It seems fitting that I should be writing my Note on prisoners and their religious rights.

At IJM this past summer, our group of interns had looked to the plight of Min Ko Naing and other such political prisoners (i.e. charged with nothing other than political dissent towards the authorities) in Burma. (See 8/20 and 8/21 posts in August 03 archive.)

I had also started reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison last summer (after a very long hiatus). It chronicles the letters he sent to family and friends (and their letters to him) while imprisoned for suspicion of participating in a plot against the Nazis. I picked up Letters again today, and it caused me to be thankful. There isn't much theme to these snippets, but it raises my spirits beyond the drudgery of the here-and-now.

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"Simply being near to you matters a great deal, even though one is continually aware with gratitude how little outward separation has to do with inward togetherness."

"Joy is a thing that we want very badly in this solemn building, where one never hears a laugh - it seems to get even the warders down - and we exhaust all our reserves of it from within and without."

"Prison life in general brings one back, both outwardly and inwardly, to the simplest things of life... But I wonder whether one's understanding is not affected by the restrictive nature of life here?"

"That the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel, as a result of which people can no longer understand each other, because everyone speaks a different language, should at last be brought to an end and overcome by the language of God, which everyone understands and through which alone people can understand each other again, and that the church should be the place where that happens - these are great momentous thoughts."

"Fritz Reuter puts it very well: 'No one's life flows on such an even course that it does not sometimes come up against a dam and whirl round and round, or that people never throw stones into the clear water. Something happens to everyone, and he must take care that the water stays clear, and that heaven and earth are reflected in it.'"

"However certain I am of the spiritual bond between all of you and myself, the spirit always seems to want some visible token of this union of love and remembrance, and then material things become the vehicles of spiritual realities. I think this is analogous to the need felt in all religions for the visible appearane of the Spirit in the sacrament."

"I had another very nice letter from Susi, which pleased me very much. She is quite right; this time of separation first makes it clear that often we take too little trouble to get together in normal times. Precisely because we do not feel it necessary to 'cultivate' the obvious family relationships, many things are often neglected, and that is a pity."
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The last one prompted me to write a note to my family today. I won't be spending the Thanksgiving holiday with them, which is a first. I've been rather neglectful of many relationships this past quarter, but it's particularly unforgivable towards one's own family, I think.

Happy Thanksgiving to you!