Looking back. Looking ahead. 2020-2025

POLITICS AND SOCIETY | SPEECHES   183 I would like to close with a few lines from a poem by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, written here in Flossenbürg and now often sung as a hymn, offering hope even in the darkest of times: … the weight of bitter days still holds us fast. O Lord, pray comfort our startled souls, and give the grace for which we were cast. … But if you choose to let us feel again this world’s bright joy, sunlight’s radiance, then we will honour all that once has been, and lay before you our life and stance.* * By Gracious Powers Wonderfully Sheltered, a spiritual poem by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, written in captivity in December 1944.