Jacques Lusseyran, the French author and anti-Nazi activist in his autobiography And There was Light, described his childhood years as the “clear water of childhood.” Lusseyran wrote, “My parents were ideal.” He describes his father, a chemical engineer, as “intelligent and kind.” His mother, “who had studied physics and biology herself, was completely devoted and understanding. Both of them were generous and attentive.
Lusseyran continues on with his description of his ideal parents. “My parents were protection, confidence, warmth. When I think of my childhood I still feel the sense of warmth above me, behind and around me, that marvelous sense of living not yet on one’s own, but leaning body and soul on others who accept the charge.”
“My parents carried me along and that, I am sure, is the reason why through all my childhood I never touched ground. I could go away and come back. Objects had no weight and I never became entangled in the web of things. I passed between dangers and fears as light passes through a mirror. That was the joy of my childhood, the magic armor which, once put on, protects for a lifetime.”[1]
Jacques Lusseyran was a man who was blinded when he hit his head a school desk at age eight. At sixteen, during the Nazi occupation of France, he organized an underground resistance movement, which beginning with 52 boys, all less than 21 years old, within a year had grown to 600. In the summer of 1943 he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the concentration camp in Buchenwald. When the United States Third Army liberated the camp in April 1945, Lusseyran was one of 30 survivors of the group of 2000 that had been shipped there at the same time.
So with these life circumstances, what was this “magic armor” that protected him for a lifetime? Obviously, good parenting was an essential factor. His parents loved him unconditionally. The family, through warmth, understanding, and attentiveness, had a strong rapport, a resonant bond. As Lusseyran writes,” You know I had good parents, not just parents who wished me well, but ones whose hearts and intelligence were open to spiritual things, for whom the world was not composed exclusively of objects that were useful, and useful always in the same fashion; for whom, above all, it was not necessary a curse to be different from other people. Finally, mine were parents willing to admit their way of looking at things, the usual way, was perhaps not the only possible one, and to like my way and encourage it. “ [2]
Lusseyran’s blindness led him to spiritual insight. “It was a great surprise to me to find myself blind, and being blind was not at all as I imagined it. Nor was it as the people around me seemed to think it. They told me that to be blind meant not to see. Yet how was I to believe them when I saw? Not at once, I admit. Not in the days immediately after the operation. For at that time I still wanted to use my eyes. I followed their usual path. I looked in the direction where I was in the habit of seeing before the accident, and there was anguish, a lack, something like a void which filled me with what grownups call despair.”
“Finally, one day, and it was not long in coming, I realized that I was looking in the wrong way. It was as simple as that. I was making something very like the mistake people make who change their glasses without adjusting themselves. I was looking too far off, and too much on the surface of things. This was more than a simple discovery, it was a revelation.”
“I was aware of a radiance emanating from a place I knew nothing about, a place which might as well have been outside as within. But radiance was there or to put it more precisely, light. It was a fact, for light was there.” [3]Lusseyran eventually learned that his attitudes would influence the qualities of the light. “Still there were times when the light faded, almost to the point of disappearing. It happened every time I was afraid. If, instead of letting myself be carried along by confidence and throwing myself into things, I hesitated, calculated, thought about the wall, the half-open door, the key in the lock; if I said to myself that all these things were hostile and about to strike or scratch, then without exception I hit or wounded myself. What the loss of my eyes had not accomplished was brought about by fear. It made me blind.” [4]
Parenting in 2011 requires tremendous courage. Yet, don’t we all want our children to be surrounded by the “magic armor” that brings light to life’s darkest moments? Jacque Lusseyran points to the virtues of patient understanding, warmth and attentiveness. Children benefit from parents who are open minded and walking a soul/spiritual path that separates them from the crowd. Parents who understand why the phrase “fear not” appears so often in the books of the sacred traditions.
