[Dialogue] Bonhoeffer executed 60 years ago today

[Lucille Chagnon]

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Cock" <jpc2025 at triad.rr.com>
To: <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 1:12 PM
Subject: [Dialogue] 60 years ago today


> Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed for his role in an intricate
> putsch aimed at assassinating Adolf Hitler that occurred on July 20,
> 1944.

--------------------------------------
>From Lucille Chagnon in Wilmington, DE

  Thank you so much, John, for the reminder of today's anniversary of
Bonhoeffer's execution--and to everyone else who has been passing on info on
Bonhoeffer.

    Allow me to pay a debt of gratitude.  In 11 days, on July 31st, it will
also be 60 years that Antoine de St-Exupery, aviator and writer, went down
over the Mediterranean.  His plane was discovered in the waters off
Marseille four years ago, but it wasn't until this past April that it was
verified as being St-Ex's plane.
    St-Ex's book, Citadelle (The Wisdom of the Sands) influenced my life and
life philosophy as much as the Bible.  I highly recommend it, but with this
caveat:  I have never read it in English so I don't know how good the
translation is.  Katherine Woods' 1943 original translation of The Little
Prince is not good.  However, Harcourt published a new translation by
Richard Howard in 2000, and, after 60 years-plus,The Little Prince has found
a new voice.
    After the RS-I at the Franciscan Monastery in Rye Beach, NH, when I was
teaching in Dover, I met a Franciscan who knew Annabella (Tyrone Power's
actress (former) wife) who was a close friend of St -Ex ,and he promised to
let me know next time she came to Rye on retreat.  I brought my Editions de
la Pleiade copy of St Ex's complete works, and she signed it for me as she
told me stories about "ce grand ours d'homme"--that big bear of a man--whom
she visited in a Calif. hospital during the early war years when he was in
the States.
    I can't recommend St-Ex's books highly enough:
Southern Mail (Courrier-Sud)
Night Flight (Vol de nuit)
Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre des hommes)
Flight to Arras (Pilote de guerre).

    Join me in celebrating the life and death of a missional man who, like
Bonhoeffer, publicly opposed Hitler, and also Petain, in his life choices
and in his writings.

Lucille