We said goodbye in Thalwil to our friend Dora Milt, who passed away on August 25, in her 80th year after a long illness. Dorli, as we called her, was ready to go: she had prepared her funeral service, her addresses were in order, she had written some notes about her life for the young German pastor of the parish to use.
"Teach me, O Lord, to walk in your ways; I will follow the path of your truth; prepare my heart to fear your name (Psalm 86, v. 11): This verse, received at her confirmation, took on an ever deeper meaning for Dorli; she had decided in her senior school classes to live her life without God. As a young schoolteacher with no faith, but still searching for a great meaning in life, she was invited in 1936 to a meeting of the Oxford Group. "At the end of the meeting, she wrote, "a colleague walked with me in the mountains; I knelt down with her and gave my life to God; it was my first prayer in years".
In 1946 Dorli gave up her job and her apartment and joined a large group of Swiss men and women who wanted to work for a moral and spiritual rearmament in Europe around the start of the Caux conference centre. This work corresponded to her longing to build bridges between Christians and Muslims. When she reached seventy, Dorli felt that after years of traveling, she needed to find a place to settle down. This was not easy. After much uncertainty, an old school friend offered her a charming little apartment in his building. Dorli was at home there. She met old and new friends and lived her last years there rather quietly, with astonishing inner freedom.
Dorli was a sportswoman and, in particular, a passionate skier, but she was not sentimental; she hated showing off but excelled in correspondence. So many friends, close and far, received letters from her, written in her beautiful, regular handwriting. We will always remember her with gratitude. Hanni Haeberli
French
