Tag Archives: God

Uncategorized

Burning Alive

6 Comments

“…till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

–Genesis 3:19 (ESV)

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more.

–Psalm 103:13-16 (ESV)

The Apostle Peter had a slightly different spin to Psalm 103:

Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for:

“All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower falls,
but the word of the Lord remains forever.”

And this word is the good news that was preached to you. –1 Peter 1:22-25 (ESV)

I write these “meditations” a day ahead, so who knows how I’ll be doing by the time you actually read this, but as I’m keyboarding this message, I am very much aware that “all flesh is grass,” (Isaiah 40:6) here one day and gone the next. I’m not feeling very “imperishable.” It’s not a perfect world. Today, it doesn’t even seem to be a particularly good one.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issued another call Sunday to free Jonathan Pollard. His appeal came shortly after Pollard was rushed to a hospital.

“The time has come to free Jonathan Pollard. The Jewish people’s holiday of freedom should become his personal holiday of freedom,” the Prime Minister declared.

-by Maayana Miskin
“Esther Pollard: Don’t Make Me a Widow”
First Publish: 4/8/2012, 3:25 PM
Arutz Sheva News Agency

This is only one example of an injustice occurring during one of the most holy times on the Jewish calendar (and I suppose on the Christian calendar too, though Easter has just ended). My “calendar” isn’t exactly filled with joyous rapture these days either. Lots of reasons, though none that I’m prepared to disclose. I wonder if that’s the point, though. Is faith and trust in God, let alone in ourselves, supposed to be dictated in terms of circumstances? Not according to Rabbi Tzvi Freeman (appropriate last name for this Passover, don’t you think?):

Why do we kick ourselves so hard when we make a mess? Because we pat ourselves so nicely on the head when we succeed. As though success and failure is all in our hands.

Yes, we believe. We believe that it is not our talents, our brains, our good looks and hard work that brings success, that everything is in the hands of heaven.

But when we walk out the door into the cold, real world, we leave our faith behind in a world of fantasy.

If we would chew on it a little and allow it to digest before we went through that door, if we would let it sink into our minds and our hearts, then it would be more than faith — it would be a vision, an attitude.

It would be more real than even a dollar bill.

Although Freeman’s message is more oriented toward comparing the spiritual to the commercial (hence the “dollar bill”), the fact that we kick ourselves when we’re down and pat ourselves on the back when we’re up seems to show how the center of our reality is us rather than God. If, when life deals us harsh blows or when life grants us lush blessings, we were to consistently turn to God in praise, the condition of our lives wouldn’t really matter, would it?

Then why do we still feel pain and sorrow? Shouldn’t true people of faith be immune to “situationalism” by now? Is that why all the “real” religious bloggers only talk about their lives in upbeat, positive terms, because either nothing bad ever happens to them or bad things never affect them?

It’s often why I take inspirational blogs, religious or not, with a grain of salt.

But speaking of which, another of Rabbi Freeman’s messages states that, “In the heavens is G-d’s light. In the work of our hands dwells G-d Himself, the source of all light.” God is not (supposedly) hiding from us up in Heaven, but He’s right here with us, occupying everything we’re doing, every experience we are having, and perhaps even everything that we’re feeling.

But instead of listening to me kvetch, God has something to say, and He wants me to shut up long enough to hear Him.

There are questions to which G-d says to be quiet, to be still, to cease to ask. The quietness, the stillness, the abandonment of being, that itself is an answer.

-Rabbi Freeman
Be Quiet

It’s tough to abandon my being when the pain from the splinters in my soul and psyche keep bringing me back to myself.

All flesh is grass, especially mine.

Peter failed the Master by denying him three times publicly right before the crucifixion. The disciple upon whom the “church” would be built came to his lowest ebb at that time and in the days that followed. The resurrection of Christ still didn’t heal his wound, and Jesus himself added to Peter’s pain:

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. –John 21:15-17 (ESV)

Maybe you don’t see this transaction the same way as I do, but try to picture the scene. Peter is humbled and humiliated at having denied that he had anything to do with Jesus as the Master was undergoing his false trial. His betrayal and shame could only have gotten worse in the hours and days that followed, as Christ was tortured and then slowly murdered upon the cross. No wonder he and the others among the core disciples went into hiding.

Of course Peter ran to the tomb on even the slim hope that Jesus had been resurrected three days later, but that wasn’t going to fix the problem. Yes, the return of the Master from death was a joy beyond measure, but then, as we see recorded in John’s Gospel, Peter had to face his “accuser” again, the man he had horribly abandoned.

The Master asked, “Do you love me?” I wonder if Peter asked this question about his love of the Master. I wonder if he said, “How can I say I love him when I am so guilty?” How could Peter say, “Lord, you know that I love you” in response? How could he love even God when he must have so loathed himself?

Unlike Peter, in my current circumstance, I can’t say that I really failed. I only feel responsible because I’m involved. No one has failed, but when someone you love is hurt and in need, and you struggle to find a way to help and can’t, it still feels like failure. It also creates unbidden tension in other relationships, which serve as a reminder that after all, you’re only human.

I’m only human, and I am grass, cut and thrown into the fire, withering and turning to ash, even as I write.

I am on fire and soon the fire will be gone, and there will be only hot ash and smoke. And then that will cool, and the cold, dry ash that used to be me will be caught up in the breeze, become airborne, and scatter, carried by the four winds.

Even that would be a comfort, but I can’t let that happen because I’ve still got so much to do and have too many people who depend on me.

Though he slay me, I will hope in him… –Job 13:15 (ESV)

But God is gracious. As miserable as things can seem sometimes, He can also lighten the load. A little while ago, God relaxed the pressure He was putting on my skull with His thumb and I’m really grateful that He did. The fire is beginning to die down and I’m still here and in one piece. We may be living sacrifices (Romans 12:1), but there’s only so much we can take before we break, or God, in His mercy, takes us off the altar.

Like Icarus, my wings have melted and I’ve fallen to the ground, but my ashes are cooling and pretty soon, I feel like I might be able to rise up from them again.

Maybe this time I’ll get a new set of wings, or maybe God will just heal the old ones.

Uncategorized

The Uninspired Passover Seder

4 Comments

All in all, this year’s Passover seder in my home was pretty lousy. There are a lot of reasons for this, most of which I am not at liberty to discuss. It’s wasn’t anyone’s fault. No one burned the roast, or behaved poorly, or arrived abysmally late to the event. But it certainly wasn’t the joyous occasion of freedom that I usually anticipate…at least not on the surface.

But I was disappointed and sundown at the end of Shabbat and the first full day of Passover was a sad relief. At least it was over.

I had anticipated a simple but happy affair. It is true that we were all busy for the past couple of weeks and there was no elaborate preparation for Passover, as there has been in years past. My wife and daughter (the principle authors of our family seder) were incredibly busy in the weeks approaching the first day of Pesach, so there wasn’t an opportunity to plan an elaborate meal. I had once suggested to my daughter that my sons and I do the actual planning and cooking this year, but her disdain for our “male” abilities in this area became immediately apparent. I actually thought at one point that we wouldn’t have a seder at all.

As the head of household, the responsibility to lead our family seder falls to me. This is when I become acutely aware that I’m a goy and while reading the Leader’s portions of the Haggadah, I tend to become more than a little embarrassed. This year, I was also the only Gentile present in a family of Jews, so my chagrin was even greater than usual. I also hadn’t had time to even look at the Haggadah prior to the start of the seder, so I could feel myself stumbling over the words and wondering if it was such a good idea to even hold the seder.

But it was my idea.

My wife, son, and I actually talked about not having the seder earlier in the day. True, all the food had been prepared, but perhaps, given the circumstances, we should just have a “Passover-themed” meal and call it good. But then, I had to shoot off my big mouth (and remember, I’m the only goy in this conversation) and say that Passover has been observed by Jews in all sorts of difficult circumstances but it has been observed. It’s important (in my humble Gentile opinion) to not give up the celebrations and commemorations of Judaism when faced with adversity. If a little difficulty was all it took to stop a Jew from celebrating what is Jewish, then probably there would be few or even no Jews left by now, or at least, no Jews who remember how to have a Passover seder.

So we went ahead and had our seder.

I won’t describe the grizzly details, but it wasn’t joyous. It wasn’t hideous or outrageously bad, but it simply fell rather flat. It lacked “pizzazz.” Whatever makes a seder an experience rather than just a meal with some reading just wasn’t there.

It was sort of like praying to God in a time of need and then feeling worse after praying then you did before entering His presence.

And it’s over for another year. Next year in Jerusalem? I’d be satisfied if it’s next year in my dining room, as long as at the end of the seder, we all felt, as a family, as if the Passover had been observed and not mangled or abused.

So for the next week or so, I’ll be dining on dry matzah and ashes and trying to remember that holiday expectations are not the same as a relationship with God. Events can be messed up for many, many reasons but it’s what God experiences with us that matters. Since I’m not Jewish, I am not strictly commanded to observe the Passover, but my family is. If I’ve done anything to prevent them from observing the mitzvot associated with the Pesach meal, then I’ll bear my guilt and whatever consequences that go along with it alone.

It’s not particularly my fault. It’s no one’s fault. But this being the first year I’m not affiliated with any congregation or religious organization, I somehow feel that I’m to blame. I’m looking for the good among the bad; the flower among the weeds, but so far, it hasn’t bloomed.

It is hard to describe the dire poverty that afflicted the citizens of Yerushalayim eighty years ago. The scarcity of food was so extreme that children sometimes went to sleep without having tasted a morsel the entire day.

One child was was walking along on a Shabbos afternoon when he noticed a very valuable gold coin. Of course he could not pick it up, since it was muktzeh. But he figured that he could stand on it, to guard it and take it after Shabbos. Unfortunately, an Arab youth passed by and he noticed that the boy remained stationary. Understanding that it was the Jewish Shabbos and that the boy might be guarding something to take after Shabbos, he threw the child to the floor and spotted the valuable coin— which he immediately pocketed.

The child was overwhelmed with grief. Not only had he endured being thrown violently to the ground, he had also lost a coin which could have fed his family for quite some time. He went into the Rachmastrivka shul and began to cry bitter tears.

When Rav Menachem Nochum, zt”l, the Rachmastrivka Rebbe, heard a child crying copiously in the beis haknesses, he immediately went to see what had occurred. When he asked the child and was told the entire story, he comforted the child. “Today is Shabbos, so we can’t speak about money, but please calm down for now. Come to see me after Shabbos.”

After Shabbos the rebbe took out a coin—exactly like what had been taken from him— and showed it to the child. “I am happy to give you this coin if you will sell me the merit of having endured great pain for the honor of Shabbos. To keep the halachah you were thrown onto the floor and you lost a fortune of money.” But the boy immediately refused. “No. I will not relinquish the reward for this mitzvah for any money in the world!”

Later the boy recounted. “I left the rebbe’s presence with a conviction that the treasure I had gained through my suffering was much more valuable than any mere coin!”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“The Golden Treasure”
Kereisos 20

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. –Matthew 5:3 (ESV)

The “poor in spirit” is looking for the golden treasure among broken crumbs of matzah. When a celebration of God dedicated to joy and freedom is anything but joyous and free, what then?

NOTE: I didn’t post my usual “meditation” Sunday morning because, outside of Israel, both the first and second day of Passover are considered “Sabbaths.” For that reason, I refrained from making any comments on the Internet during these special Shabbatot. Thank you to those who contacted me behind the scenes asking if everything is OK. I appreciate it.

Uncategorized

Unavoidable

10 Comments

It was the summer of 1930, before most of these things had happened…It was several months since I had been in London, and then only in passing, so I had really hardly had seen Father at all since he had entered the hospital the autumn before.

So all of us went to the hospital. Father was in a ward. We had arrived much too early and had to wait. We were in a new wing of the big hospital. The floor was shiny and clean. Vaguely depressed by the smell of sickness and disinfectant and the general medical small that all hospitals have, we sat in a corridor downstairs for upwards of half an hour…

Finally, the clock we had been watching got around to the appropriate hour; we went up an elevator. They all knew where the ward was – it was a different ward. I think they had changed his ward two or three times. And he had had more than one operation. But none of them had been successful.

We went into the ward. Father was in bed, to the left, just as you went in the door.

And when I saw him, I knew at once there was no hope of his living much longer. His face was swollen. His eyes were not clear but, above all, the tumor had raised a tremendous swelling on his forehead.

I said: “How are you, Father?”

He looked at me and put forth his hand, in a confused and unhappy way, and I realized that he could no longer even speak. But at the same time, you could see that he knew us, and knew what was going on, and that his mind was clear, and that he understood everything.

But the sorrow of his great helplessness suddenly fell upon me like a mountain. I was crushed by it. The tears sprang to my eyes. Nobody said anything more.

I hid my face in the blanket and cried. And poor Father wept, too. The others stood by. It was excruciatingly sad. We were completely helpless. There was nothing anyone could do.

What could I make of so much suffering? There was no way for me, or for anyone else in the family, to get anything out of it. It was a raw wound for which there was no adequate relief. You had to take it, like an animal. We were in the condition of most of the world, the condition of men without faith in the presence of war, disease, pain, starvation, suffering, plague, bombardment, death. You just had to take it, like a dumb animal. Try to avoid it, if you could. But you must eventually reach the point where you can’t avoid it any more. Take it. Try to stupefy yourself, if you like, so that it won’t hurt so much. But you will always have to take some of it. And it will all devour you in the end.

-Thomas Merton
“Chapter Three: The Harrowing of Hell”
pp 90-91
The Seven Storey Mountain: An Autobiography of Faith

Reading this part of the chapter doesn’t hurt so much today as it did when I first read it a day or two ago. It doesn’t hurt so much as it did when I read it the day after writing about Joe and Heidi’s latest scene from their cancer battle. Merton was about 17 years old when he visited his dying Father in the London hospital as described above. He had gone through a few vague encounters with religion up to that point in his life, but none yet with God. So as he said, facing his father’s terrible illness and imminent death was like a “dumb animal” facing a tragedy it could not avoid and had no ability to understand.

Does faith make tragedy easier to handle? Joe and Heidi think so. I can’t imagine what that must be like, and frankly, coward that I am, I don’t want to imagine. Who actually wants to face that and have their faith tested? Peter, James, and John had their faith tested at Gethsemane (Mark 14:32:42) and it was found wanting.

My friend Leah said that having faith helps. When her husband died in a sudden accident many years ago, she went around in a fog for the first twenty-four hours, but after that, it was her faith in God and the certainty of the resurrection that sustained her. It was still “the year from hell” in which she grieved terribly, and any hint of joy was fleeting if present at all, but the presence of God was with her the entire time. She was not alone.

I suspect Merton was alone in his grief and sorrow when he visited his father in the hospital, even though he was surrounded by family. God was there too, but no one noticed. No one except Merton’s father, that is.

In fact, if he could not talk, there were other things he could do. One day I found his bed covered with little sheets of blue note-paper on which he had been drawing. And the drawings were real drawings. But they were unlike anything he had ever done before – pictures of little, irate Byzantine-looking saints with beards and great halos.

Of us all, Father was the only one who really had any kind of faith. And I do not doubt that he had very much of it, and that behind the walls of isolation, his intelligence and his will, unimpaired, and not hampered in any essential way by the partial obstruction of some of his senses, were turned to God, and communed with God Who was with him and in him, and Who gave him, as I believe, light to understand and to make use of his suffering for his own good, and to perfect his soul. It was a great soul, large, full of natural charity. He was a man of exceptional intellectual honesty and sincerity and purity of understanding. And this affliction, this terrible and frightening illness which was relentlessly pressing him down even into the jaws of the tomb, was not destroying him after all.

-Merton pp 91-92

Merton wrote his autobiography as a young Trappist monk and saw the world and his past through the newly minted lens of his Catholic faith, rather than from the perspective of later in his life as a cleric. I have no idea if, at 17, any of this would have occurred to him, and of course, he had no idea what his father was subjectively experiencing, but his father, a professional artist, was communicating that experience in the only way he knew how. And years later, it’s possible that his son finally understood.

At the time, Merton probably only understood the following, and ironically, decades removed from the event and having lived a completely different life than he, I also understand.

Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture.

-Merton, pg 91

I don’t know if Merton captured the ineffable essence of all human suffering in that paragraph or if, by the grace of God, he managed to actually create in that brief stream of words, a completely accurate description that points to my life as it is today specifically for the sake of my soul, but these words speak to me like no other words that I’ve ever read. In virtually one literary breath, Merton describes my predicament and it’s potential cure. In trying to avoid suffering, I have become the author of my own pain. Every little event is registered as another injury, and my very life, with every beat of my heart, is my greatest agony. Each heartbeat is like another splinter inserted into my eyes, and each breath is constricted by a great hand crushing my lungs.

And the cure is to stop avoiding suffering.

Strange cure, I must admit. After all, who seeks to suffer? Who actually wants their own faith to be tested?

But Peter became a better man after he recovered from denying the Master. Merton believed that, even in terrible suffering, with death waiting for him as close as his shadow, that his father’s soul was becoming better because of his torment. Of course, this is a Catholic’s perspective on the matter, and a 17 year old Merton could not truly assess the condition of his father’s soul, but his father could not avoid suffering and so there he was; drawing “little, irate Byzantine-looking saints with beards and great halos,” and communing with God.

So I went back to school, after seeing Father for a moment on the way through London. I had been back for barely a week when I was summoned, one morning, to the Headmaster’s study, and he gave me a telegram which said that Father was dead.

-Merton, pg 93

And so the great mass of horrible agony and pain is really made up of tiny bits and pieces of frustration and annoyance and sorrow. The missed opportunity to say, “I love you,” the driver that cuts you off on the road, the harsh rebuke from your daughter, the unfriendly chiding of an online critic; these are all filtered through the self and the self-loathing of my existence and my life as I vainly attempt to avoid injury and insult. The harder I try to isolate myself from the “slings and arrows,” the more they strike and stab at me.

Is there some truth after all in letting down my defenses and praying that God stand with me in the face of my own wretched life?

Ironically, it was famed martial arts master Bruce Lee who said, “Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” On the one hand, I have no control whatsoever, of the seemingly random events of the world around me. But on the other hand, I have a great deal of control about how or if I choose to try to avoid them and, in encountering such events, how I choose to interpret their impact. Am I in pain? It feels that way. Do I have to be? I don’t know.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, interpreting the letters and talks of the Rebbe, Rabbi M. M. Schneerson, said:

In the morning, we make our plea as though unable to tolerate another moment. And as evening comes, we demand again as though morning never passed.

We live on the verge of eternity. May we arrive now.

We live on the verge of eternity, as if life were like dancing on the edge of a razor blade, running fast and hard, terrified that if we fall, we’ll be cut to ribbons.

But what if we…what if I chose one day, to deliberately fall off of the edge of the razor, but rather than falling headlong into the sharpened metal and being destroyed in bloody shredded flesh…

…I flew?

Uncategorized

Putting Light in a Cage

9 Comments

On today’s daf we find that Rabbi Akiva asked Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Yehoshua a halachic question while they were in the market purchasing an animal for Rabban Gamliel’s son’s wedding. This is the way of gedolei Torah. Even while on their way to a simchah, they only think about Torah.

Rav Eliezer Gordon, zt”l, the first Rosh Yeshiva of Telz, was just such a person. The tales regarding his absolute devotion to Torah even during the most unusual times are astounding.

Rav Gordon was a person who had such a deep-felt ahavas haTorah that he would think in learning at every available moment. While he walked down the street and while he was apparently in repose, he was always immersed in a sugya.

Once, when Rav Gordon was on his way to serve as sandek at a bris milah, he passed by a shul and heard two bochurim discussing a certain difficult question in learning. Rav Gordon immediately forgot everything. He stopped in front of the window and, while standing outside, began to discuss this complex question in depth. He attempted to answer it and the bochurim debated various suggestions he proposed that might resolve the problem.

Two hours later, the guests at the bris were still waiting, but the rav had not yet come. Finally they found an acceptable answer and Rav Gordon continued on his way. Then he remembered that he was supposed to be sandek at a local bris.

When he arrived he apologized and explained what had happened. “Regarding Torah I am like a drunk near a bottle of wine who cannot think of anything else!”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“Intoxicated by Torah”
Kereisos 15

I know. It sounds kind of irresponsible to me, too. If I have an appointment and people are expecting me, especially for an important event, I really try to be on time and often, I’m a little early. So how can we explain Rav Gordon?

At the threshold of liberation, darkness filled the land of Egypt. But in the homes of those to be liberated, there was only light.

Light is our true place, and light is the destiny of every child of Noah who nurtures the G-dly beauty of this world. As dawn approaches and Darkness shakes heaven and earth in the final throes of its demise, those who belong to Light and cleave to it with all their hearts have nothing to fear.

For darkness is created to die, but light is forever.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Light Forever”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

Imagine being filled with light all of the time. You can’t really help it. God is not only on your thoughts and affecting your emotions, but His very Word is interwoven into your flesh and bone. It has invaded your blood stream and is coursing through your veins and arteries like life-giving corpuscles. The light of His Word creates the electrical impulses that leap at lightning-fast speeds across the gap between the synapses in your brain. And all that light within you is inexorably drawn to other light just like it…and you cannot help but run the other’s light, so you can join the light within and the light without.

So too, is Rav Gordon, even to the point of allowing himself to be distracted and to be hours late to a bris.

Or he could have just been one of those people who lose track of time when caught up in a compelling intellectual argument.

Where is the balance between the holy and the secular? It is said that Hillel the Elder, the great Torah sage who lived a generation before Jesus, devoted his life to Torah study while also working as a woodcutter. (Hertz J.H. 1936 The Pentateuch and Haftoras. Deuteronomy. Oxford University Press, London.) Certainly Hillel knew the meaning of balance in his life.

And then there’s this:

Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. –2 Thessalonians 3:6-8 (ESV)

I can’t find the source, but I recall reading that it is considered a sin if you study Torah to the exclusion of all other responsibilities, such as feeding your family, and meeting your other worldly obligations.

I can’t lay all of that at Rav Gordon’s feet. After all, he was only distracted for a couple of hours and perhaps justifiably so. I’m in no position to judge.

To tell you the truth, it’s far more common for people to allow the demands of their day-to-day secular life to distract them from their duty to study the Bible, to meditate upon God, to pray, to show devotion on the Shabbat. It is far more common to be lured off of the path to God by your daily grind, than to be late for work because you were praying or studying.

God understands that we have a daily life and indeed, he requires that we do have an “ordinary” job so that we, like Paul, can support ourselves and not be a burden to others. All of the great Torah scholars had some means by which they supported themselves, as did the Prophets, and as did the Apostles. Part of a whole life is not only sharing it with God and joining with that light, but allowing the light to shine into the rest of your world. God is in the act of commuting to work, in sitting at a computer keyboard, in picking your children up from school, in mowing the lawn, in paying your taxes, in taking out the garbage.

And He’s in being immersed in a sugya and in joining two bochurim discussing a certain difficult question.

There’s a passion that must be part of who we are as people if we are to overwhelm the oppressive demands of a human experience with the light of God. In Judaism, each soul is considered to be a shard or a spark of the Divine Light of God, come to earth to inhabit a person. The spark yearns to return to its Source but the flesh chains the holy shard to earth. The bird is caged and cannot fly. If you remove freedom from the bird long enough, it forgets how to fly, and pines for its lost freedom. The notes of its song sour and it loses its way back to the Source, perhaps forever.

So too is the soul within us that is cut off too long from its Source. Humanity is an anchor that drags us to the floor of an impenetrably deep sea. This is the opposite of Rav Gordon and his drive to seek out perpetual light perpetually. But if we pray, if we meditate, if we study the Bible, if we associate, even occasionally, with others who have the same drive and light, if we allow the Word to weave its way through us, the bird is not kept in total darkness and it is allowed to spread its wings. It has a song to sing, even while caged within its flesh and blood prison.

The bird has hope, not only that someday it will return to the Source, but that in the here and now, there is a light within that shines, and a light without to follow.

Someday we will be free.

Uncategorized

Publishing Mistakes

1 Comment

That doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you recognize the value in researching, teaching, collaborating, and correcting mistakes. That’s why the Move The Web Forward folks went on to encourage writers to “keep your posts updated.”

And that’s why Rebecca Murphey, when discussing how to get better at writing JavaScript, said:

“The number one thing that will make you better at writing JavaScript is writing JavaScript. It’s OK if you cringe at it six months from now. It’s OK if you know it could be better if you only understood X, Y, or Z a little bit better. Cultivate dissatisfaction, and fear the day when you aren’t disappointed with the code you wrote last month.”

In this case, Rebecca was talking about actually writing code, not writing about code. But the same principle applies: you will get better when you make mistakes and correct them.

-Louis Lazaris
“Publish What You Learn”
Smashing Magazine

Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death,
prisoners in affliction and in irons,
for they had rebelled against the words of God,
and spurned the counsel of the Most High.
So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor;
they fell down, with none to help.
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,
and burst their bonds apart.
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
For he shatters the doors of bronze
and cuts in two the bars of iron.

–Psalm 107:10-16 (ESV)

No, I’m not a programmer, but a great deal of what these “meditations” represent are writing about what I have learned and being open about my mistakes (which is rare in just about any kind of blogging…particularly religious blogging, in spite of what Lazaris just said).

The Psalm writer encourages us (OK, he was writing to a Jewish audience, but I think I can stretch the interpretation to include all of those who were created in the image of God) to acknowledge God and to thank Him for redeeming us, especially when we have been redeemed from our own stupidity and ignorance.

Publicly admitting your mistakes and even thanking God for getting you out of the mess you created is easier said than done. Even after God has redeemed you and relieved you from the consequences (or some of them) of your actions and the punishment for willful sin, there’s still the guilt and shame to deal with. Thanking God for being redeemed is still a lot like saying that you’re a screw up and you did something immeasurably stupid. Blogging about the same “immeasurably stupid” stuff is making the same admission, except it’s to people and not to God.

And yet, there’s supposed to be some sort of benefit to doing both, even though it makes you (and me) feel like crawling under the nearest slime-covered rock and hiding there for the next 70 or 80 years.

The 73rd mitzvah is that we are commanded to verbally acknowledge the sins we have committed before G-d (exalted be He), when we come to do teshuvah (to repent). This is vidui (verbal confession), the idea of which is to say, ” ‘O G-d, I have sinned, I have committed iniquity, I have transgressed and done …” One should elaborate verbally and ask for atonement on this transgression with all the eloquence at his command.

-Translated by Rabbi Berel Bell
From “Sefer Hamitzvot in English”
Confessing Sins
Positive Commandment 73
Chabad.org

So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. –Matthew 23-24 (ESV)

It is said that if we have sinned against God, we must seek forgiveness from God, but if we’ve sinned against man, we must seek forgiveness from that man before God will forgive us. If we do not ask the man for forgiveness, God will not forgive us, either.

And if we do seek forgiveness from man and it is not given, will God then forgive us in the man’s stead?

I don’t know. Logic says that God will forgive you if you’ve made your best effort to seek forgiveness from one you’ve sinned against, but I’m not sure. I only know we are supposed to do our best to live at peace with others, regardless of what they’ve done to us…even if they hate us.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. –Matthew 5:43-48 (ESV)

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. –Romans 12:14-21 (ESV)

The Bible talks about forgiving others and seeking forgiveness from others and seeking forgiveness from God, but it never talks about forgiving yourself. It seems as if the last person you must forgive is yourself. Otherwise, you live with guilt, shame, and condemnation for the rest of your life, paying for a crime that has already been atoned for in Heaven (or so we hope).

There is a common misconception that life is about being in the right place at the right time. In truth, how you experience life has more to do with what is happening inside you as with what is happening outside.

Like riding a roller coaster without being prepared, if you are not well-tuned to the channel of life, a symphony of miracles could come across as cacophony from the boiler room.

This is what the sages call z’chut –sometimes translated as merit. It means a refinement of the soul, so that it will be precisely on the right frequency and static-clean.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Z’chut”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

People can be very cruel and spiteful, sometimes even to themselves. Do I need to have my frequency fine tuned?

Yeah, I know. I sound more like Yom Kippur is coming up rather than Passover.

Uncategorized

Flight of the Sparrow

11 Comments

Devastating News Today, darn it!

Heidi’s tumor markers not only went up but doubled. So this new chemotherapy failed completely, like the one they tried in December/January. We will hear what option(s) are left sometime tomorrow.

My own outpatient surgery is tomorrow morning at 8am, another unwelcome surprise.

We’re really grateful to all of you for your kindness and support.

My beloved wife has metastatic breast cancer (spread to lungs, bone, liver). I am a prostate cancer survivor and my bladder cancer is in remission. We are both treated at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. But we love God, we love life’s adventures, we love our family & friends. And will do so until God takes us Home. We are followers of Christ.

-Joe Hendricks
Tuesday, April 2nd, 2012

I’ve never met Joe and Heidi Hendricks face to face. I suppose I could, since we live only about a day’s drive away from each other. However, through the “magic” of Facebook, I have shared the last few years of their cancer battle together. The photo I’ve posted is number 56 in their scenes from our cancer battle.

The most startling thing for me about photo 56 is that Joe and Heidi aren’t smiling. No, I don’t expect them to smile after such terrible news, but if you go through their “photo album,” even in the most dire of circumstances, they’re always smiling and joking and pressing on through adversity. Humor is almost the last tool to fail when all other tools have long since burned out in the course of such a tremendous physical and emotional drain. I must admit, mine would have been shot through like swiss cheese in a hail storm long before this. But Joe particularly always makes me laugh.

But not today.

Besides their sense of humor, the thing I admire most about Joe and Heidi is their faith. A lot of Christians say they have faith and trust in God…that is, until something really bad happens. Then it all goes flying out the window and it’s “Why did you let this happen to me, God?” and “How could you be so cruel to me, God?” I’m sure I’d be among that group if I had to face the scenes from Joe and Heidi’s cancer battle first hand.

But no matter how grim it’s been for them, they’ve always grasped tightly onto the hand of God and never let go, just as love has bonded Joe and Heidi together and the never let go of each other.

I’m angry. No, not at God…well, not exactly. I don’t who or what I’m angry at. I think it’s that I feel really helpless and frustrated. Sounds strange, eh? There is horrible tragedy happening all over the world. Every day, someone suffers. Every day, someone dies. Every day, some act of injustice is committed, the helpless are victimized and have no defender, the innocent are made to pay for the crimes of the oppressor. It’s a broken world.

But in the face of all that, I’m angry at the news of Joe and Heidi’s cancer battle today. I know the world isn’t fair, but I’m still angry. It isn’t fair.

It’s like my feelings have mass and can be affected by gravity. It’s like the muscles that hold up my feelings are tired and my sadness is a lead weight, pulling my shoulders down and anchoring me to my seat. I feel as if I’m slowly being pulled to the floor. It’s as if my only light is losing its brightness, and I’m just getting more heavy and silent and it’s getting dark all around me.

The light of laughter is going out in the world.

And where is God?

How many people of faith have asked that question across the long stretch of centuries? How many Christians and Muslims and Jews and whoever else have asked God where He went off to when horrible news, disease, injury, and death stalked us one by one? Is this what ancient man felt like, cowering in some cave in the night, listening to the predators crying out at the moon and declaring to the grey, reflected light that they would find you and consume you?

Is that what it feels like knowing that there is a cancer inside of you and it’s taking over and it won’t be chased away?

I’ve heard the words “God is in control” said countless times in countless church services, but what do the words really mean? God is in control, but people still get sick. God is in control but people still get hurt. We’re alone, and we’re scared, and we need to be able to hang on when our strength, and our stamina, and finally our laughter is dried up like the last drop of water feeding the last wilted flower in the brilliant summer sun baking the vast and endless desert.

I realize that there are forces in the world and forces in our body that we can fight but we can’t always control. At some point, no matter how much you put into the struggle, you (I can only imagine, since I haven’t had to face this) have to let your shoulders relax, let the weight pull you down, look up, put your tiny hand in God’s immense grasp and say, “No matter what happens, please don’t go away.”

I hate crying.

God, don’t go away. Stay with Joe and Heidi, no matter what happens. We all want a miracle, but the greatest miracle is that You even care. If not even one tiny sparrow falls to the earth apart from the will of the Father, then You are mindful of Joe and Heidi, for they are worth much, much more than sparrows.

Stay with them God and, if it is Your will, don’t let them fall. Let them fly.