To Hear Her Voice Again

Posted on July 1, 2012 by Tom Bolton

My mother died when I was in high school. She had been in a hospital many times in those last years. In recent years, I have been unable to recall her voice as I once did.

To Hear Her Voice Again

I was fourteen when first I heard her voice less regularly.

A Rose

She was away more months at a time, and
Her voice then was brittle and softly sad.
Her voice frightened me too often, and
I could not respond, didn’t know how to answer.
Once, when she was home, I went into hiding,
afraid to hear her words of anguish.
As a boy and as a man, I struggled with ‘sad,’
I hurt with ‘hurt,’
At sixteen, we were in separate worlds–
But aren’t all mothers and teenagers?
But her world had locks that I barely understood,
and my world had the locks of teenage angst,
and like my pals, I picked the locks to my world.
I escaped more often than not.
In December at sixteen, there were moments free,
moments when I heard carols in her voice,
giggles in her ironic instances, in silly instances.
But deep-freeze days followed, as they always followed.
Darkness enveloped.
Still I carried the sweet voice in my head.
Most often I could muffle the still soft sad voice.
The next year she left me behind.
In the parlor, I hugged sweet friends, old and new, aunts and uncles, soldiers who loved my folks.
We could still laugh there. Friends even then made me laugh.
We laughed despite it all.
And I could then pull back her voice clearly.
I could hear her–most often from better days.
I could bring back old reprimands and instructions.
I often resurrected her songs.
I pulled in her joking moments.
Usually I let the fragile moments drift by.
I relished the moments when she softly spoke just to me.
When I married, I was twenty-six.
I thought of her that day too.
I wanted to share those days, to make her proud in some way.
In my head, I could still hear her voice.
She was distinct. I knew her as a Mom.
I knew her singing still.
I was comforted by her in my mind.
My ears still picked out her voice.
At thirty, I yearned to share baby stories, to get her encouragement for me, a Dad,
and I imagined my first boy on her lap, in her arms.
Still her voice was accessible.
I could share her songs, and hear her laugh.
The brittle voice was gone now.
She shared my stories across time.
At thirty-five, I held up a new baby for her to see and coo to.
Her voice, though soft, I heard.
She saw me in my youngest, and we both laughed.

Now, these days, I no longer find her voice.
I can find some words of hers,
But the melody of her voice, and
The lilt of happy times are gone.
I miss her now at fifty-plus.
I get mad at me that I cannot hear her.
Is it me?
Has my memory so failed me?
Is it my ears that are too old now?
Have I just filled my mind with too much stuff?
Someday, I yearn to hear her voice again.
Will it be in my twilight times?
Even later, will it come?
I yearn to hear her voice again.

(c) Tom Bolton, June 29, 2012, Milwaukee

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Bonhoeffer on Discipleship

Posted on June 29, 2012 by Tom Bolton

As I have been reading the biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Rev. Dietrich BoenhoefferMartyr, Prophet, Spy), I have pored over translations of some of his books this past week. I am presenting here some of his comments about discipleship.

There is not a place to which the Christian can withdraw from the world, whether it be outwardly or in the sphere of the inner life. Any attempt to escape from the world must sooner or later be paid for with a sinful surrender to the world. Ethics

I fear that today, we don’t so much try to withdraw from the world, as we are wont to cling to it.

The first call which every Christian experiences is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. The Cost of Discipleship

I have found this to be true in my life only recently.

Our enemies are those who harbor hostility against us, not those against whom we cherish hostility… As a Christian I am called to treat my enemy as a brother and to meet hostility with love. My behavior is thus determined not by the way others treat me, but by the treatment I receive from Jesus. The Cost of Discipleship

I’ve been taught this since I was a third-grader, and still I struggle to live this way.  I can find it most closely in the early morning, just before dawn, when I am praying.

Earthly possessions dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. Yet all the time they are the very source of anxiety. The Cost of Discipleship

This is so true.  For me, life was simpler when I had less than when I had to think all the time about how to keep what I have.

Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others, we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as ourselves. The Cost of Discipleship

Interestingly, I find this harder to avoid than it should be.  Even when I am with a group that has been judged harshly, I find they often want to judge others who are just a little ‘worse than they are.’

Also, those who are disciples sometimes lose track of what it means.  Before worship recently, a beautiful matron in the Church, whom I see regularly in our sanctuary, asked me if I thought the homeless were for real or if they are just free-loaders.  She also proceeded to condemn a homeless woman who not only showed up to eat at our Church, but even came on Christmas Eve to dampen our festivities.

I can no longer condemn or hate a brother [or sister] for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me is transformed through intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died. Life Together

Amen!

The followers of Christ have been called to peace. . . . And they must not only have peace but also make it. And to that end they renounce all violence and tumult. In the cause of Christ nothing is to be gained by such methods. . . . His disciples keep the peace by choosing to endure suffering themselves rather than inflict it on others. They maintain fellowship where others would break it off. They renounce hatred and wrong. In so doing they over-come evil with good, and establish the peace of God in the midst of a world of war and hate. The Cost of Discipleship

I find that when I have pursued pacifism, I have been hated.  It is hard to understand.  but I’m not sure we can find our peaceful natures anymore.  Certainly it is not common in my world.

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In Quiet, Listening and Reflections

Posted on June 28, 2012 by Tom Bolton

(I’m reflecting on Galatians and reading Bonhoeffer still.)

Today I look in a mirror, and I see there
Brother Dietrich behind me at ten o’clock, 
and I’m learning to listen, and
I’m joyous in this community–even when disappointed in us–
and I see too John Wesley and
others who teach me now and across time.
Solomon teaches me too and I wonder if he had the lessons deep inside him, and outwardly he taught us in sound bites.
Was the kingdom firmly in his grasp?
In silence, I listen, and now my friends
question my silence.
Walking beside those who hunger and ache,
I listen, and briefly boost them up.
They seek answers from me, but I have
only a few answers, and I am simple.
Paul is by me too, and he has polished his arguments.
I am simply here, simple in argument.
Like those around me, I love the carols;
all through each year, I love these carols.
God worked extraordinary miracles through Paul.
He spoke extraordinary truths through
these around me, and through Jeremiah and Job.
I do little:
I listen,
and I sing praises of God all my life.
He upholds the oppressed and the lonely
all the time.
He feeds the hungry and visits the prisoners.
How many kinds of prisoners may we find here?
With Teresa, he teaches us to smile
and to give blessings to the blind and hurting.
He loves the lonely, the poorest of the poor.
He is with us in these lowly places, preaching on a mount.
God blesses us in our silence and our listening.
God blesses His servants!
He offers us grace and peace when we listen.
Grace and peace:
Are there any better gifts?
If I were trying to please neighbors,
I would no longer be Christ’s servant.
Let me listen and serve in this
community, this blessed community, this day.
In my fogged mirror, let me see still those who
guide me, and listen and serve.

(c) June 28, 2012, Milwaukee

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Bonhoeffer on Work and Prayer

Posted on June 26, 2012 by Tom Bolton

After the first morning hour [of prayer], the Christian’s day until evening belongs to work. “People go out to their work and to their labor until the evening” (Ps. 104:23). In most cases a community of Christians living together will separate for the duration of the working hours. Praying and working are two different things. Prayer should not be hindered by work, but neither should work be hindered by prayer. Just as it was God’s will that human beings should work six days and rest and celebrate before the face of God on the seventh, so it is also God’s will that every day should be marked for the Christian both by prayer and work. Prayer also requires its own time. But the longest part of the day belongs to work. The inseparable unity of both will become clear when work and prayer each receives its own undivided due.

This is a hard lesson for me.  It seems straightforward, but it is difficult  for me to keep prayer and work in balance.  Either I am distracted from my work, or I leave my prayer behind when I get overly engrossed in a work project.   Still, I find that prayer is best when it is part of my saily life.

I am just starting a study of Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible .  He wrote Life Together in 1938. The treatise contains Bonhoeffer’s thoughts about the nature of Christian community based on the common life that he and his seminarians experienced at the seminary and in the “Brother’s House” there. Bonhoeffer completed the writing of Life Together in 1938.  It is opening my eyes in some ne ways for me.

Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters, since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ. Colossians 3:23

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Bonhoeffer Deeply Moving Me

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Tom Bolton

https://tbolto.wordpress.com/2012/03/18/bonhoeffer-trailer/

I posted a trailer for this wonderful Dietrich Bonhoeffer biography in March. I’ve been re-reading the book this week, and to say that it is moving me is an understatement. Bonhoeffer’s words really get under my skin. I think I will post some excerpts from the biography and from Bonhoeffer’s published works over the next two weeks. One passage that I really enjoyed is from his message to his first confirmation class in 1938. I guarantee you that I will look for ways to include this in our Confirmation class next year.  Perhaps, as a few others have done in recent years, I may mail the text to our Confirmands and their parents in April.

(While Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a theology professor at Berlin University, he also had the opportunity to teach a confirmation class of fifty boys in Wedding, a tough neighborhood in North Berlin. Really up for the challenge after his visit to New York City, Bonhoeffer took the extra steps to get to know the boys and their families. It then fell to the young pastor to visit the homes and parents of every one of the fifty students. Wedding was a squalid, poverty-stricken district, and many of the parents allowed him into their homes only because they felt they must.  To be closer to all of these families and spend more time with the boys, he moved into a furnished room in the neighborhood at 61 Oderbergstrasse, which he kept open to all the boys.

Here are some wonderful words from his 1938 Confirmation Sermon on Mark 9:24:

This confirmation day is an important day for you and for us all. It is not an insignificant thing that you profess your Christian faith today before the all-knowing God and before the ears of the Christian church-community. For the rest of your life, you shall think back on this day with joy. But for that very reason I admonish you today to full Christian soberness. You shall not and may not say or do anything on this day that you will remember later with bitterness and remorse, having said and promised more in an hour of inner emotion than a human being can and may ever say. Your faith is still weak and untried and very much in the beginning. Therefore, when later on you speak the confession of your faith, do not rely on yourselves and on your good intentions and on the strength of your faith, but rely only on the one whom you confess, on God the Father, on Jesus Christ, and on the Holy Spirit. And pray in your hearts: I believe, dear Lord, help my unbelief. Who among us adults would not and should not pray the same with you?

I love too these words:

“I believe.” Today, when the Christian congregation acknowledges you as autonomous members of the church, it expects that you begin to understand that your faith must be your very own individual decision. The “we believe” must now grow more and more into an “I believe.”

Faith is a decision. We cannot avoid that. “You cannot serve two masters”; from now on either you serve God alone or you do not serve God at all. Now you only have one Lord, who is the Lord of the world, who is the Savior of the world, who is the one who creates the world anew. To serve him is your highest honor. But to this Yes to God belongs an equally clear No. Your Yes to God demands your No to all injustice, to all evil, to all lies, to all oppression and violation of the weak and poor, to all godlessness and mocking of the Holy.

Near the conclusion, he says, “Come and receive in faith forgiveness, life, and peace.”

Amen!

[1] Sermon preached on April 9, 1938. Text quoted from Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Theological Education Underground: 1937-1940 (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works). Ed. Victoria J. Barnett. Trans. Victoria J. Barnett, Claudia D. Bergmann, Peter Frick, and Scott A. Moore. Vol. 15. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012. Print. 476-480.

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Confirmation Haiku Experiments

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Tom Bolton

Written around the time of our 2010 Confirmation service:

In soft May flowers,
These faithful new believers
Share new unbelief.

Pushing through spring reds,
New brothers and sisters
Lift high our loving Christ.

As dew on new grass,
These faithful seven glisten,
Claiming faith afire.

(c) Tom Bolton, 2012, West Allis

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Posted on June 21, 2012 by Tom Bolton

John Meunier brought forth some wonderful words from John Wesley’s journal yesterday, and these seem like good words to hear in 2012. Wesley wrote these words in 1774. I need to hear these words today. Thanks for sharing this John.

John Meunier's avatarJohn Meunier

John Wesley wrote in his journal Oct. 6, 1774:

I met those of our society who had votes in the ensuing election, and advised them, 1. To vote, without fee or reward, for the person they judged most worthy: 2. To speak no evil of the person they voted against: And, 3. To take care their spirits were not sharpened against those that voted on the other side.

Let those with ears, hear!

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