”Through me course wide rivers and in me rise tall mountains. And beyond the tickets of my agitation and confusion there stretch the wide plains of my peace and surrender. All landscapes are within me. And there is room for everything. The earth is in me, and the sky. And I well know that something like hell can also be in one, although I no longer experience it in myself, but I can still feel it in others with great intensity. And that is as it should be, or else I might grow too complacent.”
Etty Hillesum was a contemporary mystic who died in a Nazi Concentration camp. At the end of her life, she wrote about the connectedness of all that is, including the guards and prisoners. Her words transformed me in ways that are beyond conventional language. I will simply say that I began to notice a paradoxical harmony of opposites along with a growing ability to hold the tension of life’s abundant paradox loosely. I later learned to call this “ineffable harmony” from Jon the Scot in the 9th century CE.
Still, I had yet to realize I was a TheoArtist. To be continued…
