thesoulpurposedotorg

“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 God must be dug out again.”

– Etty Hillesum, from The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hilliesum 1941-1943

It is customary in our culture to look for any sort of fulfillment outside of ourselves. I am reminded of the words in our constitution guaranteeing our right to pursue happiness as an inalienable right, as if happiness were a thing to capture. We often are taught to seek God in this way as well. If we just found the right church, or read the Bible for long enough each day, or listen to this or that guru, or wait until we die and are rewarded with heaven….pursuing God. But this isn’t how God is found. God dwells within the deepest recesses of our being. God has already been “captured” so to speak within the holy walls of our human self, deep in our hearts. When we endure the silence of attending to this Presence, we can live there even in the most difficult of circumstances, even in the worst as did the writer of the quote above before she met her death in Auschwitz.