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| I want to hug Elie Wiesel |
Hi, Imaginary Friend. Come in out of the cold rain. Yay, another rainy night. *ironic smirk* Well, let's at least have a cup of cocoa and enjoy the quiet inside night that miserable weather affords us. *offers you a hot mug and a quilt*
Tell me, Imaginary Friend. If you could hug anyone right now, whom would you hug? Would it be a friend? Perhaps a relative? Someone who's passed away? Someone you admire but don't really know?
Me, I want to hug Elie Wiesel right now, more than I want anything else in the world. I am reading his book Night for the first time, and I'm 75% of the way through. I keep having to put the book down to regain my bearings, to think, to grieve for him and all the Jews tortured and killed in concentration camps, to try to keep my lunch down. The New York Times described the book as "A slim volume of terrifying power."
Oh, yes. His words are indeed very powerful.
I had the honor of hearing Mr. Wiesel speak last fall before a crowd of nearly 6,000 packed into a 5,000-seat auditorium. (I got back row even though I showed up nearly 2 hours early.) I will never forget his words that night.
He said he felt his duty in life was to catch the tears of his people in buckets and then carry those buckets into the world. He started this huge task after the Jews were liberated, and he continues it today. He still pours out those buckets, because we all need to be doused in the tears of the downtrodden.
But Mr. Wiesel, who is going to catch your tears? Once in your life you would have turned to God. Unfortunately, your God died on the gallows in the shape of a little boy hung in the Appelplatz at Auschwitz. But your hope died months before that, in the first days in that horrible place. You said (Night, p. 34):
"Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my derams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.
Never."
I could almost hear those words echo in the silence of my room as I read them. I had to stop until they were done ricocheting off the walls and finally resting in my mind.
Oh, Elie, I know I am sixty-five years too late and far too powerless to save you or your faith. I cannot try to change your point of view. I cannot interject sunshine into the expression of your soul's eternal night. But still, I want to hug you tightly, so tightly I absorb all those tears you've gathered as well as the ones you forgot how to shed. I want to gather up all those tears, sop up all those horrid images that haunt your memories and nightmares, soak those bucketfuls right up as well, and just go wring myself out over the sea, as far away from you, as far away from humanity as possible.
This is the mother hen in me wanting to kiss the boo-boo and make it all better. Just as some terrible people are bent on hurting others, some of us are bent on healing others. In your lectures you call on people to carry the burden for saving the world, saying that no one is going to save the world for us, that it falls to us to heal hurts, rout out hate, and teach the new generations to create peace. To write it on the doorframes of our houses and hang it on on our foreheads.
Some of us are trying, Elie. We really are.
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Posted by Pipedreamer on 2009-10-29 00:13:26 | Rating: | Views: 28
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