On being accessible

The chapter titled Berlin in Bonhoeffer’s biography, by Eric Metaxas, was a challenging read. What a force of personality this man was, and such was the extraordinary life he lived.

Each week his gifted family held music nights in their home, and when Dietrich became a lecturer at the university he invited the students along. This is what one of them, Otto Dudzus, recalled:

Whatever he had and whatever he was, he made that accessible to others. The great treasure he possessed was the cultivated, elegant, educated, highly educated, open-minded home of his parents, which he introduced us to. The open evenings, which took place every week, or later every two weeks, had such an atmosphere that they became a piece of home for us, as well. Also, Bonhoeffer’s mother entertained in the best possible way.

And these students continued to visit his parents, who treated them like familiy, even after Bonhoeffer went to London.

But the truly amazing story is the story of the confirmation class he took in Wedding, a squalid, poverty-stricken district, where his class consisted of 50 “sawed-off hoodlums”. He moved there, so

... as to be able to have the boys here every evening, in turns of course. We have supper together and then we play something – I have taught them chess, which they now play with the greatest enthusiasm ... At the end of each evening I read something out of the Bible and after that a little catechising, which often grows very serious. The experience of teaching them has been such that I can hardly tear myself away from it.

He visited all their families, he bought woolen cloth to make each boy a confirmation suit, he took the boys away on weekends. I read this chapter and started to feel like a waste of good space.