Author: Walter Thiessen

Today’s talk was all about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Peter Fitch shared a timeline of Bonhoeffer’s life that he has been working on for his work at the university, and he also focused on a recently-found letter that Bonhoeffer sent to Mahatma Gandhi in 1934, asking if he could come to visit in order to finally see what a community based on the Sermon on the Mount would look like. We finished with one of his poems from prison, “Who Am I?” The gorgeous musical set before the talk was done by Raymond Funk and Haydn Wiebe.

Peter Fitch reminds people about the different characters in Jesus’ story of The Good Samaritan. Then he shares ideas from Martin Buber about a sliding scale between ego and personhood. Some people are so detached from others that they are almost all the way over to the ego side, while others are so connected that they are almost all the way toward personhood. This leads to the question, “What is a person like?” Many responses from the people gathered help to answer this question and give insight about how to get there.

Rick Coates and Jessica Williams shared music/poetry.

Peter Fitch read Psalm 34 and asked what a naive interpretation of this psalm might indicate. Then he showed a talk by Kate Bowler called “Everything Happens for a Reason, and Other Lies I’ve Loved.” Then he read Psalm 34 once more and asked people if they saw any deep truths within the psalm that still rang true after Kate’s talk. There were many rich comments. Music today was by Jacob Rose, including 3 original songs, and a couple of the songs were accompanied by Sarah MacPhail as she and her husband, Tim, were visiting from Germany.

Peter Fitch read Psalm 34 and asked what a naive interpretation of this psalm might indicate. Then he showed a talk by Kate Bowler called “Everything Happens for a Reason, and Other Lies I’ve Loved.” Then he read Psalm 34 once more and asked people if they saw any deep truths within the psalm that still rang true after Kate’s talk. There were many rich comments. Music today was by Jacob Rose, including 3 original songs, and a couple of the songs were accompanied by Sarah MacPhail as she and her husband, Tim, were visiting from Germany.

Peter Fitch asks questions about the nature of joy and whether or not we can learn to welcome its visits with greater frequency. He looks at ideas in the NT and then finds additional wisdom from other sources: Jimmy Santiago Baca, Kahlil Gibran, and the Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu. Joy is something that we fight for, that we rest into, and that we gain through participation and service to others. It has a rich connection with sadness and sorrow, and also with the kind of connection with the Eternal that allows one to be fully alive in the present moment.