Spirituality in the writing of Etty Hillesum
Etty Hillesum was a secular Jew of Danish legacy who lived in Amsterdam, which was apparently occupied by the Nazis. In the year 1941 (March), she started assimilating a diary that has considerably amount of information and that ends in the month of October 1942. The writing introduce the readers to an extraordinary and amazing women who discusses with her readers, through her account, about human relationships and feminism, the power that art has in transforming the world order, inner peace that is much required for the humans in an era of constant combat and intense hate, about accepting demise and more importantly about her spiritual pursuit that have helped her transform from within and which were marked predominantly through prayers and her constant interaction with the God within her. “That part of myself; she writes, that deepest and richest part in which I repose, is what I call God (Hillesum, p. 519).”
The spiritual legacy of Etty Hillesum can be perceived and well understood in terms of a quest for integration. There is a persistent struggle that one can notice in her writings – a struggle with justice and clemency, perfection and immanence, abhorrence and mercy, and the claims of isolation and care for the people. The fundamental premise on which the spirituality of Etty Hillesum lies is the pursuit to discuss these ostensibly opposing and contending stances. The enormity and prominence of her soul lies in her relentless pursuit to live with the consequential obscurity and even inconsistency, moving in the direction of a personal integration in which dichotomy form the key to unity and the integrity of this dichotomy is established as well as also acknowledged.
Works Cited
Hillesum, Etty. "A Life Transformed." Downy, Michael. The Balm to All Wounds: The Spiritual Legacy of Etty Hillesum in Spirituality. Brill, 2009. 514.
