This week we are traveling in the company of Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch Jewish woman who in 1941 began to keep a diary, nine months after the Nazis invaded her homeland of the Netherlands. To pick up the thread of this week’s reflections, visit Monday’s post.
This is a Week of a Million Things. A Week of Not Enough Time. A week where I wish I could work as fast as I can think and imagine and dream. A week in which I wish I had a few more hands for all—expected and otherwise—that waits for my attention.
I find myself thinking often of Etty, who on a spring morning wrote, “Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inward in prayer for five short minutes.”
Etty knew that a five-minutes’-prayer is no substitute for loitering with God, much as a five-minutes’-conversation with a friend does not take the place of lingering with them, speaking and hearing what can only be spoken and heard when we give ourselves time to tarry together. Yet for Etty, so much of prayer was a running conversation with God, a continual revealing of herself to God in the midst of her daily life. Even as the horrors around her began to press with more and more insistence upon her, she persisted in turning herself toward stillness, even if for a moment, listening for the sacred presence there and speaking her words into the silence.
I am on my way out the door on this full and fine spring day, traveling toward the next thing in this Week of a Million Things. Breathing deep, listening for the One who breathes into the silence between the breaths.
Questions for reflection
How does prayer take place in the rhythm of your days? Is it something separate from the rest of your life, or is it part of the pattern of it, intertwining with the other pieces of your life?
Etty’s words are from Etty: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum 1941-43 and can also be found in an abridged version of her work, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-43.
Jan – today’s post is so very timely for me as I am sure it is for others. Prayer has been vital to my survival especially in the corporate world where for 30+ years I have made a living. Today once again I asked God “why must this path be mine?”… and the answer came to just simply Be Still, return to prayer, and spend more time with Spirit. I have let that slip lately. So thankyou for the reminder to return more often to the well of prayer that keeps me fresh and renewed. May deeper prayer and quiet time with God carry me into another day, week, month, year… And of course breathing helps 🙂 Namaste’ Beth Knight