Coffee Theology

I've just had a week's holiday, and holidays always involve a stack of (mostly trashy) books.  After the latest highly enjoyable but pretty brainless Dan Brown novel, I started on 'The Storyteller' by Jodi Picoult.  It's about the Holocaust, so it's pretty grim, and includes a long narrative from the point of view of the heroine's Jewish grandmother, a survivor of Auschwitz.  It was the ending of the novel, set in the present day, which really shocked me, however - SPOILER ALERT - if you want to read this novel, look away now. The novel's present day heroine, Sage, befriends Josef, a retired German teacher in his 90s.  Josef is a a much-loved local character who has served his community well and has many friends.  Knowing that Sage is from a Jewish family, Josef tells her his terrible secret - during the war, he was a member of the SS who served in Auschwitz.  He does not feel that he deserves the long life he has had and wants Sage to help him die. In t...

About ten years ago I came across Sister Helen Prejean's book 'Dead Man Walking' in which she tells the story of her friendship with two death row prisoners in the United States.  This unassuming Roman Catholic nun began writing to prisoners and eventually to visit and talk with them - as well as with the families of their victims.   Both men described in her book were guilty of unspeakable crimes; there was nothing sympathetic about them in human terms.  And yet Sister Helen offered them friendship as human persons loved by God and spoke of his mercy.  I read the book before I began to explore Christianity and, despite my lack of Christian faith, found myself profoundly moved by one memorable passage.  One of the prisoners is due to be executed, and Sister Helen asks to be present at the execution.  He doesn't want her to have to see it, but she says that she wants him to be able to see her face.  "I want to be the face of Jesus for you," she explains...