It Never Goes Away
The photo attached was a snapshot from p.119 of Etty Hillesum, a compilation from diaries gathered after her death during the Holocaust.
Likely a different style and deeper transparency than I dare go, but moving and challenging for this 74 year old aspiring writer.
Now after four attempts at authorship, I still have not found the means to communicate what I feel compeled to share. Unlike Ms. Hillesum, my life has been quite blessed, but at times deeply troubled. Now in a day when we could easily find ourselves in a global war with similar off-shore tyrants as the one who caused her death, I must share my heart, my fears and my struggling faith.
As she so eloquently introduces the larger picture of a war that is actually unfolding, the worst of a nationalism that as a Jew she has diminishing means of influence, she seems never to allow the times to mar or distract her own thoughts and amazing wisdom at only twenty-eight years of age.
I struggle with the opposite. How do I share my inner most thoughts and wisdom gained over seven decades in a way as to address the looming threats of a similar war, in a nation now adrift, yet with such an amazing history of prosperity.
Our times are fraught with lies and political divisiveness, as our forefather's sins have surfaced, many of our families dysfunctional, churches now failing and schools so over burdened with societal issues that corporate leaders seek offshore labor among nations incentivized by the American dream.
American corporations made fat by her prosperity now barter for tax incentives, lest they abandon their nation of origin to follow insurmountable greed, so similar to the oligarchs of our most ruthless of dictators. Meanwhile, off-shore resources are channeled back to America's consumer driven population, bleeding other nations of their own resources, nations often driven to the brink of environmental destruction by leaders alligned solely out of a lust for power.
The profitability and need for us as consumers may be the only thing that keeps other nuclear prolific nations from destroying one of the few remaining beacons of democracy.
We are on a precipice as a nation. Is there hope, I still believe!