Bonhoeffer's "Who Am I? They often tell me"

This poem was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer from his prison-cell in either 1943 or 1944. It was probably smuggled out of prison by a guard he befriended.  Today I am getting caught up with my TA work, and feel chained to my desk, and overwhelmed like him at the difference between what others know of me and what I know of myself.  The words I can imagine from someone reenacting his ordeal, but that he actually wrote them himself, and they survived, is a gift.

Who Am I?

Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell's confinement
calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
like a Squire from his country house.

Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly,
as though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbourliness,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.

Who am I? This or the Other?
Am I one person to-day and to-morrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army
fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!

(Translated by J.B. Leishman. From Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship. Rev. ed. London: SCM Press, 1962. p. 15)

My new bike

Update from SIL-UND

So, I've been here in Grand Forks, ND for three weeks now. Had a lot of victory in my actions this week... and working on my thought life. There was a prayer group started among some of the guys living on my floor of the dorm, on Tuesday. Skit night was on Friday night, and it was a blast. There was a "linguist's confession" video during the show, and part of it showed me leaping onto a table and yelling, "I'm really an extrovert!" I will not live it down.

I'm a TA in a class called LING 480 Learner-Directed Second Language Acquisition. There are eight of us TAs: Me, Amy, Amber, Sallie, Lydia, Lesa, Bob, and Becky. Greg is the professor, and his wife Angela is manager of the lab sessions and TAs (us).

Up to now, we've been using Angela's lesson plans for the first two weeks (I got here a week before classes started). Now, we have to plan one lesson a week, and let the students each plan and lead one lesson a week. I have eight students, four in each group. The lab groups meet from 2-3 and from 3-4 every weekday. We're learning Kirundi, a Bantu language from Burundi, Africa. And our nurturer is named Pascal.

Beyond that, I'm taking a class called Ethnographic Methods in Field Linguistics (LING 535). It's a challenging amount of reading and writing. The current prof, Doug Fraiser, has inherited the teaching materials from Tom Headland, who made it very rigorous. I've been reading about ethnocentrism, the reputation of missionaries, the reputation of SIL, structures of family units around the world, kinship terms... and writing a summary of just about every article I read. It will be good to look back on, and it makes me reflect quickly on what I've been reading. It just takes a lot of time.

Been making lots of acquaintances. First of all my students. It's always beneficial for an introvert to expand his circle.

The forehead of a whore

I felt the desire to flip open Jeremiah 3 this morning. It says,

"By the waysides you have sat waiting for lovers,
like a nomad in the wilderness.
You have polluted the land with your whoring and wickedness.
Therefore the showers have been withheld,
and the spring rain has not come;
yet you have the forehead of a whore,
you refuse to be ashamed." (Jeremiah 3:2b-3)

I have done this too often... at least twice a week... where I would imagine my way into a sinful situation, often while listening to a Christian book on my ipod. Then once the idea is realized, I would mb. Later in retrospect, I would rationalize it as not sinful. Refusing to be ashamed forestalls repentance. Be ashamed and repent. Then you won't be ashamed.