In a note to his fellow conspirators on New Year’s Eve 1943, Bonhoeffer wrote: “The ultimate question for a responsible person to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation is to live.”

Miguel has been writing about Dietrich Bonhoeffer lately. I’d never heard of Bonhoeffer, but from reading Miguel’s posts about principled resistance, I understand that Bonhoeffer was a socially conscious religious activist. Bonhoeffer was hanged in a Nazi prison camp one week before the end of the War in Europe in 1945 for his participation in a protestant resistance movement. A witness to his execution described him as “entirely submissive to the will of God.” Bonhoeffer’s political activity is controversial. His execution was a consequence of his participation in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler despite his profession of Christian faith. The incongruousness of his ethical stance has been hard for many people to reconcile.

It was interesting that today I ran across a reference to Bonhoeffer when reading about the IRA convention, where Marian Wright Edelman was the keynote speaker. In her keynote Edelman said that

according to the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children. In the United States, Edelman said, we flunk that test every day.

Edelman established the Children’s Defense Fund, an organization that is dedicated to ensuring that all children are provided with the material, intellectual, and spiritual nurturing they deserve to pass successfully into adulthood. The CDF’s political agenda is expressed in The Leave No Child Behind Movement which, among other things, adresses the need for health insurance, nutrition programs, and access to preschool and early learning opportunities for all children.

According to the IRA report on her keynote address:

Edelman ended her talk with an anecdote about Sojourner Truth, the antislavery and women’s rights advocate whom Edelman called her role model. One white man heckled her once, saying her efforts meant no more to him than a flea bite. “The Lord willing,” she replied, “I’ll keep you scratching.” Edelman told the conferees to be just as persistent—”I hope that you will commit to being a flea,” she said, “for justice for children.”

Work for justice. Commit to fleadom.

How will the coming generation, or the next, live? The mystery of teaching, for me, is in the wonder of never knowing. It’s hard work. I’m guided by faith and commitment to teaching as a spiritual path. I grow from it because I’m called on to be a better person than I want to be every day, every moment.

Whose world are we building? I imagine several possibilities, and I’m having a hard time continuing without a clear answer.