I had become convinced it is not possible to radically (i.e., to the root) consider or to pursue irreversibly a ‘religionless’ spirituality and ethics while remaining positioned within the ‘religious’ sphere. Instead, the experience of becoming in life and thought ‘religionless’ is as radical as is suggested by the analogy of completely resetting a computer’s defaults.
[Note: I had in mind in this journal entry the vocabulary, grammar, idiom, non-verbal, nuancing complexities associated with fluency in the use of a language. The language for interpreting life experiences I learned from birth still seemed credible within the 1950s rural, American, pre-modern, fundamentalist perception of ‘the world’ into which I was born. Pivotal experiences and exposure to new information eventually forced questions I could not avoid/ignore -- questions about what counted as ‘the world’ (i.e., the ‘reality’ before/against which ideas are tested) and questions about the credibility of the ‘religious’ language for interpreting life experiences I had learned from birth. The choices at the proverbial ‘fork’ became clear. I either had to recoil from pivotal experiences and new information in order to (attempt to) recover/protect as much confidence as possible in the language most familiar to me. Or I had to embrace/pursue pivotal experiences and new information, knowing the language most familiar to me would fail. I chose to venture time and again down the latter path, each time a bit further, until finally coming to the point/realization that I could only go on by not going back. The ‘religious’ language for interpreting life experiences I had learned from birth became rusty as I concentrated on the discovery (and, to some degree, the creation) of a language for spirituality and ethics that anticipates with enthusiasm pivotal experiences and new information.]
43 [6/1996] The ‘religionless’ approach to spirituality and ethics I am following focuses on the ‘displaced’ (unplaced? misplaced? replaced?) who are thereby outside societal spheres.
44 [7/1996] The ‘religionless’ approach to faith I am following engages (1) faith and doubt, (2) faith and reason, (3) faith and failure, (4) faith and parenting, (5) faith and community.
[Note: The influence of Tillich’s Dynamics of Faith is evident in this journal entry. Though never inspired by his less than honorable life story, I continue – thirty years after my first reading of Dynamics of Faith – to find Tillich’s analysis of ‘faith’ thought provoking. ‘Faith’ for me has to do with the ideas on which I stake my life day to day, the ideas implied in my actions, the ideas that hold when face to face with the breadth/depth of suffering so widespread among human beings. The telephone pole climbers I watched as a child at my father’s side (he was a group manager for the phone company) remain my most vivid symbol of trust. After ‘walking’ to the top of the tall utility pole to get to the phone lines in need of repair, the lineman would turn loose of and lean away from the pole with all his weight pressing against the leather work belt looped around the pole. Secure and hands free, he did his work. Reflection on my dissertation is also evident in this journal entry. I studied the impact becoming a churchman – first a priest and soon after a bishop – had on Augustine’s exercise of critical reasoning. I was sobered by the conclusion I drew – i.e., that the exercise/purpose of his critical reasoning became increasingly polemic as he had to defend the ‘religious’ institution/constituency he represented/led.]
45 [10/2005] I found the phrase ‘with the world face to face’ during one of my early readings of Dietrich’s prison correspondence. As Christmas 1943 neared, Dietrich prepared a few prayers for his fellow prisoners at Tegel Prison. One prayer recalled the words from a Paul Gerhardt (1606-76) hymn --
Every Christian in his place should be brave and free, with the world face to face.
Though death strikes, his spirit should persevere, without fear calm and good.
For death cannot destroy, but from grief brings relief and opens gates to joy.
Closed the door of bitter pain, bright the way where we may all heaven gain.
I do not recall that Dietrich used the phrase ‘with the world face to face’ as I do, but I see the resolve to be ‘with the world face to face’ (1) in the determination he expressed in his prison letters to stay focused on ‘the outer line’ rather than turn to ‘the inner line’ piety of the broken Confessing Church, (2) in the prison reflections he shared with Eberhard on ‘the world come of age’, (3) in his last words before being executed.
I was privileged to be invited to Eberhard’s 90th birthday celebration (August 1999). The celebration was conducted in the Godesberg Castle a few kilometers south of Bonn. There were @150 invited guests present. Immediate and extended family members constituted the largest group. There were also numerous individuals from across Germany with whom Eberhard had worked during his churchman years. One former Finkenwalde student – Albrecht Schonherr – was present. Several university professors were present (including one who, I was told, opposed Eberhard’s efforts to make Dietrich’s life and work accessible).
I did not know anyone present for the birthday celebration other than Eberhard and Renate. I happened to sit at a table with two very interesting couples – (1) a theology professor and his wife from Wuppertal, both educated in the 1950s along post-war Confessing Church lines (she with enthusiastic appreciation for Dietrich’s prison letters, he as a student of Barth and Moltmann before being exposed to Dietrich through Eberhard); and (2) a couple in their mid-70s (he a recently retired architect who was a seventeen-year-old soldier conscripted at the war’s end and who studied architecture in Berlin between 1947 and 1951).
Renate introduced to the gathering each person present. During a break in the program, I asked her what she had said about me (as I could not keep up with her German comments to the audience). Drawing from our many conversations and letters, she had first described my discovering the imprisoned Dietrich early in the course of my first wife’s losing battle with multiple sclerosis. She had then told the audience, “Douglas lives in the United States like Bonhoeffer, a theologian to the world.”
Renate could not have chosen a more affirming and humbling way to introduce me. During subsequent conversations at the table during dinner, both couples asked me, “What does it mean to ‘live as Bonhoeffer’? to be ‘a theologian to the world’?” My response then -- as would be the case now -- began with the resolve to be ‘with the world face to face’. This resolve is the cornerstone of the approach to spirituality and ethics I have been tracking since 1992 in journal entries. No idea or action is for me more basic, more centering.
Now for another set of ten reflections. These reflections have been selected/adapted from journal entries written during our years in New Orleans (January 1995-November 1997).
36 [5/1995] My move conceptually and relationally out of the ‘religious’ sphere (the roots of this move reaching back at least to the early-1980s) was completed with our 1992 move to Vermont. Crossing the threshold from ‘religious’ to ‘non-religious’ has been very difficult to explain even to my closest acquaintances within the ‘religious’ sphere. The parallel with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s hesitancy re explaining his covert resistance decisions and actions after 1939 to his Confessing Church associates (especially his Finkenwalde Seminary students) is one of the many reasons his 1939-45 experience (as traced/interpreted in his Ethics, in his December 1942 ‘After Ten Years’ essay, and in his Letters and Papers from Prison) has been pivotal for me since the mid-1970s.
37 [6/1995] Becoming conceptually and in other ways truly ‘outside’ the ‘religious’ sphere, I find the self-consciousness and the insincerity so widespread in that sphere increasingly evident and, as one previously invested there, disturbing. I am troubled by the investment of time, money, attention to buildings, needless duplications, and other ‘high maintenance’ traits of ‘religion’.
[Note: Can this self-consciousness and insincerity be seen from inside the ‘religious’ sphere? My experience and observation still lead me to answer, “To some degree, but not clearly/thoroughly”. I am reminded of the inability of the ‘religious’ leaders, as depicted in the Synoptic Gospels, to see the self-consciousness and insincerity ‘Jesus’ saw in the ‘religion’ of his day. ‘Religion’ – in denominational and congregational forms -- discourages radical (i.e., critical, into the root) questioning, does not value seeing its reflection from ‘outside’, capitalizes on the members’ investment ‘inside’ (e.g., time, resources, friendships, networks, traditions/routines, . . . the accumulation of which makes it increasingly difficult to risk being candid). Inside the ‘religious’ sphere, critical insight increases along the radius to the unorthodox/heretical outer edge of the ‘religious’ sphere. I am admitting in this 1995 journal entry that, though long anxious about the self-consciousness and insincerity characteristic of ‘religion’, I had not seen as clearly/thoroughly ‘inside’ as ‘outside’. I thought I saw more clearly/thoroughly when ‘inside’ than was the case.]
38 [7/1995] I have been thinking about the observation the philosophically educated (USC PhD, as I recall) ‘Toymaker’ in Norwich, VT, made during our last in the series of meetings for coffee and conversation we enjoyed while I lived in Vermont – i.e., “Doug, I think your work within the medical sphere would be considered subversive”. I have come to realize his assessment is accurate.
39 [6/1996] I have been thinking recently of ‘religion’ as analogous to physics’ black hole (i.e., the force pulling inward is so great that even light cannot escape a black hole and what falls into a black hole is distorted/crushed). Becoming ‘religionless’ has to do with breaking out of and away from the ‘religious’ black hole. (Note Hawking’s idea that a few particles do escape from black holes). Continuing this analogy, the necessary resolve/energy to break out and away from the ‘religious’ black hole may come from: (1) ‘religious’ abuse, (2) exposure to the crooked and tragic in the human story in such magnitude that ‘religious’ denials or explanations/justifications for the crooked and tragic collapse (e.g., Ecclesiastes), (3) more immediate/personal experience of tragedy, offense, . . . in such magnitude that integrity is radically challenged (e.g., the extended story/play Job).
40 [6/1996] My use of the term ‘religion’ relates most immediately to the organized/institutionalized ‘religious’ sphere. I would not/do not hesitate to extend the term’s interpretive use to the medical, business, education, political, sports, entertainment, arts, . . . societal spheres. Therefore, to become ‘religionless’ does not mean simply moving one’s place/alignment from the institutionalized ‘religious’ sphere into another societal sphere. Instead, ‘religionless’ has to do with a spiritual death and with an essence/way of being defined by (1) ‘wilderness’ and (2) by genuine/vulnerable ‘community’ with those who are (why are they?) by existential lot outside societal spheres (including but not limited to the organized ‘religious’ sphere). One without the other would be incomplete.
41 [6/1996] Options for relating to ‘the world’ that fall short: (1) being ‘religious’ and withdrawn from ‘the world’, (2) being ‘religious’ and in but not engaged with ‘the world’, (3) being ‘religious’ and selectively engaged with ‘the world’, (4) being ‘religionless’ and withdrawn from ‘the world’, (5) being ‘religionless’ and in but not engaged with ‘the world’, (6) being ‘religionless’ and selectively engaged with ‘the world’.
42 [6/1996] Breaking free from ‘religious’ controls, ‘religious’ filters, ‘religious’ interpretations is leading for me to a radical (i.e., into the root) ‘re-languaging’ experience.
The experience of becoming ‘religionless’ is severe, prolonged. The subtle vestiges of ‘religion’ must be found and laid aside. To do so is to go through a spiritual death/void. Why go through such? By the late 1980s, I had become convinced it is not possible to radically (i.e., to the root) consider or to pursue irreversibly a ‘religionless’ spirituality and ethics while remaining positioned within the ‘religious’ sphere. Instead, the experience of becoming in life and thought ‘religionless’ is as radical as is suggested by the analogy of completely resetting a computer’s defaults.
[Note: I had in mind in this journal entry the vocabulary, grammar, idiom, non-verbal, nuancing complexities associated with fluency in the use of a language. The language for interpreting life experiences I learned from birth still seemed credible within the 1950s rural, American, pre-modern, fundamentalist perception of ‘the world’ into which I was born. Pivotal experiences and exposure to new information eventually forced questions I could not avoid/ignore -- questions about what counted as ‘the world’ (i.e., the ‘reality’ before/against which ideas are tested) and questions about the credibility of the ‘religious’ language for interpreting life experiences I had learned from birth. The choices at the proverbial ‘fork’ became clear. I either had to recoil from pivotal experiences and new information in order to (attempt to) recover/protect as much confidence as possible in the language most familiar to me. Or I had to embrace/pursue pivotal experiences and new information, knowing the language most familiar to me would fail. I chose to venture time and again down the latter path, each time a bit further, until finally coming to the point/realization that I could only go on by not going back. The ‘religious’ language for interpreting life experiences I had learned from birth became rusty as I concentrated on the discovery (and, to some degree, the creation) of a language for spirituality and ethics that anticipates with enthusiasm pivotal experiences and new information.]
43 [6/1996] The ‘religionless’ approach to spirituality and ethics I am following focuses on the ‘displaced’ (unplaced? misplaced? replaced?) who are thereby outside societal spheres.
44 [7/1996] The ‘religionless’ approach to faith I am following engages (1) faith and doubt, (2) faith and reason, (3) faith and failure, (4) faith and parenting, (5) faith and community.
[Note: The influence of Tillich’s Dynamics of Faith is evident in this journal entry. Though never inspired by his less than honorable life story, I continue – thirty years after my first reading of Dynamics of Faith – to find Tillich’s analysis of ‘faith’ thought provoking. ‘Faith’ for me has to do with the ideas on which I stake my life day to day, the ideas implied in my actions, the ideas that hold when face to face with the breadth/depth of suffering so widespread among human beings. The telephone pole climbers I watched as a child at my father’s side (he was a group manager for the phone company) remain my most vivid symbol of trust. After ‘walking’ to the top of the tall utility pole to get to the phone lines in need of repair, the lineman would turn loose of and lean away from the pole with all his weight pressing against the leather work belt looped around the pole. Secure and hands free, he did his work. Reflection on my dissertation is also evident in this journal entry. I studied the impact becoming a churchman – first a priest and soon after a bishop – had on Augustine’s exercise of critical reasoning. I was sobered by the conclusion I drew – i.e., that the exercise/purpose of his critical reasoning became increasingly polemic as he had to defend the ‘religious’ institution/constituency he represented/led.]
45 [10/2005] I found the phrase ‘with the world face to face’ during one of my early readings of Dietrich’s prison correspondence. As Christmas 1943 neared, Dietrich prepared a few prayers for his fellow prisoners at Tegel Prison. One prayer recalled the words from a Paul Gerhardt (1606-76) hymn --
Every Christian in his place should be brave and free, with the world face to face.
Though death strikes, his spirit should persevere, without fear calm and good.
For death cannot destroy, but from grief brings relief and opens gates to joy.
Closed the door of bitter pain, bright the way where we may all heaven gain.
I do not recall that Dietrich used the phrase ‘with the world face to face’ as I do, but I see the resolve to be ‘with the world face to face’ (1) in the determination he expressed in his prison letters to stay focused on ‘the outer line’ rather than turn to ‘the inner line’ piety of the broken Confessing Church, (2) in the prison reflections he shared with Eberhard on ‘the world come of age’, (3) in his last words before being executed.
I was privileged to be invited to Eberhard’s 90th birthday celebration (August 1999). The celebration was conducted in the Godesberg Castle a few kilometers south of Bonn. There were @150 invited guests present. Immediate and extended family members constituted the largest group. There were also numerous individuals from across Germany with whom Eberhard had worked during his churchman years. One former Finkenwalde student – Albrecht Schonherr – was present. Several university professors were present (including one who, I was told, opposed Eberhard’s efforts to make Dietrich’s life and work accessible).
I did not know anyone present for the birthday celebration other than Eberhard and Renate. I happened to sit at a table with two very interesting couples – (1) a theology professor and his wife from Wuppertal, both educated in the 1950s along post-war Confessing Church lines (she with enthusiastic appreciation for Dietrich’s prison letters, he as a student of Barth and Moltmann before being exposed to Dietrich through Eberhard); and (2) a couple in their mid-70s (he a recently retired architect who was a seventeen-year-old soldier conscripted at the war’s end and who studied architecture in Berlin between 1947 and 1951).
Renate introduced to the gathering each person present. During a break in the program, I asked her what she had said about me (as I could not keep up with her German comments to the audience). Drawing from our many conversations and letters, she had first described my discovering the imprisoned Dietrich early in the course of my first wife’s losing battle with multiple sclerosis. She had then told the audience, “Douglas lives in the United States like Bonhoeffer, a theologian to the world.”
Renate could not have chosen a more affirming and humbling way to introduce me. During subsequent conversations at the table during dinner, both couples asked me, “What does it mean to ‘live as Bonhoeffer’? to be ‘a theologian to the world’?” My response then -- as would be the case now -- began with the resolve to be ‘with the world face to face’. This resolve is the cornerstone of the approach to spirituality and ethics I have been tracking since 1992 in journal entries. No idea or action is for me more basic, more centering.
