Seeking the Divine Indwelling 

How do we choose to respond when we are faced with the worst of humanity? Living School guide Valerie Dodge-Reyna reflects on the moving wisdom of Holocaust victim, Etty Hillesum, who wrote in her journal about connecting with our divine indwelling and reclaiming a deep and abiding peace within ourselves.  

We are collectively experiencing a deeply troubled world at so many levels. With the divisive nature of things, I can be hard pressed to find love in the people whose actions are breaking my heart. Just as I say that, I feel how easy it is for me to slip into my own “holier-than-thou-ness.” 

I once heard Teilhard de Chardin scholar Ilia Delio say that God literally loved everything into existence; from every grain of sand to every human. If this is true, then how do we understand people with a love-resistant agenda or condoning rhetoric? The simple and most difficult answer is that we cannot change anyone. But if we can’t change a thing, maybe we can be a different kind of thing.   

For this seemingly impossible task, I have been inspired lately by Etty Hillesum (1914–1943). Etty was voluntarily held captive at the Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands so that she could be with fellow Jews before they were deported to concentration camps.   

Etty was not a white-washed-saint, nor did she “gloss over” or “water down” the catastrophic events in the world. She faced evil squarely—and there in the reality of utter darkness, she found God hiding below the surface of horror. Written in her discovered diaries, “There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God. Sometimes I am there too. But more often stones and grit block the well, and God is buried beneath. Then he must be dug out again.”   

Therefore, Etty learned to live her life out loud by first engaging deeply with the interior landscape of her soul. There she found solidarity with every human; both in the capacity for violence and for love. In essence, Etty didn’t have much to fight against because she saw herself as equal to those who lived through a lens of hatred and violence. She writes, “It is not very difficult to hate a group you do not belong to, but we must realize there are some executioners also inside your own. And this is much more difficult to accept.”  

Etty knew she could find reasons to hate, but instead chose to refuse that route. She writes, “And I believe that I will never be able to hate any human being for his so-called ‘wickedness,’ that I shall only hate the evil that is within me, though hate is perhaps putting it too strongly even then. In any case, we cannot be lax enough in what we demand of others and strict enough in what we demand of ourselves.” 

I am sitting with the idea of what it means to “fight for justice.” It seems like everyone has their own bent on what that means and too often justice is equated with violence. Etty fought against evil through a profound resistance to hate through the active embodiment of love. I presently am not seeing this love-action in the world. Personally, what I see in my own heart and in the actions of others around me is an energy where “stones and grit block the well.”   

Etty found love (divine indwelling) and then she became that love. It’s so different from either the “cozy and content” or “militant and punitive” images of God that the Western world often projects on Divine Mystery. Listen to this rare view of love: “Yesterday, I suddenly thought: there will always be suffering, and whether one suffers from this or from that really doesn’t make much difference. It is the same with love. One should be less and less concerned with the love object and more and more with love itself, if it is to be real love.”   

When I see images of hatred that are embedded into every news and social media outlet, I often feel the “absence of God.” Etty didn’t see God as a victorious savior, and yet she found God even amid the most egregious acts on humanity. In her words, “Alas, there doesn’t seem to be much You-Yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives. Neither do I hold You responsible. You cannot help us, but we must help You and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last.” This is also where she found her moral duty.  

“Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.”   

Etty came to know a love with zero conditions. I have so much to learn from her. As we enter into the unknown of what will transpire in our country and globe, I am shifting my lens. Etty is helping me to lean into what it means to “fight” for the common good and to see the enemy (including myself) through the eyes of love.  I think we need both.  

Reflect with Us 
How does Etty’s example inspire you to act with love at the helm? Share your reflection with us. 

Valerie Dodge-Reyna is a spiritual director, writer, and guide for the Living School for the Center for Action and Contemplation. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more from Valerie on her website. 

We Conspire is a series from the Center for Action and Contemplation featuring wisdom and stories from the growing Christian contemplative movement. Sign up for the monthly email series and receive a free invitation to practice each month.