“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.”
—Etty Hillesum in An Interrupted Life: The Diaries, 1942-1943 and Letters from Westerbork (Picador, 1996).
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Etty Hillesum was a young Jewish woman studying law in the Netherlands in the 1940s, who lived down the street from Anne Frank. She died at the age of twenty-nine in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. She kept a diary that described her inner life as well as the severe persecution of the Jews in Holland during those days. It was published after her death. Her transformation from fear and hate to love and care and kindness and compassion for those suffering around her makes her an icon, especially for us today. Through the help of her psychotherapist, she learned to see the “God hole” in people and situations during those amazingly difficult times. And she sought to fill that God hole with the love she had within.
This is indeed our ministry as spiritual friends. Each of us has a hole in our mind, our heart, our body that only God can fill. Instead, we try to fill it with relationships, food, alcohol, drugs, shopping work, sports, work, power—even family, writing, reading, and patriotism. We can also choose to fill it with hate, persecution, bigotry, self-centeredness, intimidation, cruelty, negativity, pessimism, hopelessness, despair, apathy, and indifference.
As spiritual friends we are called to help each other find that God hole and fill it with the best unconditional love we can muster up. It begins with our presence with each other and with holy listening.
I remember a dear friend who came into my office at the hospital early one morning to talk about a relationship that had just ended. He was depressed, sad, broken hearted, in tears. We talked for some time. Mostly I listened and tried to let him know how much I cared about him. Late in the conversation, I mentioned the God hole. Somehow, he intuitively realized that this relationship had completely filled his God hole. I only had to say a few words. A light bulb went on. I usually do not mention the God hole when someone is in so much suffering; but something told me to bring it up on that early morning. Hopefully, both of us were being guided by the Holy Spirit in our own God hole.
joanna . joannaseibert.com
