Dora Milt

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 which the young German pastor of the parish could 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 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 groups. "At the end of the meeting, she writes, "a colleague walked with me over the mountain; 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. This work, focused on reality, corresponded to his understanding between Christians and Muslims. Charis Waddy writes: "Our guests were people from this country, we live in their homes, and we brought them the message of hope and renewal for which we had been committed since our youth.

When she reached her seventy years, Dorli felt that after years of traveling, she needed to find a place to stay. This was not easy. After much uncertainty, an old school friend offered her a charming little apartment in his building. Dorli felt comfortable there; she met her old and new friends and lived her last years there rather quietly, with an 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: how many friends, close or far, did her letters, written in her beautiful, regular handwriting, bring joy to them? We will always remember her with gratitude.