Today the homily at the Lenten service was about Dietrich Bonhoefer, so I hoped to work a comment about his writings on grief during yesterday's Books at 12:10 Discussion of Sherman Alexie's Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I located a discussion, section by section, of the Beatitudes - Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted - which referred to the comfort of the bereaved being Christ. Dietrich Bonhoefer was a Lutheran pastor who was executed in 1945 in Nazi Germany for his resistance participation. He studied in the United States in 1930 and did a lecture tour in the United States in 1939. His writings were in the format of homilies.

Because Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is Young Adult fiction, I looked in a few books about it - I think the book has been published as Grief Therapy, but shelved with Young Adult books because all young adults should very well handle the sad parts of the plot.

One reader commented that when she became a widow in the middle of the 1990's her children saw the movie Smoke Signals, which Sherman Alexie developed from fiction he had written, fiction based on life experiences. It affirmed their experience.

The point I wanted to discuss was that the format matters in putting the information across to those who need it - the fiction format is accessible in ways other possible formats are not.

Six were present during the discussion, our comments were enthusiastic.