Hillesum’s words, written written by a victim of a genocide in which numerous self-identified Christians participated, express a central aspect of what Christian spirituality ought to be: through prayer and a life of following Jesus, we might “give space” to God, to borrow a phrase from Rowan Williams. How can we both see the dark reality of the world, and yet exert our imagination to envision an alternative of flourishing, justice, freedom, and love-and even walk with a spring along the barbed wire? Life is indeed glorious and magnificent-even as it contains brutality, war, oppression, pain, and alienation. “All I want to say is this: The misery here is quite terrible and yet, late at night when the day has slunk away into the depths behind me, I often walk with a spring in my step along the barbed wire."Īnd then time and again, it soars straight from my heart-I can’t help it, that’s just the way it is, like some elementary force-the feeling that life is glorious and magnificent, and that one day we shall be building a whole new world." Jews at Westerbork Transit Camp boarding a deportation train to Auschwitz
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