Etty

Etty

I think about her a lot. Don’t worry, my wife knows about Etty. She is not the object of my desire. She is my teacher. She has what I want: an unshakeable inner peace. Sure, she gets sad, rough German soldiers unsettle her, but the jasmine blooms within her unabated. She picks flowers for God in the watered garden of her own heart, and she and God talk about the way the world is spinning and how the dear earth groans under the burdensome weight of the evil acts of men.

It’s not rose colored glasses or buoyant optimism that keeps her afloat. It’s the stubborn, childish belief that only love will do to make the world livable again. Added to that is the remarkable conclusion that her actual body is the very House of God, and yours is too, all bodies are even ones that don’t know it.

As the soldiers with their iron fists wrapped tight around her neck drag her across the heath to her death she prays these outlandish words, “God, I am not in their clutches, for I am in Your arms. They have come for me, but they may not have me because I belong to You.”

Though they killed her she lives. I see her in my dreams; I promise you she is alive. She told us as much when she left the camp for the last time singing, “Farewell dear ones, I’ll meet you in the garden where the jasmine blooms eternal. The Lord is my high tower.” Etty believed that all of us will be rescued from the evil acts of men only by the love espoused at Corinth by the man, Paul, who was himself living proof of the power of Grace. I believe that too.