Tapestries were portable. You could roll them up, send them ahead of you, and in the time it took to hang them up, you could transform a cold, dank interior into a richly colored setting.

Indeed, I have recently been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer s sublime and challenging Letters from Prison, in which he yearns for a Christ capable of offering mercy to a world, our world, then in the process of being martyred for a single man. Written in a cramped, dank, and putrid cell, where hope was meant to die before the body, Bonhoeffer crafted a book rich in faith, openness, possibility, and, yes, hope even in humanity s darkest hour.