Diane Reynolds, The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer QUOTES

1 " Do you still … me a bit? I still … you a little, but only a little—hardly at all! I think this is quite a nice letter all the same! Yours, Maria. "

― Diane Reynolds, The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

2 " people, also, after all, let the lovely cornflower bloom./No one planted it, no one watered it./Vulnerable, it grows freely/and in cheerful confidence/that it will be allowed to live its life/under the wide sky.” Such is the image of friendship; such is the image of grace. Such is the manifesto of people everywhere, gay, straight, male, female, black, white, who might not quite fit, seeking sacred communion with the other: “Far or near/in fortune or calamity--/each knows in the other/the faithful helper/toward freedom and humanity. "

― Diane Reynolds, The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

3 " I thought,” Dietrich wrote, imagining he would soon be executed, “I myself could learn to have faith by trying to live something like a saintly life… Later on I discovered and am still discovering, that one only learns to have faith by living in the full this-worldliness of life. If one has completely renounced making something of oneself …then one throws oneself completely into the arms of God, and this is what I call this-worldliness: living fully in the midst of life’s tasks, questions, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities—then one takes seriously no longer one’s own sufferings but rather God’s sufferings in the world. "

― Diane Reynolds, The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

4 " I am thinking gratefully and with peace of mind about past and present things. "

― Diane Reynolds, The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

5 " London, 1939: “The forsythia and dark mauve lilacs bloomed enchantingly, luxuriantly, in the old gardens in Forest Hills and the daffodils gleamed from the broad expanses of the parks. "

― Diane Reynolds, The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

6 " How should things go after the Baltic? Do you want me or not? I would really like to know.” Bonhoeffer, letter to Eberhard Bethge, July, 1939 "

― Diane Reynolds, The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

7 " I am living in the loveliest area of Manhattan, directly on the Hudson and somewhat above the city. But it is probably even lovelier to live high up in one of the skyscrapers (the highest is 360 meters!). Again and again, the general impression of New York is indeed stunning, the skyscrapers, the masses of people from all nations and races milling about, the host of churches and chapels. "

― Diane Reynolds, The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer