“Those two months behind barbed wire have been the two richest and most intense months of my life, in which my highest values were so deeply confirmed. I have learnt to love Westerbork”.
Etty Hillesum – The Interrupted Life
A young Jewish woman working to help fellow Jews facing death, and finally being murdered before her 30th birthday in Auschwitz
Grieving and Joy – Our Sacred Journey
Never give up, never escape, take everything in, and perhaps suffer, that’s not too awful either, but never, never give up. (Etty Hillesum)
No matter how happy we might want to feel in April 2022, there is a cloud of sorrow we can’t ignore. Millions have died in the past two years from a pandemic that scorched the world with pain, fear, anger, threats, thievery, long sickness, and, yes, death.
Bodies are not the only victims. We are weary. Weary of fighting – sickness and each other. It seems to me that our fears have exhausted our joy.
But, things started looking better. Some of us leave masks at home. Many of us have joined family and friends. Funny how different humans feel when we are in control, even if control is an allusion. And then there is –
Atrocities of War
And I don’t need to tell you how badly we grieve, all of us, like one lung or one heart; we suffer when the world suffers. I am reminded of how we carefully maneuver a dusty blanket, we don’t dare move around in our feelings too much or we might choke. If we look in the mirror of human behavior, we see our capacity to hate. And the longer it goes, the more the hate spills from the aggressor to those who oppose the torment, and they, in turn hate, and crave retribution. Understandably so. We cannot stand idly by. But will we choke on our own dust of vengeance, about the war in Ukraine, about politics, or the loss of our loved one?
And this is where Etty Hillesum should enter.
“A large group of us were crowded into the Gestapo hall, and at that moment, the circumstances of all our lives were the same. All of us occupied the same space, the men behind the desk no less than those about to be questioned. What distinguished each of us was only our inner attitude.” Etty Hillesum
Meet Etty
A young woman in her twenties, full of life and certainly not “circumspect” by a religious term, volunteered her life to Love.
She watched the intense suffering of her people up close. Scores of thousands boarded trains to eternity while she served those who remained with all she knew. All she could offer.
She kept a diary now called “The Interrupted Life” (reading it leaves you – silent) of her years watching as the persecution unfolded, and finally refusing to hide and volunteering to serve instead, she was sent to Westerbork and then hauled, along with her family to Auschwitz.
A neighbor and contemporary of Anne Frank, Etty learned by the grace of Love to find Silence and in that space to embrace joy and suffering simultaneously.
I share Etty with you, dear reader, because she was a normal, every day, young, and vibrant woman who enjoyed men, and the “vices” – and was transformed by the world she lived in and through by Love. She has so much to say about processing global grief.
Quotes on Processing Grief
I don’t feel worthy, to be honest, to comment much more on her life and the depth of her mystic experience. Instead, as a gift to you, I offer a few more of her words of life, the holding together of joy and sorrow, and if you can receive it, the sacredness and privilege of holding the sorrow of others. I encourage you to get your hands on the book. (See notes in Teacher below) (All quotes below to Etty Hillesum)
Every day I shall put my papers in order, and every day, I shall say farewell. And the real farewell, when it comes, will only be a small outward confirmation of what has been accomplished within me from day today.
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I am reminded here of the enormous novel by CS Lewis, “Till We Have Faces,” where the Queen is tutored by her mentor, “die before you die.” Buddhist traditions might call it impermanence. We might see it as living in a letting go state, not clingy or craving.
Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.
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Most people write off their longing for friends and family as so many losses in their lives, when they should count the fact that their heart is able to long so hard and to love so much as among their greatest blessings.
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Thinking gets you nowhere. It may be a fine and noble aid in academic studies, but you can’t think your way out of emotional difficulties. That takes something altogether different. You have to make yourself passive then and just listen. Re-establish contact with a slice of eternity.
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I don’t want to be anything special. I only want to try to be true to that in me, which seeks to fulfill its promise.
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Featuring “Processing Grief” Painting by Harmony Thiessen
Acrylic painting on 16 x 20x 1.5-inch canvas, ready to hang. Finished sides in black. Varnished for long life. All professional quality paints. Finished and wired for hanging. $325 – Free Shipping USA. Free Delivery in Whatcom County and Southern BC Canada. This painting goes on public display on April 10, 2022, in the Whatcom Art Gallery Fairhaven (Bellingham, WA). You can visit it in person, or you can purchase it online. Learn More
Processing Grief – Harmony Thiessen
Front side
back side
I invite you to offer someone else words and images that encourage, inspire, and strengthen them. Act with unprovoked gestures of kindness!
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