Westerbork 2 English | Challenge La Rioja

Auschwitz Challenge

STAGE 7 - westerbork II - Listen, your body speaks

Dear pilgrim, dear friend,

The Challenge Team has asked me to come and collect you at your hotel today so we can find together a nice and quiet place where you can become more aware of your body and listen to yourself. If you ask me, this chap Fernando, has quite lost it. You know... all this stuff about our body talking to us and all that. I just don’t get it! I don’t know... my body has never had much of a conversation with me… The most I have heard of it is my stomach growling around mid-morning in the desperate crave for a bite. And, well, I have had to answer back with some food to hush the fuss...

So, I’ll tell you what I have thought of for us today. Surely, after yesterday’s visit to Westerbork, most pilgrims will be heading elsewhere today and if we go back there, ourselves, we shall find some solitude and the necessary silence for some introspection and maybe even find Etty’s echoing voice.

Did you know Etty is often referred to as weak of health? Yet, as a member of the Jewish Counsel she was allowed to return to Amsterdam to recover herself whenever she became ill, and it was, precisely, during confinement that she learnt to become aware of her body and to listen to what it had to say. So here we are... our body does speak, after all!

But, our body, as does our soul, has needs of its own that also claim to be satisfied, as today’s special guest would have said. According to Simone Weil, social order should enable our human nature to be enlightened in its essence. Although these thoughts are worth of a great philosopher, her commitment with labour class realities was also worth of admiration.

This peregrination keeps challenging us into meeting wonderful, enthusiastic, and full of hope characters that shine their own light. Sometimes I wonder, and cannot help but look up with a bold face asking myself what have I done after all these years of studious reading and believing myself to be knowledgeable. How come I have not met any of these truly wondrous and meaningful personalities? But then, again, back to reality I’m glad that at least I have had the chance to meet you, my dear friend, and share the taxi ride.

Let’s get going, let’s go back to Westerbork. Are we all done and ready?

¡EUNTES!

WESTERBOrK

AROUND AND ABOUT WESTERBORK CAMP

Today’s History Pill with Unai and Uxía

Two youngsters from the diocese and belonging to the Youth Ministry will help us better understand the war conflict that frames Etty’s writings as well as those from her contemporaries.

GROWING UP WITH ETTY

Marina invites us to a very interesting view of how Etty Hillesum experienced her own body and how she learned to listen to it. Our body is wise; and sometimes it happens to answer to those questions we insist on solving by reasoning and prayer. Just listen, because God is very telling through our bodily dimension.

PROPOSAL PRAYERFUL

Focusing is a body-based technique that helps us to confirm our inner knowing, that which our body communicates through different felt sensations that we often disregard or are unaware to listen... These may take the form of lightness, tension, pain, flow, state of peace among other many manifestations in our body.

THE CHARACTER OF THE DAY

PhD by Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá and member at Fundación Etty Hillesum, Anderson, invites us to reflect upon Simone Weil.

Simone was a Jewish philosopher who came close to Christianism and decided to become involved with labour classes’ reality. So it seems that philosophy is also possible in down-to-earth terms....

06. Your concentration camp

Today, we are focusing on our bodily dimension. I hereby invite you to offer God your own “concentration camp” taking Etty’s body gestures as an example:

If you can, kneel down. Otherwise, remain seated.
If you are kneeling down, bend forward and let your forehead touch the floor and let your arms fall beside your head, palms facing up. The intention is that of praise and imploration to God for your own “concentration camp.”

If you are seated, open your arms and with your palms facing up raise them up to Heaven. Look out for your own “concentration camp.”

07. Great enigma of Auschwitz Challenge

In each of the stages we shall provide you with a clue so that, by the end and upon arrival, you can work out who the mysterious character of the Auschwitz Challenge.

Today’s clue: Before talking to Steven Spielberg, his pursuant insistence was key to one of Thomas Keneally’s books.

GET YOUR TRAIN TICKET

In order to move on to the next stage, your personal driver needs to make sure you have profited from today’s experience. Please fill in the form and get hold of your ticket!

EXTRA MATERIAL

RECIPE OF THE DAY: DUTCH BISCUITS

¼ kg. corn flour
¼ kg. flour
150 gr. icing sugar
¼ kg. butter
1 coffee spoon of baking powder
1 egg (big)
icing for decorations

Put all the ingredients into a bowl, except for the egg that shall be set apart and wipe your hands clean. Add the full egg and mix it all into a nice dough.
Smoothly stretch the dough until it is 5mm thick. Cut out small circles 7cm diameter. They are easier to eat!
Lay your cut-out circles on a roaster covered with foil oven paper and in to the pre-heated 180° oven. Leave in for 20 minutes and take out while they are still pale white.
After cooling, decorate with icing to make them look and taste nicer!