Shadow Land

The month of January is a time for reflection. I am by nature someone who likes to do that; it has been a habit since my youth. Of course, I had no idea what life held in store for me, but I had my dreams.

Shortly after graduating from high school, I moved to Winnipeg from Alberta and got a job at the Christian Press, a small bookstore above its printing press. I was hired because of my knowledge of German. It was a bookstore that marketed English and German books. I could read any book I chose -- heaven was at my doorstep!

This place will always be special to me because it is where I first met the person with whom I would spend the rest of my life. He was a student at the nearby college. For two years (after only one date), we were continents apart and maintained a letter-writing relationship. (Hardy was in the Congo from 1965-1967 as a member of a Bible translation team.)

I clearly recall sitting at my desk on the last day of 1966 and writing a letter in which I promised my commitment and love. In that letter I shared a poem by Dietrich Bonhoeffer which we continue to read together on New Year's Eve. We love reading it in the original German but I found a good English translation to share with you. 

A bit of background about Bonhoeffer: A Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident, he was imprisoned by the Nazis on April 5,1943. For an entire year he was separated from his family, his friends, his fiancée, and his church. He spent the time behind bars in Berlin's Tegel prison for his participation in plots to kill Adolf Hitler. 

In the damp cold darkness of his cell, bereft of light, family, and friends, Bonhoeffer wrote his last theological work, a poem addressed to his fiancée Maria von Wedemeyer, entitled, Von Guten Mächten Wunderbar Geborgen. This poem has since been made into a hymn and can be found in the German Lutheran hymnal, the Evangelisches Gesangbuch. (An English translation follows.)

Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazi SS on April 19,1945. He was 39 years old.

By Gracious Powers:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Prayer for a New Year

By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered

and confidently waiting, come what may,

we know that God is with us night and morning, 

and never fails to greet us each new day.

The worries of the old year still torment us,

we’re troubled still by long and wicked days.

Oh Lord, give our frightened souls the healing

Which you’ve prepared for us in many ways.

And when this cup you give is filled to brimming

with bitter sorrow, hard to understand,

we take it gladly, trusting though with trembling,

out of so good and so beloved a hand.

Yet when again in this same world you give us

the joy we had, the brightness of your sun, 

we shall remember all the days we lived through

and our whole life shall then be yours alone. 

Bonhoeffer did not know what fate awaited him and where life would take him. He had his moments of despair, expressed in the poem Wer Bin Ich? (Who Am I?), of which the final two lines are:

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.

Whoever I am, thou knowest, Oh God, I am thine.

When we first read this poem to each other, Hardy and I had no idea what awaited us. In our latter years we have the privilege of looking back and seeing the path we walked; at times it was so difficult we didn't know if we would make it or not. This time of isolation during the Coronavirus epidemic is one of the more challenging times but not the worst.

We trudge along in the darkness and coldness and isolation,

wondering what lies ahead.

But we are not alone.

Yet when again, in this same world you give us 

the joy we had, the brightness of your sun,

we shall remember all the days we lived through

and our whole life shall then be yours alone.