A Valentine’s Day Massacre

In the early hours of this morning at the Flossenbürg concentration camp, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was led to the gallows among Nazi guards and hanged until he was dead. It was not Palm Sunday seventy-two years ago. In fact, Easter fell on April Fool's Day in 1945. Today, Jesus is led into the streets among joyful

Sixty-one years ago today, in Flossenbürg, Germany, Nazi guards hanged Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Two weeks later, the Soviets would liberate the prison. This is the last poem he wrote, found in his cell. "By the Powers of Good" With every power for good to stay and guide me, Comforted and inspired beyond all fear, I’ll live these

There are plenty of problems with Valentine's Day. There's the consumeristic cultural pressure to conform to purchasing some fetish object that signifies a perceived-appropriate kind and level of affective significance. There's the capitalistic exploitation of (genuine or contrived) affection and desire to sell, well, everything. There's the matter of poor St. Valentine, himself, brutally martyred