O Undercurrent!
O Lover,
Only in my most recent re-reading of the unabridged diary of Etty Hillesum (1914-1943) have I been seized by her use of the term “undercurrent.” I first noted the image in her 12/21/41 entry with additional citations later that winter. These usages were still early in her astonishingly transformative journey as she was beset by a complicated relationship, her spiritually chaotic identity, and the ominous future bearing down on her Jewish people. On April 1 she wrote of “. . . the undertow, the life current that never stops flowing in the depths,” contrasting it with what she called the “life instinct” bent on hustle, bustle, and undeferred gratification. As her journey unfolded as witnessed to by the diary (ending 10/13/42) and final correspondence (9/7/43) her referent of the term “undercurrent” was expanding far beyond her own chaotic and egoic center. Indeed, I was glimpsing Etty’s growing awareness of Your Oneing (unítas indistinctiónis), the naming of You as “Undercurrent.”
Why is it that this image of “Undercurrent” snags my attention? More specifically, to what of You, O Lover, does it point? This is a water image, that densely sacred strand ubiquitous in peoples and millennia, which connotes dynamic fluidity, the ever-becomingness (more than mere being)of all that is. In its “view from below” it explicitly references depth, the subterranean, and thus the unseen, unfathomable, and mysterious. It might also hint of interimbuement or interpenetration, often sans awareness.
So then, to cut to the chase, I do experience Your surfacing within me via the image of Undercurrent. Both beneath and within my senses, thoughts, depictions and imaginings You, Embedded One, brood. Whether I am awake or no, alert or distracted, You are both ontologically and experientially Depth and Grúnt (“Ground”) of each here and now. In my more whole seasons I live attentive to and expectative of what Julian of Norwich called Your “showings” from below, Your subtle surfacings up into my consciousness. Although in this my life doubt is never totally excised, You as Undercurrent, repeatedly both sourcing and eliciting my longing, are the constant amid the flux.
A final self-baring to You, O Lover, this triggered by Etty’s use of the near-synonymous term “Undertow.” Even more than the content of Undercurrent, the image of Undertow can connote hazard, costliness, even death. This perilousness is both bad news and good news: the former to the fabricated and egoic self, the latter insofar as the core of Your cosmic dream is viewed as implacable convergence and Oneing (Unítas Déi). Surrendering to You as Undertow is modeled in the event of the Christ in whose annunciation (Lk 1:38) and Gethsemane agony (the Synoptics) is offered the prayer “Do with me as You will” (fíat volúntas túa). Etty’s “Undertow,” not entirely unlike Francis Thompson’s The Hound of Heaven, catches something of the grávitas of Your Love: unrelenting yet ever respecting of agency, deconstructive yet ever transfigurational, toward the Télos of Your “all in All” (I Cor 15:20-28).
Awaken me to You, O Undercurrent!
