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Jump to navigationJump to searchEtty's Notes on "Quiet Time" (view source)
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[[File:lighterstill.jpg]][[File:Ettie hillesum.jpg|right|frame]]
“But it’s not so [[simple]], that sort of “[[quiet]] hour.” It has to be [[learned]]. A lot of unimportant inner litter and bits and pieces have to be swept out first. Even a small head can be piled high inside with irrelevant [[distractions]]. True, there may be edifying [[emotions]] and [[thoughts]], too, but the clutter is ever present. So let this be the aim of the meditation: to turn one’s innermost [[being]] into a vast empty plain, with none of that treacherous under-growth to impede the view. So that something of “[[God]]” can enter you, and something of “[[Love]],” too. Not the kind of love-de-luxe that you revel in deliciously for half an hour, taking pride in how [[sublime]] you can feel, but the love you can apply to small, everyday things.”
“I feel like a small battlefield, in which the [[problems]], or some of the problems, of our time are being fought out. All one can [[hope]] to do is to keep oneself humbly available, to allow oneself to be a battlefield. After all, the problems must be [[accommodated]], have somewhere to struggle and come to [[rest]], and we, poor little humans, must put our [[Inner Life|inner space]] at their [[service]] and not run away.”
“[[Thinking]] gets you nowhere. It may be a fine and [[noble]] aid in academic [[studies]], but you can’t think your way out of emotional difficulties. That takes something altogether [[different]]. You have to make yourself [[passive]] then, and just [[listen]]. Reestablish contact with a slice of [[eternity]].”
“I no longer believe that we can [[change]] anything in the world until we have first changed ourselves. And that seems to me the only lesson to be learned from [[WWII|this war]]. That we must look into ourselves and nowhere else….it’s too easy to turn your [[hatred]] loose on the outside, to live for nothing but the [[moment]] of [[revenge]]. We must try to do without that….It is too easy to feel vindictive.”
==Note==
Above is taken from the diaries and letters of [[Etty Hillesum]], written during her last years before [[death]] in Auschwitz at age 29.
[[Category: Stillness]]
“But it’s not so [[simple]], that sort of “[[quiet]] hour.” It has to be [[learned]]. A lot of unimportant inner litter and bits and pieces have to be swept out first. Even a small head can be piled high inside with irrelevant [[distractions]]. True, there may be edifying [[emotions]] and [[thoughts]], too, but the clutter is ever present. So let this be the aim of the meditation: to turn one’s innermost [[being]] into a vast empty plain, with none of that treacherous under-growth to impede the view. So that something of “[[God]]” can enter you, and something of “[[Love]],” too. Not the kind of love-de-luxe that you revel in deliciously for half an hour, taking pride in how [[sublime]] you can feel, but the love you can apply to small, everyday things.”
“I feel like a small battlefield, in which the [[problems]], or some of the problems, of our time are being fought out. All one can [[hope]] to do is to keep oneself humbly available, to allow oneself to be a battlefield. After all, the problems must be [[accommodated]], have somewhere to struggle and come to [[rest]], and we, poor little humans, must put our [[Inner Life|inner space]] at their [[service]] and not run away.”
“[[Thinking]] gets you nowhere. It may be a fine and [[noble]] aid in academic [[studies]], but you can’t think your way out of emotional difficulties. That takes something altogether [[different]]. You have to make yourself [[passive]] then, and just [[listen]]. Reestablish contact with a slice of [[eternity]].”
“I no longer believe that we can [[change]] anything in the world until we have first changed ourselves. And that seems to me the only lesson to be learned from [[WWII|this war]]. That we must look into ourselves and nowhere else….it’s too easy to turn your [[hatred]] loose on the outside, to live for nothing but the [[moment]] of [[revenge]]. We must try to do without that….It is too easy to feel vindictive.”
==Note==
Above is taken from the diaries and letters of [[Etty Hillesum]], written during her last years before [[death]] in Auschwitz at age 29.
[[Category: Stillness]]
