Thanks anita;) The short post above is an angel daily inspiration reading I got from askangels.com. that site has many meditations on how to be more spiritually connected to the divine and be happier and healthier in life. also i find the card readings quite insightful and accurate. the website above is the image of the card i got yesterday and i think how cool it is that it actually applies to my life. the card said to the right of me is archangel michael who is the protector of people. my dominant hand is my right hand and i love community service, nature and helping people. Based on the card, to my left is archangel gabriel who is the divine messenger, sending positive messages and communication with the divine. my left hand is recessive, sensitive and often detects energy and is often used in my wiccan rituals to draw energy from and communicate with the divine. the card also says that archangel uriel is in front, uriel is the angel whose name means “light of god”, so i am being guided toward my spiritual purpose and the way for me is clear and i know my direction. and the last thing the card said was that archangel raphael is behind me, raphael is the angel of healing and these days i have been meditating with raphael to assist me in healing. archangel raphael in the back also represents me healing parts of my past, letting go and accepting the divine purpose set forth on my path by angel uriel. angel raphael also represents the healing that i’m leaving behind on the world as i ravel toward a more spiritually fulfilled life. the meditations i’ve been doing with angel raphael also coincide with the fact that he is behind me to encourage me to go forward, in the meditation angel raphael has his hands on my back supporting me and giving me the belief on my own inner healing. it goes to show that i am surrounded by angels now and they are helping me find my spiritual path. i have also built more confidence and have become more outspoken.

In my ap history textbook, i read about Etty Hillesum who witnessed the Holocaust. She was able to hold on to hope and keep enjoying life even though she was in such a terrible place. At first Ettt was filled with despair and anger at Germany’s Anti-Semitism, but she realized it wouldn’t help her to be bitter at the world and at something she couldn’t control, so she decided to turn inward for self-reflection and change herself for the better. She said “I really see no other solution than to turn inward and to root out the rottenness there” (Strayer 1010). Etty became more reflective while listening to Bach music during a German day of fire, shooting and bombs. She wrote “I know and share the many sorrows a human being can experience, but I do not cling to them, they pass through me like, life itself, as a broad eternal stream and life continues… If you have given sorrow the space that its gentle origins demand, then you may say that life is beautiful and so rich… that it makes you want to believe in God” (Strayer 1010). She seems to be saying to accept the sorrows of life, that life goes on and that you shouldn’t hold on to sorrow but let it go expecting that life is meant to be a balance of happiness and sorrow, that is what makes life beautiful. It is not the things that happen, it’s the experience and perception, the lessons you take with you in life that matter, what matters is that you enjoy the journey of life and not be bagged down by where you are going and the sorrows. Etty fell deeply in love with a 55 year old German Jew therapist, Julius Spier. She worried that she had become overly dependent on a man since he was her mentor, lover and companion as well. When Spier passed away in September 1942, Etty was devastated, yet determined to go on. She wrote of Spier “You were the mediator between God and me.., and now you have gone and my path leads straight to God” (Strayer 1011). I feel like the friends I have in life are there for a reason and they have helped me grow spiritually and I realize after reading Etty’s biography that if I have to let them go; I will let them go and take the lessons they taught me to continue on my spiritual path as she did. Etty was deployed to Westorbork and then Auschwitz, yet she still kept being positive even singing with her family when they got off the train. She passed away November 30 at Auschwitz, but her work is preserved giving insihgt that she still had hopes and dreams for the future. While she was in the concentration camps, she wrote “Late at night… I often walk with a spring in my step along the barbed wire. And then time and again, it soars straight from my heart… the feeling that life is glorious and magnificent and that one day we should be building a whole new world. Against every new outrage and every fresh horror, we shall put up one more piece of love and goodness, drawing strength from within ourselves. We may suffer, but we must not succumb” (Strayer 1011). Etty provides so much insight on how we should live life, to continue to hope even when we have lost everything and not to give up. She seems to say that there is always something better out there if you believe and hope and she never lost her vision that the world could be better and that she could be more spiritual even when she saw all the horrors in the concentration camp. I really admire Etty’s ability to hold on to hope when everything was falling apart, to change herself for the better when the outside world was not and also her ability to choose to appreciate life no matter how bad things got. Even though, she had her freedom and pride stripped away, had lost all the things she had had, she continued to be perseverant. She didn’t allow fear and sadness to affect her, she didn’t allow the troubles in the outside world and bad people to influence who she was, but she accepted it and let it go filtering it one event at a time and held on to the one choice she still had left, the choice of attitude, the choice to hope. Do you think Etty’s response to the Nazis was a ‘triumph of the human spirit’ or an evasion of the responsibility to resit evil? I believe the former.