I hope you've all had a terrific holiday, mine was wonderfully exhausting, leaving me with the type of tiredness that signals fulfilling experience. It feels good to have given of yourself and feel like your heart and sweat have been invested in something worthwhile.
We took about twenty-five kids, most of them 14-15 years old with a few younger and older students along as well, down to Birmingham Alabama to work with Habitat for Humanity. The experience left us all worn out, but with a powerful memory. Habitat is an organization that works with folks who need affordable housing but don't have a lot to work with. It helps arrange for no-interest mortgages on houses built by volunteers to be sold for no profit. I only knew the organization by reputation before hand, but working with them was such a powerful experience that I would heartily contribute to the rumor that has built that rep. Habitat is an impressive program...if you get a chance, get involved!
I was extremely proud of our kids who went along...they worked very hard and were just a blast to hang out with. If any of you guys that went want to recount some of your thoughts or stories here, feel free.
Cracking into Kierkegaard these days.(I kept being pointed in that direction by Bonhoeffer) His personality comes out so much clearer than other philosophers/writers of his day, at least in my limited experience. I think we would have been buddies. He really does crack me up, too. More on that later, but some thoughts from the more academically minded that wander this way would be appreciated. Dante, I'm particularly curious about your thoughts on the Dane.
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welcome home friend. I'm gald the trip went well. I'm interested in hearing what the kids think too. teens? any comments on the trip?
i've linked the page to ashlock... he's read several things from ole' Kierk. Now if he ever responds?... that's the question! (Prove me wrong Richard!)
~Cooter
It's a nice historical connection, Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer. The two are complements, if not wholly contemporaries. K. is most often noted for his work on the solitary self, uneluctably isolated in his spiritual development; his philosophy is, for better or worse, Christian existentialism, in the best possible connotation. B., on the other hand, is known by most as the mind who cannot leave the self alone, chooosing rather to place the invidual within a community for his formative experience. B.'s best work (if not his most readable), "Ethics", represents the place where he both joins and departs from K.'s "individual." It's not that Kierkegaard fears the "Other," only that his conscience will not allow him to escape the ultimacy and primacy of the primate human's will to decide, independently, his path. B. wouldn't disagree, he would, and did, simply place the emphasis on the context of the self as a part of the self.
For both, it's always helpful to remember the context out of which both wrote. K. reacting against romanticism and rationalism, and the representative communities of both worlds. B. out of Nazi Germany, alone in a cell, staring at that small barred window, craving the touch of another, gentler hand. For K., the intellectual community had failed the intellectual Christian; for B., the political community had failed the political Christian. But for B., the craving of his spirit turned Christian community into an ideal worth romanticising over, worth forming a theology around. In his forced isolation, a physical representation of Kierkegaard's philosophical position, he found that one is never truly isolated, and therefore must reconcile the self with the other, in a kind of tension and synergy. That's why people talk about Bonhoeffer with warm tones, and why they talk about Kierkegaard while scratching their heads.
K: "Teach me, O God, not to torture myself, not to make a martyer out of myself through stifling reflection, but rather teach me to breathe deeply in faith."
Cooter: Consider yourself proven wrong.
STEVE!! HEY its Alicia. Charlie just made me a site on here. Pretty cool huh? Well, I have no philosophical comments for you, but I do want to say hi and that I miss ya tons! Tell that wonderful girl o yours I said hello as well. I'm not sure how all this works yet but I think you can write me back.. OCparker15 is my name on xanga if that helps. Anyway. BYEEEE
wait a minute, was that some kind of a bet? Cooter, you told ashlock he wouldn't look, didn't you!
Ashlock...Thanks for the thoughts, but there is another difference...Kierkegaard is such a laugher. he seems always to be smiling as he writes, even if the smile is sardonic when he critiques. Bonhoeffer, though, always seems to write with a tone of concern...is that just the way I read them?
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