“the menacing whine of bombs being dropped, the sickening thud of their impact on tenements, offices and houses, and the pervasive irremovable dust, smoke and ash drifting across the ever increasing ruins. Whole streets disappeared under piles of cascading rubble. The smell of burning pervaded everywhere. Power was disrupted. Water lines spewed aimlessly for hours on end. By Christmas it was very cold and heating supplies had virtually vanished. The mood of the people was traumatized, gay and exhausted. The unpredictability of not knowing when or where the next bomb would fall took a terrible toil. And yet, Bonhoeffer could still write. “Advent is a time especially dear to me. Life in a prison cell may well be compared to Advent; one waits, hopes, does this, that or the other, but the door is shut and can only be opened from the outside.”
Bonhoeffer’s Last Writings from Prison -CRLIX/Fall 2006/Vol 42. No. 3