Gratitude, An Enlightened Perspective

You have made me so rich, oh God, please let me share out Your beauty with open hands. My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with You, oh God, one great dialogue. Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on Your earth, my eyes raised toward Your Heaven, tears sometimes run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude. At night, too, when I lie in my bed and rest in You, oh God, tears of gratitude run down my face, and that is my prayer.

You may not recognize the author of these words, and I would dare say that few of us would be able to come close to guessing the circumstances under which the writer found herself overflowing with praise and gratitude to her Creator.

You might guess that these worshipful exclamations might have flowed from an open, praise-filled heart of one who had reached a state of deep gratefulness for a life overflowing with profound blessings.  Not so. These are the words of Etty Hillesum.

Etty was a 27-year-old Jewish woman living in Amsterdam in 1941. At a time when the Nazi takeover was rousing terror among Dutch Jews, Etty Hillesum underwent an amazing inner transformation in the direction of freedom and joy. By April of 1942 Jews were forced to wear the Star of David, and the wholesale deportation began later that spring. Finally in August 1942 she was consigned with her family to an internment camp, from which Jews were deported to Auschwitz on a weekly basis. Etty stayed in the camp until September 1943. In the midst of the squalor, the confinement, the fear, she praised God for life, for beauty, for the secure refuge of her soul. Amazingly, her prayers in these last days of her life in the prison camp were lavish expressions of gratitude.

Etty's spirit continued to burn brightly even to the very end. She stepped onto the deportation train "talking gaily, smiling, a kind word for everyone she met on the way, full of sparkling humor, perhaps just a touch of sadness," as the chronicler of her last day in the camp describes. Later, some farmers along the train route discovered a postcard she had thrown out of the train. "We have left the camp singing," it said. Etty Hillesum died in Auschwitz on November 30, 1943 ((from Judith Smith's book review of An Interrupted Life-The Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-43 translated by J.G. Gaarlandt)

How many of us can muster an attitude of gratitude in the midst of life's great challenges? When faced with great difficulty, seeing the good and giving thanks is a high bar for our consciousness to achieve. Why is this so?  The answer is embedded in Etty's response to her life situation.  Her faith was not derailed by adversity but driven deeper within her, where blessings and grace, presence and comfort were found overflowing. She refused to deny the existence of the Divine or even entertain the slightest diminution of good in the worst of human conditions. The Apostle Paul said "in all things, give thanks." Notice he didn't say "for" all things give thanks, but "in" all things be grateful.  This is the master's way of dealing with life; to remain resolute in awareness of Divine presence, and never let what happens in the world betray our faith.

Omnipresence is a lovely, lofty word to describe the absolute assurance that God is never absent anywhere in our wonderful and dangerous world. However, to bear witness to that promise and feel it at a soul level when a train of difficulty comes for us, takes enormous vision; an enlightened perspective.  I've tasted those sweet moments a few rare times in my life and know it is possible to stand in the storm and be glad and grateful even before the trouble has passed. Ultimately we can only get there if we trust that difficulty and challenge are not against us, rather seen as allies on the path that strip us of falsehoods only to reveal our bare naked, eternal, true selves.

As Henri Nouwen has written, gratitude is a discipline, "because it challenges me to face the painful moments and gradually to discover in them the pruning hands of God purifying my heart for deeper love, stronger hope, and broader faith.... "