My husband Kurt and I were just finishing up a Scrabble game this weekend, and he had one letter left, a “y” which can be quite difficult to place late in game. He was about to throw in the towel and subtract the points from his overall total when I noticed there was a solution he did not see: the “y” could be added to the word “fox” he made earlier in the game.

My friend Mary would say Kurt and I are so competitive when we play games because we are both firstborns, but I know plenty of oldest children who aren’t as competitive as we are. In any event, even though the game was close, I had to tell him he had a play he could still make.

“You could put the ‘y’ on ‘fox’,” I said. “You might beat me with that move, but it is a great word and you have to make it!” And of course he did.

I am constantly looking for symmetry and the serendipity when random things show a pattern and come together into something new. In the last week, I have been overwhelmingly blessed to discover the memoir of a man who shares my view on living a passion-filled life.

The cover of the latest American edition of “And There Was Light” by Jacques Lusseyran

“And There Was Light” by Jacques Lusseyran was originally published in the U.S. in 1963 when I was a small child so of course I had no idea the book existed. I must have read something about the book some years ago when I was working full-time and didn’t have time to read anything beyond newspapers. I had ordered a British publication of his book, never read it, and promptly forgot I had it.

If it hadn’t been for a recent e-blast from our local independent bookstore Union Avenue Books. I would probably have never rediscovered and read this beautiful gem of a book about the inner (and outer) life of a blind 17-year-old–yes a blind adolescent–who started and led a Resistance group in World War II, Nazi-occupied France.

Most of the members of his group, Defense de la France (DF), were not yet 21 years of age. And yet, the underground paper they published for disseminating accurate news and keeping up the morale of  the French people became the most important daily newspaper in Paris France-Soir after the war.

Jacques was blinded by an accident at school when he was 8 years old, but only briefly found it to be an impediment. He taught himself Braille in six weeks so he could return to  school. Remarkably within his blindness, he saw light and shadow and colors attached to people and sounds.

And remarkably, he could almost infallibly tell when someone was lying by their voice, presence, and his strong intuitive sense. This gift came in very handy at weeding out possible traitors when he interviewed would-be members of the Resistance.

Lusseyran is one of the best writers I have ever read. My words fail to capture the music of his writing. I highlighted so many paragraphs in my copy of his memoir that I had to start using different colored highlighters to differentiate the passages. He captures the fragility and beauty of life so gloriously.

Memories and emotions are fragile things. You should never bear down on them, or draw on them by main force. You should barely touch them with the tips of your fingers, the tips of your dreams. The best way to bring love back to life, and happiness with it, was to catch hold of a reminder of love, catch it lightly as it passed by.

Jacques Lusseyran

And he writes eloquently about his friendships with the young men who were his best friends in words that are in our age reserved only for talking about lovers.

I walked in the middle and was happy, without knowing exactly why–happy to be with men who, like me, were not willing to shut their eyes to life.

He was a religious man, a Catholic, who nevertheless wrote with the open nature of a humanist:

God is neither a German nor a Russian nor a Frenchman. God is life, and everything that does violence to life is against God.

Nordhausen-Gardelegen-Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1945

He was imprisoned for 15 months in Buchenwald, the Nazi concentration camp for non-Jews where he was one of only 30 Frenchmen to live of the 2000 consigned there during the final few years of the war.

How did he survive? By giving to others and living life boldly. He proclaims, “Fear is the real name of despair. Fear kills and joy maintains life.”

I could try to show other people how to go about holding on to life. I could turn toward them the flow of light and joy which had grown so abundant in me. . . . That is what you had to do to live in the camp: be engaged, not live for yourself alone. . . . Joy I found in strange byways, in the midst of fear . . .

And:

When a ray of sunshine comes, open out, absorb it to the depths of your being. Never think that an hour earlier you were cold and that an hour later you will be cold again. Just enjoy.

Buchenwald survivors when the U.S. Third Army liberated the camp in 1945.

And oh, the joy of hearing how the U.S. Third Army’s approached Buchenwald under the command of  General George Patton who did not wait to free the 20,000 people still holding desperately to life in the camp. Patton threw caution to the wind and immediately attacked the SS troops barring his Army’s progress and was able to free the camp’s fragile inhabitants whose joy knew no bounds. Lusseyran mused, however, that:

 Joy does not come from outside, for whatever happens to us it is within. The second truth is that light does not come to us from without. Light is in us, even if we have no eyes.

We have eyes and many of us still do not see, but the shining beacon of Jacques Lusseyran’s intellect, spirit, and love has shone down through the many years between our lives and has enriched my own. Thankfully we have not lived the deprivations visited upon the people who got in the way of the Nazi war machine during the worst of the madness of World War II, but we can learn from the same principles that bring the peace and joy of  a life worth living.

After hearing about Lusseyran’s inspiring story, you are probably not concerning yourself about the outcome of our Saturday afternoon Scrabble game. However, in the spirit of Jacques Lusseyran’s noting that giving is the real receiving, I will report that Kurt put a “y” on his “fox”, making the word “foxy”, and I won the game.

//Anna — 3/31/2014