I was recently discussing with a friend the topic of Mother Theresa. Apparently, throughout her many years of ministry she struggled with the nearness of God and other common battles. This is known by the reading of correspondence she had with a priest. These letters, she asked to be destroyed, after her death, but the Catholic Church chose instead to preserve and analyze them. I do not think I will end up reading the article in Time because I want to honor her desire for these private thoughts and prayers to remain between God and her priest-friend.
I do find it interesting that there is the tendency by some to try to discount her work because of these new insights. I find her all the more real and recognize in her as with the many other “followers of Jesus and lovers of God” the challenge of trusting the Unseen in a world full of visible images and messages contrary to faith and life in the kingdom.
King David’s prayers are full of raw wrestling with questions, fears, and misunderstandings but He always came back to faith in the One who is Strong and Trustworthy. This conversation brought to mind a modern psalm-like prayer by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He wrote this while in prison before he was executed.
Who am I?
Am I really what others say about me?
Or am I only what I know of myself?
Restless, yearning, and sick, like a bird in its cage,
struggling for the breath of life,
as though someone were choking my throat;
hungering for colors, for flowers, for the songs of birds,
thirsting for kind words and human closeness,
shaking with anger at capricious tyranny and the pettiest slurs,
bedeviled by anxiety, awaiting great events that might never occur,
fearfully powerless and worried for friends far away,
weary and empty in prayer, in thinking, in doing,
weak, and ready to take leave of it all.
Who am I? This man or that other?
Am I one person today, and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
but to me little more than a whining, despicable 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, you know me, O God, You know I am yours."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer (written from Prison)
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1 comment:
Great workings in your mind in this post. Well worth sharing. I understand Bonhoeffer's type of prayer, only I wih my questions were more over things I that really tore me both ways equally when thinking of virtue and vice/doubt inside of me. Sadly enough, too much vice has existed in me--even post Christ--to the point where most of my worries are over am I even saved at all, am I even His? On my good days and stretches and seasons I can feel Him and His goodness again. But oh how the darkness, especially the self-inviteddarkness, can cause me to doubt and despair on all levels. I love men like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Mom Teresa, because they show me that sin and doubt plague even those who live far holier than I.
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