A Very Narrow Bridge

The world is a very narrow bridge; the important thing is not to be afraid. ~Nachman of Breslov

Category: Reflection

November 19, 2014

Ordinary

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about: The people I love are pretty much normal.

Yeah. I know.

Anyone who’s ever heard me talk about someone I love—not least of all my kid—is reading this with a certain amount of skepticism. The amount of skepticism that usually involves saying something like “bullshit.” But it’s true.

They are my normal. Sometimes I forget that not everyone is that warm, or that compassionate, or that funny. That not everyone has that kind of presence, or depth of insight. That not everyone laughs that way, or smiles that way, is that talented. So when I meet someone and mention that I’m my sister’s brother, or my brother’s brother, or my friend’s friend, or my son’s dad and that person lights up (and this happens a fair amount), I am delighted. But I’m also a little confused. Because those people whom I love are also just normal.

They are just people like everyone else. They are moving through this life just like everyone else. Subject to the same emotional spectrum as everyone else. Just as crazy, fussy, annoying, angry, stubborn, distant, full of bad habits and self-defeating behaviors as everyone else. As me. And I love them. And I think they love me too. We share that love. Not despite the fact that we are normal. We share that love because of the fact that we are normal.

Love is a normal part of being human. It’s there for the taking. Because we are human. It’s there for us. Love. And I know. There are some people who don’t feel loved. And there are people who are abused by the people who they want to love them. And human beings do detestable things to each other.

But I think the horrendous things human beings do to each other, to animals, to the planet, are not arguments against love being a normal part of being human. I think they are arguments in its favor. Those acts, those hate-filled acts, come from fear. From distortions and complete misunderstanding of the nature of love. And none of us is immune to that kind of misunderstanding. It happens in degrees; thank God not all of us are damaged enough to act out on that misunderstanding in violent, hideous ways, but sometimes we just don’t get it.

Being human is hard.

I just re-read Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, one of my favorite books. Here’s what the main character says about love:

There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be, because in any specific instance it is only a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality. It makes no sense at all because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal. So how could it subordinate itself to cause or consequence? (238)

I love that quote. This has been a really shitty year. A lonely year. Sometimes a violent year. It’s sucked so far. But those three sentences remind me, again and again, that I don’t get to control things. I don’t get to choose how people love me, and I don’t have to subject myself to other’s demands on how I love them. I get to be who I am and accept the love that’s there for me. And I get to send some love to myself. Because I’m human. And that’s hard.

But there’s a way to do it. It’s not easy, but there’s a way. I have to remember that we are all just people. Just normal people. The people I love and the people I don’t. And me. And you. We are all just moving through this life.

Gilead takes the form of a very long letter written by John Ames, a 76-year-old Congregationalist Minister to his son, who is not yet seven. He married late in life, and his love for his wife and son is the slow, deeply burning love that comes with age and comfort. Though, when he first meets his wife his love is the awkward, embarrassing, self-doubting love that shows up at the beginning of things—he writes sermons hoping to impress her and then feels foolish when he delivers them looking at her. He takes his hat off in her presence and then feels stupid for having done it.

Here’s how he describes how he feels:

I can tell you this, that if I had married some rosy dame and she had given me ten children and they had given me ten grandchildren, I’d leave them all on Christmas Eve, on the coldest night of the world, and walk a thousand miles just for the sight of your face, your mother’s face. And if I never found you, my comfort would be in that hope, my lonely and singular hope, which would not exist in the whole of Creation except in my heart and in the heart of the Lord. That is just a way of saying I could never thank God sufficiently for the splendor he has hidden from the world – your mother excepted of course – and revealed to me in your sweetly ordinary face. (237)

He loves them so much that, had he never met them, he would still love them. He would still love them because he understands that the love he has for them is a reflection of Love. “An embracing, incomprehensible reality.” And he loves them simply because they are who they are.

I get that. That’s how I love my son. For his ordinariness. Not because he’s smart or funny, or because he is a fantastic baseball player. Not even because he moves through the world with a startling ability to accept Love. Without naming it, without demanding it, and without being ignorant of the fact that being human is hard.

I know. I can see your skeptical face. And I can hear you laughing and saying “bullshit.”

But it’s true.

Leave a comment
February 20, 2014

Enough to Get Us Here

I am sitting in my apartment. Right now. I am sitting at my kitchen table and I am writing this. And this whole scene is completely unlikely.

The table. The computer. What I’ve learned so I can write this. The plant in the corner. The light above my head. They are all products of thousands of variables. The wood for the table was grown.The lightbulb is burning because of electricity. The seed was planted in soil. The aluminum for the computer was mined. The plant was watered. And all of these things came together tonight. Right now.

And me.

I am about to write about something I learned. And the series of moments that taught me that are each made up of thousands of elements. Thousands of variables.

I read some books. Because I found teachers. Because I walked in to a yoga studio. Because my friend loved it there. Because I made a friend.  Because we made a very short, very silly, film. Because I moved to Washington. Because I was heartbroken. Because my son was here. Because my ex wife got a job. Because my son was born. Because I loved her. Because I met her. Because we both worked at a Jewish camp. Because I loved Judaism. Because I studied Torah. Because I loved the people there. Because I was born into my family. Because my mother wanted another child. Because my parents met. Because they walked into the same room. Because they lived in the city where they lived. Because their parents came for jobs. Because they were in America. Because their parents wanted a better life. Because they were born….

And I skipped a lot. I skipped some very important steps. But I only have so much time to write. And there are only so many atoms in the Universe. But every moment and every moment that moved toward that moment was equally filled with complexity. And chance. And miracles.

This week we read Parashat Vayakhel (Shemot [Exodus] 31:5-38:20).

Shabbat and then another shopping list. Really a list of things people brought for the building of the Mishkan. And Bezalel. He’s back with the same job. He’s still called out by name. He still has within him The Divine Spirit, Wisdom, Understanding, and The Deepest Knowledge. Which is cool. I like Bezalel.

And this:

 וְהַמְּלָאכָה, הָיְתָה דַיָּם לְכָל-הַמְּלָאכָה–לַעֲשׂוֹת אֹתָהּ; וְהוֹתֵר.
And their efforts (at donating the items needed) were enough to do the work. More than enough. (36:7)

So we had a shopping list last week. And this week everyone brought in the items on the list. More than they even needed to. And then they finished designing and building the Mishkan.

But a couple of things happened last week that I didn’t mention. Interesting things.

The first is when Moshe and Joshua are heading down from the mountain. Joshua hears what he thinks is a battle. And Moshe listens and he says something weird.

.וַיֹּאמֶר, אֵין קוֹל עֲנוֹת גְּבוּרָה, וְאֵין קוֹל, עֲנוֹת חֲלוּשָׁה; קוֹל עַנּוֹת, אָנֹכִי שֹׁמֵעַ
He said: It’s not the voice of heroism, and it’s not the voice of weakness. I only hear the voice of singing. (32:18)

That’s not all that weird, really. What he hears is the Israelites and their party with the עֵגֶל מַסֵּכָה, the molten calf they started to worship out of fear when Moshe took so long on the mountain.

Then there’s this:

 .וַיִּקַּח אֶת-הָעֵגֶל אֲשֶׁר עָשׂוּ, וַיִּשְׂרֹף בָּאֵשׁ, וַיִּטְחַן, עַד אֲשֶׁר-דָּק; וַיִּזֶר עַל-פְּנֵי הַמַּיִם, וַיַּשְׁקְ אֶת-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל
And [Moshe] took the calf that they made and burnt it in the fire until it was dust. And he threw it into the water so that the Israelites would drink it. (32:20)

Okay, so that’s weird, right? I understand getting rid of the calf. But why the whole water thing? Why did he want them to drink it?

Rashi cites the Talmud and says Moshe wanted to test them. If they were completely guilty and they drank the gold water their stomachs would swell up and they would die. Others would die in different ways based on their level of guilt.

But then, very soon after that, the Israelites bring more than enough material to complete the work on the Mishkan.

It doesn’t make sense to me. If so many people had been involved that Joshua and Moshe could hear their singing from so far away, how was it that there were enough who escaped punishment (and who would be willing to give up so much) to complete the Mishkan? Were they scared into it by seeing all the punishing happening? I refuse to believe the Mishkan, the Place of Presence would have been created out of fear.

…

In Taoist thought there are five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. Each one has different properties, different, seasons, organs, and different emotions with which it is associated, and each one interacts both positively and negatively with another.

Fire weakens metal, so it makes sense to burn something made of gold when you want to get rid of it.

But metal strengthens water. Metal gives water its properties. So mixing gold with water underscores the water’s wateriness. Water is the element associated with calm, wisdom, and flexibility. Maybe it’s the water that calms them. Water opposes fire. The angry fire that Moshe uses to destroy the calf would have been put out by water. Maybe the calming water gives the Israelites the courage to access those gifts within them: The Divine Spirit. Wisdom. Understanding. The Deepest Knowledge. Maybe that’s what happened. I don’t know for sure.

Here’s what I do know: I know that we all have those elements within us. We all have wood, fire, earth, metal, and water aspects. We all contain The Divine Spirit, Wisdom, Understanding, and The Deepest Knowledge. I’ve seen it at work and it’s just true.

And I know the זמרת יה, the Divine Song, the sound made by all those elements and molecules and moments that came together to bring us to where we are—me writing, you reading—I know that Song is not a song of heroism and it’s not a song of weakness, it’s just the Song singing each moment into the next.

And I know listening for that Song makes it impossible not to realize that we have more than enough material within us to create a place for the Present.

Look back and think about what got you to this moment. The incredible set of circumstances that had to happen to get you here. It seems impossible. This moment seems impossible. But here you are. Here we are. Me writing, you reading. All that that impossibility bewilders me and it makes me so grateful.

Leave a comment
December 6, 2013

What’s Happened So Far.

I’ve been given an assignment; I need to write a spiritual autobiography.

I’ve decided to share this outline with you .

I probably won’t share the completed one with you. Sorry.

Here’s what’s happened so far:

It all started with the people.

With the visit from The Rabbi to my house when I was three; I fled in stark terror and hid in my room.

Then Sunday school and “God is One” and the bronze doors on the ark in the sanctuary and trips to the choir loft.

With camp and laughter and boats and swims across the lake and Cat Stevens songs around campfires. With my best friend, whose house was filled with Jewish art and whose parents actually sang whole prayers at Shabbat dinner.

And then it moved to the unplanned-for Bar Mitzvah I demanded.

And confirmation, and studying Buber and Heschel with the rabbi and my friends in his office. To college and helping to take the entire Hillel budget and spend it on a colloquium about peace between Palestinians and Israelis.

To disappointment and anger and running very far away. To a gentle tap on my shoulder and the clear message: “I am still here.”

Then to studying Mishna in my professor’s office. To Israel. To the huppah. To sandwiches and beer and text study in Philadelphia. To youth programming in Baltimore. To Israel again. To blessing my son Friday nights before he was born:

 היה אשר תהיה והיה ברוך באשר תהיה
“Be who you will be, and be blessed in who you will be.”

Then to a bris and another blessing:

“Be like your namesake and listen for the קוֹל דְּמָמָה דַקָּה. The thin voice of silence. The still, small voice.”

Then heartbreak. And to the beit din.

To a gentle tap on my shoulder and the clear message: “I am still here.”

Then to potluck minyanim in apartments around New York for Kabbalat Shabbat and Maariv. And holidays and Hebrew study.

To Washington DC. To traditional synagogues where I didn’t feel quite at home.

To someone telling me: “You know all this yoga and mindfulness and meditation is just going to bring you back to Judaism, right?” To “Yes, but not just now.”

To a gentle tap on the shoulder and the clear message: “I am still here.”

To a Rosh Hashanah potluck. And then my tallit wrapped around me at Kol Nidrei.

To my mother’s funeral. To shacharit every morning. To latkes and shabbat candles and holidays.

To studying with a havruta. To kashrut. To Shabbat. To Rashi. To piyyutim.

And then to this week: Parshat Vayigash (Bereishit [Genesis] 44:18 – 47:27)  and this line. This one simple line.

לֹא-אַתֶּם שְׁלַחְתֶּם אֹתִי הֵנָּה, כִּי, הָאֱלֹהִים
“It was not you who sent me here, it was God.”

I was mistaken. It wasn’t the people who got me to this week. The people were helping. Just, I really hope, as I have been helping them.

What has gotten us all here? You, me, the people who made everything in this post happen,  the cocker spaniel down the street—all of us?

It’s the thin voice of silence saying:  “I am still here. There is nowhere else but Me.”

1 Comment
September 12, 2013

This is the Blessing

Close your eyes and think of your first love.

Yeah… I know.

We spend so much time on first love. We celebrate it. We mourn it. We claim it will define all our other loves.

How often do we talk about last loves? How will we know who our last love will be? Or possibly who our last love was?

I’ve been thinking about Moshe again. This week, at least on Monday and Thursday morning, we read וְזֹאת הַבְּרָכָה V’Zot Habracha, the last parsha in the Torah. It means “This is the Blessing” and it ends with Moshe’s death.

And it’s sad. And it’s also not sad at all.

It’s about love. Last love. But let’s start with first love first.

Who was Moshe’s first love? His mother, who hid him? His sister, who followed him as he floated in the Nile? Pharaoh’s Daughter, who drew him out of the water and raised him? Is first love really the love we learn at home? This is what they tell me. Though when you closed your eyes and thought of your first love, that wasn’t what you thought of, was it?

Probably you thought of a middle love.

Who were Moshe’s middle loves? Aharon and Miryam who were with him along the journey that defined his life? Pharaoh, the adversary who forced him to find his courage and power? Tzipporah, who saved his life in one of the strangest incidents (Exodus 4:24-26) in the Torah? Yitro, who offered help when he needed it most? Korach, who broke his heart? Already middle love is more interesting, I think. The middle is the interesting part, isn’t it? The hardest part, at any rate.

Middle loves hurt us and are hurt by us; they teach us and learn from us. We run from them; we regret losing them. We long for them; we hate them. Sometimes they are the kindest people who ever left us, and sometimes the most cruel people we ever allowed to stay with us. Any of these can be true in turn. All of these can be true at the same time. The middle is the hard part.

This is the blessing.

I don’t know what last love looks like. I don’t think we can know until the end. But there are hints. Last love starts out looking like first love for some of us. Sometimes it stays like that. More often, I hope, last love starts out looking like middle love. If we are lucky—and I hope to be this lucky someday—the middle love becomes a last love.

We read about Moshe’s last love at the end of the last parsha in the Torah. Moshe climbs Mount Nevo and God shows him the Promised Land. The Land he won’t be entering. And then He kisses him and buries him.

This is last Love. This is the Love who scares us, who forces us to become more than what we think we are. This is the Love who supports us, and with whom we fight. The Love who denies us our wishes and who also gives us so much. This is the Love whose attributes, comforting and maddening, we understand. This is the Love next to whom we stand and look at what we’ve accomplished together. This is the Love for whom there could never possibly be anyone else like us. This is the Love who, in the end, kisses us and buries us. The Love who has been with us all along. This is the Love who provides the Proof. Because it is the Proof that provides this Love.

Yom Kippur is almost here. The hard work is finished. The middle, for this year at least, is behind us. We are looking at a beginning. And we are searching for something–
and we are being searched for.

On Rosh Hashana and on Yom Kippur we are reminded in Unetaneh Tokef: [Our lives are] “like a broken shard, like dry grass, a withered flower, like a passing shadow and a vanishing cloud, like a breeze that blows away and dust that scatters, like a dream that flies away.”

Our Last Love is searching for us, and we are like a dream that flies away.

3 Comments
September 2, 2013

Prove it.

I am sitting at a bagel place with Benno and Nikki.

“What is the thread that connects us?” Benno wants to know. I think he already knows, but he wants us to start thinking.

Faith?

No. Faith isn’t what we have.

Belief?

No. Belief doesn’t cover it either.

Finally, a little embarrassed, I suggest that what I have is Proof.

Benno’s eyes light up. Nikki says “Yes!”

The three of us are sitting together in a bagel place (where else?) Three people from different traditions, different cultures, at three very different stages in life. All of us sitting together in the bagel place and agreeing that we have no faith. No belief. Just Proof.

Faith is predicated upon some outside factor, like the system. You can’t have faith without something separate. Even having faith in yourself seems to look at the part of you in which to have faith as something separate from the part of you where doubt, heartbreak, and hopelessness live.

Belief is all about the individual. Believing in something means you hold it to be true.

For me, Proof is something else. Proof needs both. Proof wants us, forces us, to see the connection between those things outside of us and within us. Proof wants us to know there’s no real difference between those things. Proof is Proof. And sometimes Proof scares the crap out of us.

We don’t want to be connected. We want to be ourselves. We want our beliefs. We want that outside factor to rely on.

A person can’t just go around talking about being the same thing as the table or the cocker spaniel down the road, or the head of garlic he’s wearing on a string around his neck. That’s just weird.

But Proof is also comforting. So comforting. Because Proof never goes away. We might not notice it. We shouldn’t always notice it (please see, for example, the guy in the kaftan with the head of garlic on a string around his neck). But Proof is there.

Proof is the melody of זִמְרָת יָהּ (Zimrat Ya), the Divine Song. Proof is there when we are תָּמִים (tamim) present with an open heart. Proof is what stays our hand, or our tongue, when we are tempted to destroy hope. Proof is what causes us to fall in love, and to stay in love when the rules make no sense. Proof is calling to us every time we sound the shofar during the month of Elul.

Proof is at the bagel place and on the hiking trail. Proof is in the difficult conversation and in the uncontrollable laughter.

The last Shabbat in Elul has passed. We read parshat Nitzavim-Vayeilech (Devarim 29:9 – 31:30). And we learned exactly where Proof is:  כִּי-קָרוֹב אֵלֶיךָ הַדָּבָר, מְאֹד:  בְּפִיךָ וּבִלְבָבְךָ, לַעֲשֹׂתוֹ.  “Because it is very near to you, this [Proof]. In your mouth and in your heart so that you should enact it.”

Proof is there, not for the noticing, but for the acting.

1 Comment
July 15, 2013

What are you waiting for?

“What are you waiting for, Tisha B’Ab?”

My dad loves that expression. As I think about it, I’ve never heard anyone else say it. Maybe he got it from my grandfather. I don’t know. I’m not entirely sure he’s ever really considered the deep meaning of Tisha B’Av. That’s fine—it’s not his thing.

For better or for worse, it’s my thing. I suppose that’s why I’m writing this less than three hours before I have to be at the synagogue to listen to the book of Eicha being read and to begin my long fast. What I really should be doing is eating a light meal and drinking a lot of water. This is going to be a quick one—there will be typos.

I talked about Tisha B’Av last year, so I’m only going to recap:

Tisha B’Av (the ninth day of the month of Av) is a day of mourning and a fast day commemorating a series of tragedies that have struck the Jewish people throughout our history.

I don’t want to minimize tragedy. I am not going to minimize tragedy. I would never say this to someone who is in the midst of experiencing something tragic.

But.

I’ve been thinking about tragedy and I’ve come to the conclusion that what tragedy is (not what it means—it doesn’t help to search for the meaning in tragedy): A radical shift in the nature of the moment.

A loved one is here and then they are gone. Buildings stood, now they are rubble. There was hope and belief and a sense of order, now there is despair, doubt, and chaos.

It appears that way from the middle.

But from further down the road it’s different.

Babylon gave us Jeremiah, and one of the most beautiful phrases in the Tanakh: Kol sasson, v’kol simhah, kol, hatan, v’kol kalah. (The voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.) We sing it at weddings, filled with hope and love. And it goes on. From the ruins of Jerusalem we went to Yavne and created the Mishnah and began to focus on prayer. In our expulsion from Spain, we traveled to Turkey and Morocco and composed unimaginably beautiful music.

Things don’t go according to plan. Life is not what we imagined it would be and it feels like everything’s flying off the rails. At least from the middle. We feel no control because the reality of the moment has radically changed.  This is where we are.

And, frankly, it sucks.

Tisha B’Av is important. We should weep and mourn. We should look at ourselves and the hatred we nourish despite the fact that this hatred kills us. We should remember what it feels like to be in that place where everything has changed in an instant and we are lost.

We should recognize that we can’t always control what happens. And this is where we live.  If we accept this, we will see God in that moment. And hear the Voice of Joy, unlikely as it seems.

“What are you waiting for, Tisha B’Ab?” my dad asks.

What are you waiting for? A radical change?

“It may not happen, or it may happen in a way you never imagined,” he seems to be saying.

“There is nothing to wait for; this is where we live,” I reply.

2 Comments
October 9, 2012

Eleven Months Part 8: Eleven Months and a Little More.

I am sitting in the synagogue. Again.

My friend Batya is standing at the front of the congregation about to give a short talk. “Here we are, all together.” She says. “Here we are, all together…again.” She’s making a point about Shemini Atzeret, the holiday we are observing, but maybe also a point about the sheer number of holidays we have observed lately. The Jewish month of Tishrei has more holidays than any other; in the past three weeks there have been twelve days worth of holidays. We have been together. A lot. And this particular holiday is solely about being together. Again.

But, while we might be ready to have regular life back, while we are even getting tired of holidays (the next Jewish month, Heshvan, actually has no holidays at all—possibly to give us a break), we are together and I’m glad.

On September 30th I said the last Kaddish in the eleven months of observing this mitzvah for my mother.

It was the day before Sukkot began. For eleven months I went to the synagogue just about every day. I took shelter there. I allowed my heart to heal within its walls. I got back on my feet, feeling its floor beneath me. I moved through seasons. Then it ended. I read a prayer of thanks for the community, received a lot of hugs and it was over. That night, Sukkot began and life moved, at least temporarily, outside.

Sukkahs are flimsy. They are meant to be. The same ceiling that allows us to see the stars lets the rain in and makes the floor soft with mud. The walls have gaps and a strong wind could blow the whole thing over. Overnight, I moved from the solidity of concerete and stone into the uncertainty of canvas walls and bamboo roof.

Except I didn’t.

The same people were there, all through Sukkot. The same people with whom I spent an hour every morning, or an hour on Saturday afternoon praying. The people with whom I shared meals, and who waited patiently while my sense of humor returned. The same people with whom I practice yoga, or drink beer, or watch baseball. The people who taught me to tie knots and pack a frame pack for days of hiking. The person to whom I read and with whom I play catch. The person who used to read to me when I was small. And the person who went with me to a sukkah in the Occupy DC camp in McPherson Square last Sukkot. They are all here with me as I move out into the world again.

So while those who continue to say Kaddish stand to recite it, I sit and I hope I support them–hold them up as much as they held me. Because we are all temporary and so much more fragile than those structures we built for the holiday that just passed. But today we are here. Together for one extra day.

2 Comments
August 19, 2012

Eleven Months Part 7: Master Hakuin and Elul.

The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as one living a pure life.

A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child.

This made her parents very angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin.

In great anger the parents went to the master. “Is that so?” was all he would say.

After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbors and everything else the little one needed.

A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth – that the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fishmarket.

The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask his forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back again.

Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was: “Is that so?”

– Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones p. 7. Also on 101 Zen Stories

I will get to this story later. First, some background:

I loved my ex wife from the moment I saw her. I was 17 and she was the most beautiful girl I could ever have imagined meeting. I loved her smile and her laugh and her deadpan sense of humor.

I loved her intensely, powerfully, helplessly. I loved her when we were together and I loved her for long stretches when we were apart. I loved her through relationships with other women. I clung to her. I loved everything about her, except for her. I wanted her to be someone else, someone she couldn’t be.

We have been divorced for seven years and I have spent much of those years making excuses: She wasn’t available to me, she was too involved in her medical training, she moved us too much, she didn’t respect my goals. The list goes on.

The truth is that what I wanted from her was to rescue me from my pain. From my unhappy childhood. From my lack of confidence. From everything I hated about myself. When she couldn’t do this, I got angry and stayed angry.

I would get angry at her for not paying enough attention to me, for not being there for me, for not loving me enough.

I was wrong. She was there. The person I thought she should be wasn’t. But I couldn’t see that because I was so caught up in what I wanted. In reality, she wanted me to succeed, she wanted me to be happy and fulfilled, she wanted me to be her child’s father.

She didn’t stop trying until it became impossible for her to keep trying. Our son was a baby and she realized how much it would damage him if he grew up in a home with parents who fought as much as we did. Finally she asked me to leave because she couldn’t do that to him. And she hated doing it. She hated me for not being able to come through for her. 

I’m not writing this to say it was entirely my fault that our marriage ended—things are always more complex than that. I am not writing this to say that I still grieve for our marriage—I don’t. Both of us are much happier now, and our son is happy and confident—a wonderful kid. Things have turned out pretty well.

I am writing this because it’s the beginning of the Jewish month of Elul. It is time for me to engage in my heshbon hanefesh, my soul’s accounting. What have I carried around within myself for the past year (or years) that I can let go of? This year during Elul, I have made a deal with myself to begin working very hard to see the world as it is and not how I want it to be. This is not easy, but it is necessary. It means coming to some difficult realizations, like understanding how much my ex-wife really loved me for me, and how I didn’t return that. It means welcoming in all my emotions and experiences, the good and the bad, and accepting that neither the good nor the bad experiences and emotions are the whole of my existence—that both are impermanent.

Master Hakuin is going to be my guide this month. He just accepted things with equanimity.

Think about it: He lived a pure life and he was accused of doing something impure. He must have been angry. I’m sure he was. But he didn’t throw a tantrum and shout “It isn’t fair!” He just accepted his anger along with the situation and said “Is that so?” Is that how it is? Okay, that’s how it is. I will move on and do what needs to be done. His reputation was ruined but he still needed to be a part of the community so he could provide for the baby.

When the girl and her parents came to apologize, he must have been relieved, and maybe angry too. But he didn’t say “See? I told all of you that I was not the kind of monk who would go around getting young women pregnant, but no one believed me!”

When they took the child back he must have been heartbroken. He had cared for the baby for a year, watched her grow and smile and take her first steps. But he didn’t scream “How could you take this child from me now? I have been caring for her! Where have you been, you stupid people? You are breaking my heart!” He just said “Is that so?” Is that how it’s going to be now? I’m going to be heartbroken. I’m going to miss her. That is part of my life now.

Elul is about looking back and letting go of those times when we’ve fallen short of that equanimity and, not being a Zen master, I have fallen short a lot. Heshbon hanefesh is called an accounting, but  it’s not about tallying as much as it’s about accepting. It’s a letting go, but a strange one because it’s about welcoming those things of which we are letting go.

Honestly, heshbon hanefesh is more like meditation than accounting. During meditation we are taught not to stop thinking, but to allow our thoughts to arise as they will, to welcome them, but not to follow them. Instead, we observe them and let them fall away. That’s what we are doing, maybe on a slightly bigger scale, during Elul. We are allowing our lives over the past year arise as they will, we are observing them and letting them fall away. When I do this on the meditation cushion I get up feeling clearer and refreshed—ready to move through the day. My hope is that when I move out of Elul and into Rosh Hashanah, I will feel similarly ready to move through another year of my life.

5 Comments
March 27, 2012

Eleven Months, Part 3: Not at Some High Place Along the Way.

This has been moving through my mind for the last couple of weeks:

Birth is a beginning, And death a destination.
And life is a journey:

From childhood to maturity; And youth to age.
From innocence to awareness; And ignorance to knowing.
From foolishness to discretion; And then, perhaps, to wisdom.

From weakness to strength; Or strength to weakness
– And, often, back again.
From health to sickness, And back, we pray, to health again.

From offense to forgiveness, From loneliness to love,
From joy to gratitude, From pain to compassion,
And grief to understanding – From fear to faith.

From defeat to defeat to defeat – Until, looking backward or ahead,
We see that victory lies
Not at some high place along the way,
But in having made the journey, stage by stage,
A sacred pilgrimage.

Birth is a beginning And death a destination.
And life is a journey, A sacred pilgrimage
– To life everlasting.

(Gates of Repentance, p 283)

It’s a poem from the Kol Nidrei service in Gates of Repentance: Reform Judaism’s machzor. It was written by a rabbi named Alvin Fine.

Growing up, my rabbi read it almost every week at Friday night services. My mother loved that rabbi.

“…Victory lies not at some high place along the way, but in having made the journey…”

I wish my mother had gone to services more so she could have heard this man, for whom she had so much love and respect, repeat those words. She didn’t and I think, up until the end as the paramedics worked to resuscitate her for the final thirty minutes of her life, she hoped for some victory. Some victory that never came, but to which she was so attached that she missed out on massive amounts of potential happiness, and mired herself in misery and anger.

I’m on the table at the acupuncturist when the intern’s supervisor comes in and tells me, in no uncertain terms, that living primarily in my head is not viable. “In the end,” he says “The body always wins, so listen to your body now before it’s too late. That body will win—it will die.”

We don’t get a lot of time here and our bodies remind us of that most days. But listening to those reminders can enrich our life. Thich Nhat Hanh, in the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings, explains that “…Looking deeply at our own suffering can help us cultivate understanding and compassion…”

“Life everlasting,” I think, starts with compassion.

Leave a comment
January 3, 2012

Re: Dedication

Hanukkah ended December 28 at sundown, so—you know—I’m writing about it on January 3.

Hanukkah is complex.

Really.

A lot more complex than we think. The story of Hanukkah is the story of a miracle, and a military victory in a civil war. It is the story of a holiday postponed, and of  the rededication of a holy place.

Also, there are presents, potato pancakes, and jelly doughnuts.

Maybe it’s because of its history, or maybe because it’s a relatively low-level holiday in the Jewish calendar, but Hanukkah has been subject to more interpretation than pretty much any other Jewish holiday. Hanukkah, it seems, is all things to all people.

So, now the menorahs are put away. The excess candles have been thrown into a drawer.  The very notion of food fried in oil nauseates us.  Until we start all over again on 25 Kislev next year. Now it’s time to get on with the rest of the year.

But I’m still thinking about it.

Pretty much everything about Hanukkah goes back to the rededication of the Temple. It’s all of everything I said it is,  but at the center of it all is that rededication. That cleaning up and search for holiness. There is a lot of talk about using Hanukkah as a chance to rededicate oneself to one’s values. This is a pretty decent idea, I think, and it’s a good time of year for it.

Hanukkah falls near the Winter Solstice—the shortest day of the year and a day when many people, including me, take a look at themselves and think about what needs to change over the next six months, as the world is getting lighter each day and we need those candles less and less.

Hanukkah also falls relatively near New Year’s Day—the biggest day of the year for the business managers of gyms and yoga studios around the world.

But, as with all those gym and yoga studio memberships, it’s too easy to forget about the holiness we might have found. Actually, even the Hasmoneans—the famed Macabees of Hanukkah—forgot about their duty after not too long; in the end, they were best known for their corruption.

Rededication is hard work, and it needs to keep going even after the candles are in the drawer. So I am writing about Hanukkah after Hanukkah as a reminder to myself to keep up with that dedication. I should also probably eat more jelly doughnuts throughout the year.

1 Comment