David Brooks wrote a long piece (HERE) well worth your time.

Three Jewish women and how they chose to live differently in the face of Nazism and death. Not just differently, but in a very radical way. All three were impacted by the gospel and followed Jesus.

Etty Hillesum was self-absorbed in her young life, then radically changed. When Jews in her country began to be shipped off to concentration camps, she volunteered to go to the camps as an aide.

She refused to hate the Nazis. She decided to refuse that barbarism in her own heart. She could not return hate for hate.

Edith Stein had a PhD. Her work led her to the conclusion that you can’t love in the abstract. You can’t take care of people in the abstract. You can’t understand the world only in the abstract.

Stein’s thought points to the idea that the most important truths are not abstract. They are incarnated in particular human persons. If you want to understand the world, don’t just analyze abstract arguments; get good at perceiving particular people.

She was canonized a saint by Pope John Paul II because of her faith and her work in the concentration camps.

Simone Weil was also a brilliant student. While she had definite spiritual experiences in the Catholic Church, she never joined. She loved Jesus and loved people and didn’t want any restrictions on that commitment. The way she knew people was to dive into their experiences.

Her spiritual quest, though, continued. She focused her thought on the same phenomenon that so transfixed Hillesum and Stein—the quality of attention. What is the proper way to see the souls who live, love, and struggle in this world?

How do you see souls?

Do you see souls?

This piece by David Brooks is deeply moving. His work in studying these three lives brought him to the conclusion that the key to a moral life is TO SEE.

What we have here is a different version of what the good life looks like, a version built on the seemingly simple act of seeing.

All three of these women chose to see others. They chose to enter into suffering when each of them had a path away from the horror of the concentration camps.

Brooks forms a conclusion that brings us to how we view the world. It is very easy to view it in the abstract. We have our principles. We have our “isms” that we hold voraciously to… and too often that is our worldview.

What is needed is something … well… more.

TO SEE.

It should not surprise us that, during World War II, while millions marched and fled, fought and died, and history seemed to be unfolding on an epic scale, it was these brilliant women who were able to focus their attention on what was small, direct, and personal—the manner in which one human being gazes on another.

We need our humanity restored. That happens when we fix our gaze on others and forget transactional ideas and “isms.” We simply choose to SEE.