“A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes - and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, letter from Tegel Prison
I sit on the edge of my bed mourning the recent death of my father and celebrating the way I offered him a good death, and this quote comes to mind. As a member of a faith community, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that does not celebrate Advent I wonder what he is celebrating in this letter.
My first thoughts are that it must be similar to our idea of the Atonement where Christ opens the door, to our prison, by his sacrifice in the Olive Grove. There is a famous image that hangs in many of our churches. In the painting, Christ is outside knocking on a door with no knob. It symbolizes Christ knocking on the door waiting for an invitation to go inside.
Bonhoeffer wrote this letter to a friend from a Nazi Prison camp where he was sentenced for the crime of establishing independent Lutheran Seminaries. He is locked in a building awaiting the opening of a mortal prison cell. He will never be freed from this prison. He will be hung shortly before the end of World War II.
So, what is the Advent Bonhoeffer is referring to in this letter? I turn to my best research associate, Google, and ask it what is Advent and when it occurs. I learn that it begins four weeks before Christmas when the Christian Community anticipates the coming birth of the Savor. Since the time of Adam and Eve, he and his children have looked forward to their release from their confinement brought on by the eating of the fruit and the Fall of Mankind.
I wonder if I am awaiting a gift of freedom from a sense of guilt and loss. The guilt of having deprived my father-in-law of a good death, or the failure to provide for my father an environment where he would not be able to injure himself. His death was brought on by a refusal to remain his home while I was at work. He crashed his bike in the middle of the street while recovering from neck surgery. But anyone who knows my father knows the only way I could have prevented this injury was to covert our home into more of the prison then it was currently. Since the starting of the Covid-19 outbreak he has been largely confined to his home, and this has left him with very few pleasures in life.
Toward the end of his life, I knew we would be confined to this home together, me giving him his medicine every four hours and emptying urine bags, while I worked from an adjoining bedroom. We both looked forward to freedom or Advent. He from his Earthy confines and me from this sense of guilt and loss.
He passed fairly quickly after I received permission to use the Oral Morphine. Both of us enjoy freedom or Advent together. He died on a Thursday and on Friday morning I awoke and sent my boss an SMS saying I was not coming to work. I filled my car with gasoline and took a long 6-hour drive through Eastern Idaho and Western Wyoming. It was such a beautiful day for a drive and a chance to celebrate this Advent and look to the next where Christ would redeem my father and me and help us to return to my Heavenly Parents.
