Strength for the Day (and bright hope for Tomorrow)

Another reminder that I need to read Bonhoeffer soon. And finish my thesis. Preferably in the reverse order.

“Work plunges men into the world of things.  The Christian steps out of the world of brotherly encounter into the world of impersonal things, the ‘it’; and this new encounter frees him for objectivity; for the ‘it’-world is only an instrument in the hand of God for the purification of Christians from all self-centeredness and self-seeking.  The work of the world can be done only where a person forgets himself, where he loses himself in a cause, in reality, the task, the ‘it.’  In work the Christian learns to allow himself to be limited by the task, and thus for him the work becomes a remedy against the indolence and sloth of the flesh.  The passions of the flesh die in the world of things.  But this can happen only where the Cristian breaks through the ‘it’ to the ‘Thou,’ which is God, who bids him work and makes that work a means of liberation from himself.”

“The work does not cease to be work; on the contrary, the hardness and rigor of labor is really sought only by the one who knows what it does for hm.  The continuing struggle with the ‘it’ remains.  But at the same time the break-through is made; the unity of prayer and work, the unity of the day is discovered; for to find, back of the ‘it’ of the day’s work, the ‘Thou,’ which is God, is what Paul calls ‘praying without ceasing’ (1 Thess. 5:17).  Thus the prayer of the Christian reaches beyond its set time and extends into the heart of his work.  It includes the whole day, and in doing so, it does not hinder the work; it promotes it, affirms it, and lends it meaning and joy.  Thus every word, every work, every labor of the Christian becomes a prayer; not in the unreal sense of a constant turning away from the task that must be done, but in a real breaking through the hard ‘it’ to the gracious Thou.  ‘Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus’ (Col. 3:17).

“Then from this achieved unity of the day the whole day acquires an order and a discipline.  These must be sought and found in the morning prayer and in work they will be maintained.  The prayer of the morning will determine the day.  Wasted time, which we are ashamed of, temptations that beset us, weakness and listlessness in our work, disorder and indiscipline in our thinking and our relations with people very frequently have their cause in neglect of the morning prayer.  The organization and distribution of our time will be better for having been rooted in prayer.  The temptations which the working day brings with it will be overcome by this break-through to God.  Decisions which our work demands will be simpler and easier when they are made, not in the fear of men, but solely in the presence of God.  ‘Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men’ (Col. 3:23).  Even routine mechanical work will be performed more patiently when it is done with the knowledge of God and His command.  Our strength and energy for work increase when we have prayed God to give us the strength we need for our daily work.”

Bonhoeffer, Life Together

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The Audacity of Hope

I’ve been reading Obama’s ‘Dreams from my Father’ for the past few weeks. A bit slower than I’d wanted, but there’s lots to do these days. Delightful and honest book – and (dare I say?) a must-read. About halfway through the book, he describes a sermon by Jeremiah Wright on hope, and a description of this painting is particularly worth sharing.

This 1885 painting was by the Victorian painter George Frederic Watts and is titled ‘Hope’. Rev. Wright’s sermon is worth quoting for it’s eloquence (full speech at http://preachingtoday.com/sermons/sermons/audacityofhope.html?start=1):

“he talked about the painting as being a study in contradictions because what is depicted as the title and what is on the canvas seems to be in direct opposition one to the other. You see, the painting is titled “Hope” and it shows a woman sitting on top of the world playing a harp. Now at first glance, that would be all right, for what more enviable position could one ever hope to achieve than being on top of the world with the whole world, everything and everyone dancing to your music. But when you look closer at the picture, when the illusion of power gives way tot the reality of pain the world at which this woman sits, our world, that is a world which is torn by war, destroyed by hate, devastated by despair and devastated by distrust. The world on which she sits is on the very brink of destruction. Famine ravishes millions of the inhabitants of this world in one hemisphere while feasting and gluttony are enjoyed by inhabitants of another hemisphere. A time bomb ticking is the world on which she sits with apartheid in one hemisphere and apathy in the other hemisphere and enough nuclear warhead scientists tell us to wipe out all forms of life except for cockroaches and that is the world on which this woman sits. A world which cares about more bombs for the enemy than it does about bread for the hungry. A world that is still more concerned about the color of skin than it is about the content of character. A world more finicky about the texture of hair or what is on the outside of your head than it is about the quality of education or what is on the inside of one’s head. That is the world on which this woman sits. You and I think of being on top of the world as being in heaven, but when you look at the woman on Watt’s painting a little closer what you discover is that this woman is in Hell. And that artist Watt dares to entitled the painting “Hope.”

“Then, on top of that, she’s sitting there in rags. Tattered clothes as if she herself has been in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Her head is bandaged and her blood is beginning to seep through the bandages. Scars and cuts are visible on her face, her arms and her legs. That’s when you look closer at the picture. And the instrument, on which she plays, her harp, has all but one of its strings broken, torn or ripped out. Even the instrument ha been damaged by what she has been though and she is even more the example of quiet despair than anything else. Yet, the artist dares entitle the painting “Hope.”

“When you look closer at what Watt has done on that canvas, the illusion of power, sitting on top of the world gives way to the reality of pain and isn’t that the way it is with so many of us? Oh, we give the illusion of being in an enviable position, being on top of the world, but when you look closer at our lives what you begin to find is the reality, many times, of a pain almost too deep for the tongue to tell. Like that woman in Watt’s painting where it looks like heaven is actually for many of us, existing in a quiet Hell.”

and

“… began to understand why the artist titled the painting “Hope.” In spite of being in a world torn by war, in spite of being on a world destroyed by hate and decimated by distrust, in spite of being on a world where famine and greed are uneasy bed partners, in spite of being on a world where apartheid and apathy feed the fires of racism and hatred, in spite of being on a world where nuclear nightmare draws closer with each second, in spite of being on a ticking time bomb, with her clothes in rags, her body scarred and bruised and bleeding, her harp all but destroyed and with only one string left, she had the audacity to make music and praise God.”

The Audacity to Hope. That is what sustains each and every one of us in this world of dark contradictions.

PS: Personally, I think I know what Watts wanted to depict here. I know what it means to be poor (not extreme poverty, luckily), but I know what it means to NOT have X, Y or Z (and sometimes all together). I know what it means to come from a relatively poor family. I know what it means to have all one’s clothes fit in a tiny drawer. And it is easy to slip into despair. But perhaps, it is with this hope that my mother (bless her!) took me to school on that first day (in my bright yellow school uniform), it was with this hope that she let go of my hand while I cried, scratched and tugged in my efforts to not be separated from her, and perhaps it is with this same hope that she endures the physical distance and the long separation (for the past 5 years I haven’t been home for longer than maybe a month in total). It is a hope for a brighter tomorrow. The audacity of hope.

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Summer 2010

So it seems like my summer is finally coming together (Things were on hold due to a glitch in the visa application process). I finally obtained the German visa from New York today. Ceteris paribus, I should be in Bochum, Germany (about 20 minutes from Dortmund) for about 2 months, Amsterdam for about 1 or 2 weeks, and then Ghana for the rest of the summer till I return to Princeton in the fall.

The most exciting things about the summer will probably be travel, reading and research.

For research, I’m working on materials science, specifically lasers, with a professor in Ruhr Universitat Bochum. I will be working on fast processes in semi-conductor lasers. Decipher that! I haven’t really done any work with lasers before now, but the graduate student I will be working with sent me a pretty thorough introduction to the material, so I’m going to hit the ground running and it should be a rewarding summer, if work conditions are right.

Travels – Pretty pysched to travel through Europe. I plan to be in Madrid, Berlin, Paris, Munich, Rome and Amsterdam. In addition, Essen (about 10 mins from Bochum) is the European Cultural Capital for 2010, so there’s lots of activity in the region, and I have free tickets to travel there for the whole summer. So it should be a pretty thorough cultural immersion in ‘European culture’.

These are my projected summer reads (Hopefully, I’ll have a separate post on each of these after I have read them):

1. C.S. Lewis’ ‘Mere Christianity’ and ‘The Screwtape Letters’

2. The Bible (in its entirety)

3. Timothy Keller’s ‘Problems with the Christian God’ (Audio)

4. Catherine Blyth’s and James A. Morris’ ‘The Art of Conversation’ (Actually two separate books)

5. Barack Obama’s ‘Audacity of Hope’ and ‘Dreams from my Father’

6. Thomas Friedman’s ‘The World is Flat’ (again)

7. ‘The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing’

8. St. Augustine’s ‘Confessions’

9. Erwin Kreyszig’s ‘Advanced Engineering Mathematics’

10. Thesis reads.

11. H. Richard Neihbuhr’s ‘Christ and Culture’

12. Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’

13. Sarah Erdman’s ‘Nine Hills to Nambonkaha’

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My Creed

Quite literally. Another one of my favorites. By Edgar Albert Guest (1881-1959).

To live as gently as I can;
To be, no matter where, a man;
To take what comes of good or ill
And cling to faith and honor still;
To do my best, and let that stand
The record of my brain and hand;
And then, should failure come to me,
Still work and hope for victory.

To have no secret place wherein
I stoop unseen to shame or sin;
To be the same when I’m alone
As when my every deed is known;
To live undaunted, unafraid
Of any step that I have made;
To be without pretense or sham
Exactly what men think I am.

To leave some simple mark behind
To keep my having lived in mind;
If enmity to aught I show,
To be an honest, generous foe,
To play my little part, nor whine
That greater honors are not mine.
This, I believe, is all I need
For my philosophy and creed.

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Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’

There’s very few poems I like. I like to think I’m a simple person so I hate overly-packed metaphors and references to abstract abstractions (Keep it simple, stupid!)*. So that must be why Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ holds such a fascination for me. Its simplicity is stunning (and thanks to the insights of a dear friend, Jahnabi Barooah, I observe that Kipling describes the kind of person I want to be)! My favorite lines (near the end) are ‘If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds of distance run, Yours is the earth and everything in it’. Wise words. Especially for today’s consumerist, procrastination-prone, watch-’em-do-it-on-TV society (Surely those three correlate positively!). Now, I’ll let Kipling speak:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

*There are some really, really abstract poems I like, though.

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