Purple Triangles

The strangest little things sometimes remind me of our brothers who suffered so terribly in the Holocaust.

One of the best reasons I wanted the job in Pennsylvania was the proximity to Washington DC and the US Holocaust Museum.

The first time we went, we stepped into the train car.  It is not a replica, but one of the actual train cars that carried Jews, Roma, and our brothers and sisters to the camps. 

I don't believe (as you don't) in auras or the metaphysical.  I don't believe that emotions are embedded in physical things.  I don't believe walls can talk.  But I felt such a chill when I got on that train car.  Carly and Kimberly felt it too.  We stood there hushed, hurting, hot lumps of bawling rising in our throats before we finally limped out.

There is a room full of shoes taken as the prisoners stripped before getting into the showers.  There is a huge concrete post that was the corner of the electrified fences. 

You've seen the video and read the accounts in our literature.  When speakers sometimes ask rhetorical questions of the audience about who we'd like to meet in the resurrection, of course I have a long long list of names.  Women from the Bible.  Even a few of the guys.  David, for music.  Jubal, for pipes.  But I also always think of those who died during the Holocaust. 

Of all the people there against their will, our people were the only ones who could have gained their freedom by denying their faith.  Very few did.  What a witness that is for Jehovah to all the persecutors and the others in the camps.

I thought of all this because my neck and shoulders are very tender today from laying on the rim of that sink where they wash hair at the salon.  I mean scary tender in that I can hardly brush my hair, and can't decide if the worst thing is reaching up to do it or the feel of the brush on my sore neck.

For some reason I thought about how sore I'd be sleeping in one of the wide wooden bunks they have at the museum, or how I would feel riding packed like a sardine into that train in freezing temperatures, in melting heat.

There is so much suffering in this system.  There are so many ways to suffer.  Our bodies have such a vast array of things to go wrong.  Our feelings get trampled.  There is no getting ahead and hardly any staying at the status quo.  If the days were not cut short, no flesh would be saved. 

I will take some Tylenol PM and let my tired muscles repair themselves while I sleep.  Even with this gray hair and sore neck, I am in awe of the way the body will recover and keep living as best it can.  In a fear inspiring way, yes David, we are so wonderfully made.  I will be glad to meet him face to face someday.

As for you my sisters, I hope your suffering is as small as possible on this day, and every day.