CMP Review 2026-01-18

In 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was held captive in Tegel military prison. On November 21 he wrote a letter to his student Eberhard Bethge. “Today is Remembrance Sunday. … Then comes Advent, a time during which we share so many beautiful memories.” He went on: “By the way, a prison cell like this is a good analogy for Advent; one waits, hopes, does this or that—ultimately negligible things—the door is locked and can only be opened from the outside.”

Two millennia before the world was held in a prison cell. It was “a period of such inconceivable oppression,” writes Charlotte Mason, that it “naturally raised in men’s minds a certainty of deliverance… Predictions were rife, omens were in the air, men were aware of an expectation which they could not define.”

The door was locked and it could only be opened from outside. The world watched and waited. Enter the mystery today with Charlotte Mason’s poem of expectation. Find it here.

@artmiddlekauff