Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Stations on the Road to Freedom :: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Discipline

If you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all discipline of soul and your senses, so that your passions and limbs might not lead you confusedly hither and yon. Chaste be your spirit and body, subject to your own will, and obedient to seek out the goal that they have given. No one discovers the secret of freedom but through self-control.

Action

Dare to do what is just, not what fancy may call for; lose not time with what may be, but boldly grasp what is real. The world of thought is escape; freedom comes only through action.
Step out beyond anxious waiting and into the storm of events, carried only by God's command and by your own faith; then will freedom exultantly cry out to welcome you spirit.

Suffering

Wondrous transformation! Your strong and active hands are tied now. Powerless, alone, you see the end of your action. Still, you take a deep breath and lay your struggle for justice, quietly and in faith, into a mightier hand.
Just for one blissful moment, you tasted the sweetness of freedom, then you handed it over to God, that he might make it whole.

Death

Come now, highest moment on the road to freedom eternal, Death, put down the ponderous chains and demolish the walls of our mortal bodies, the walls of our blinded souls, that we might finally see what mortals have kept us from seeing. Freedom, how long we have sought you through discipline, action, and suffering.
Dying, now we behold your face in the countenance of God.

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