Gilead and Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I'm about halfway through Gilead. I bought this as an airport novel, just to read and then forget, but this book deserves better. I've been enjoying the musings of an old midwestern pastor, but wondering if there isn't something more to the story that will soon be revealed. I love the way the author uses language, and am thinking of having a look at her most famous novel, Housekeeping.

I have also been listening to a series of podcasts of "Speaking of Faith," a public radio program that I love but can barely ever catch--I'm often at work at 4 on Sundays but I usually can't stay by the radio. I listened to the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a minister in Germany who was part of a plot to kill Hitler. He felt that he was called by God to do this. The plot never succeeded and in fact Bonhoeffer was put to death just before the Allies took over. There is a documentary that I would like to catch on this topic and the interview was with the filmmaker. What I was most taken by is the following quote, from one of his letters from prison:
"I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith."
The opposite of Buddhist withdrawl from the world.