TOUCHED, HUMBLED, TORN...BLESSED, I

[The following is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of October 30, 2015.]

'We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.' -- The last words in the diary of Etty Hillesum who died at Auschwitz in November, 1943, at the age of twenty-nine. [From "An Interrupted Life, the Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-43"]

I do not believe there is a snowball's chance of any human becoming "willing to act as a balm for all wounds" without herself being an authentic spiritual experience. An authentic spiritual experience is said to come from profound love or intense suffering. Haunting and hurting pain, both.

I used to pray for an authentic spiritual experience, and believe me intense suffering was not in my plan of action...and profound love was all about rainbows, roses and butterflies. Imagine my resistance when I realized they are one.

I wonder, though, as I read again "An Interrupted Life," how far have I come from my starting point, really? Oh, from my eyebrows up, I'm light years advanced. I have suffered deeply and I have come to love deeply the very source of my suffering...for where I am, for who I am. 

We are, however, referring to the Holocaust. Being a victim of evil beyond imagining during the Holocaust. Being taken to Auschwitz...to the showers at Auschwitz. And up to the end, thinking of...even desiring to be...a balm for all wounds.

All who read of Etty Hillesum and are touched, humbled, torn are strengthened by our weakness...our desire to lighten such a load seventy-some-odd years later is in itself of God.

Etty Hillesum lives.

Thank you.