from the game of speculation.”12 Among the human words that interested Bonhoeffer were those employed in the church’s training of children. The most difficult theological pronouncements, Bonhoeffer wrote at the time, were worthless if they could not be explained to children. Thus in late 1926, as he initiated work on his dissertation, Bonhoeffer began giving regular children’s “meditations” at his church in Grunewald. Out of this experience grew the “Thursday Circle,” a regular reading and discussion