love | A Very Narrow Bridge

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.

August 28, 2014

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

I just want to say, before I say anything else, that the first draft of this was written as a text message to someone. If my writing seems even stranger than usual, you should blame her. I know I do. I’m sort of grateful for that.

Anyway. The title for this blog comes from a quote from Rebbe Nachman of Breslov.

כל העולם כלו גשר צר מאד והעקר לא לפחד כלל
The entire world is a very narrow bridge and the essential thing is not to be afraid at all.

Except for when we should. Because sometimes fear is the right thing to feel.

Rebbe Nachman actually knew this.

I mean, he wasn’t lying when he said we shouldn’t be afraid. It’s just that he was talking about something else altogether.

He taught that there were two kinds of fear. One of them is pachad, and one of them is yir’ah.

Pachad is the one we don’t need.

It’s illusory fear. Fear of of the world created by our mental constructs—from our misconception of separateness. If we believe we are separate, we believe we can lose or win, or that we can have our heart broken, or suffer humiliation, or generally end up in a really shitty place.

And, usually, that’s what happens when we cling to this kind of fearful view of the world.

Rabbi Alan Lew, teaching in Rebbe Nachman’s name, calls it “… the fear of the phantom, the fear whose object is imagined.”

It’s this sort of fear of illusion that leads us to a sense that we are right and they are wrong. The sort of worldview that makes us believe that some lives are worth more than other lives. That sort of thing.

Frankly, it makes the world a shittier place because it’s very difficult to find compassion when we get so wrapped up in fear. Nachman, like so many other spiritual teachers, didn’t want that for us.

Then there’s the other kind of fear, yir’ah: That’s just love.

Seriously.

It’s the fear that’s associated with connection. The overwhelming feeling that comes with access to the incredibly powerful Love that is the basis of…well… everything.

Here’s what Rabbi Lew said about it:

“It is the fear that overcomes us when we suddenly find ourselves in possession of considerably more energy than we are used to, inhabiting a larger space than we are used to inhabiting.”

That’s Love, right?

But it’s still scary as hell because it involves having to shed a sense of who we think we are and what we think we deserve. Yir’ah wants to open us up to the truth about Love. It’s everywhere. All the time. It’s overwhelming and huge and really hard to appreciate and understand.

But it’s also very present between us and the people we love. When we see (or feel the presence of ) a person, or a dog—or whatever we love, we realize that the love we are feeling is coming from them as much as it’s coming from us.

We are reflecting back the love in them, and they are reflecting back the love in us. And it’s actually that huge, overwhelming, inconceivable Love. In that moment, that look, that feeling, we are just focusing that Love and bouncing it back and forth to each other.

That’s what happens when an interaction with someone becomes the whole of the Universe for a moment. We allow ourself to open up to that Love. Love, the Universe, God—you can call it what you want. Whatever we call it, we are completely open to it for that moment.

And that’s really terrifying.

And it’s supposed to be.

2 Comments

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.

February 1, 2014

Who Do You Think You Are, Anyway?

Benno: Ha, ha. You’re a spiritual teacher whether you own up to it or not. Ha, ha!

Harry: Am not!

Benno: You are this thing you are. And I, personally, really don’t care what you call that. Colleague, friend, advisor, teacher…don’t care. I just like that we have the conversations that we have.

Yes. My friends are really like that…some of them are even worse.

It’s easy to repeat the question “Who do you think you are?” to yourself. It’s easy for me to repeat it to myself, anyway.

But am I the best judge of that? I’m not sure. I think maybe not always.

I have all sorts of ideas of who and what I am built up. Some of them are right and some of them are very wrong. Sometimes I am able to just be who I am, unapologetically. Sometimes I get myself tied up in Gordian knots and I have no idea how to cut through them. So I try to be something else. Try to present people with what I think they might want me to be.

But that doesn’t work. When I try to prove how mindful, smart, thoughtful…whatever else…I am, I just end up asking myself again: “Who do you think you are?”

And the more I choose—or avoid—titles for myself, the worse it gets. Sometimes to the point of absurdity:

“You call yourself Shabbat-observant, but you just turned the light out in the bathroom?” or “You call yourself a yogi but you leaned on the horn and called the guy in the Escalade an asshole to yourself for driving like that?” or even “You call yourself a loving father and yet you would buy conventional bananas instead of organic?”

I’m not always completely mindful. Of my spiritual practices, of my temper, of what I eat. You can ask around, people will tell you it’s the truth.

But those same people, some of those same people at any rate, will tell you that I am mindful, smart, thoughtful and a whole bunch of other things. Because, they see me.

Me. Not their conceptions of me. Or my conceptions of myself. Me.

And they know that I am what I am, and who I am.

Because I opened to them. I just let them see me. Whether it’s upside down in the yoga studio, or at the bagel place, or in the meditation hall, or wherever. I just opened to them.

And it was terrifying.

And that’s hilarious.

The other day I read this:

It is essential to surrender, to open yourself, to present whoever you are to the guru, rather than trying to present yourself as a worthwhile student. It does not matter how much you are willing to pay, how correctly you behave, how clever you are at saying the right thing to your teacher…. Such deception does not apply to an interview with a guru, because he sees right through us. Making ingratiating gestures is not applicable in this situation; in fact it is futile. We must make a real commitment to being open with our teacher; we must be willing to give up all our preconceptions.

—Chögyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism (39)

You can substitute any number of titles for “guru”, “teacher”, or “student” and it will still be true.

Those titles don’t matter because we are these things we are and the people to whom we truly open ourselves don’t care what we call ourselves. They will always see us for who we are no matter what. And we will always see them the same way: Honestly, compassionately, and with love.

The trick is that we have to also send some of that love to ourself.

Terrifying.

Hilarious.

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

August 22, 2013

Grammar and Love

It’s halfway through Elul. How’s that heshbon hanefesh coming along, Harry?

So. Anyway…

I’m just going to cut to the chase.

This week we read Ki Tavo (Devarim [Deuteronomy] 26:1 – 29:8).

There’s a nice part about bringing fruit to the Temple. More blessings. More curses. More things to avoid doing so you won’t be cursed. Threats of never-ending hemorrhoids. Seriously. Never-ending hemorrhoids. Check it out: Devarim 28:27.

But in the middle (before the hemorrhoids) there’s this, which is more important (26: 17-18):

אֶת-יְהוָה הֶאֱמַרְתָּ, הַיּוֹם: לִהְיוֹת לְךָ לֵאלֹהִים וְלָלֶכֶת בִּדְרָכָיו, וְלִשְׁמֹר חֻקָּיו וּמִצְו‍ֹתָיו וּמִשְׁפָּטָיו–וְלִשְׁמֹעַ בְּקֹלוֹ

וַיהוָה הֶאֱמִירְךָ הַיּוֹם, לִהְיוֹת לוֹ לְעַם סְגֻלָּה, כַּאֲשֶׁר, דִּבֶּר-לָךְ; וְלִשְׁמֹר, כָּל-מִצְו‍ֹתָיו

26:17 Today you have selected Adonai to be your God, to walk in His ways, to keep his hukim and his mitzvot, and His mishpatim, and to listen to His Voice.

26:18 And God has selected you today to be His treasured people, as He told you, and you should keep all his mitzvot.

Hukim are statutes and mishpatim are ordinances. Both are important.

I’m just going to keep thinking of mitzvot as connections.

Traditionally, mishpatim are laws that reason would suggest are necessary. Laws against murder, robbery, adultery—that sort of thing. Hukim are different. They don’t make sense. Laws about not mixing wool and linen in the same cloth. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Hold onto that thought for a minute. It’s going to be important, I promise.

I suck at Hebrew grammar, so I will probably get this completely wrong, but the verb form that the word for “selected” takes in those verses is the hiphil which is often used to denote the causative. In fact this extremely informative video explains just that.

So, the verses could be read: “Today God is causing you to select Him…” and “And you are causing God to select you…“

Honestly, that’s not my interpretation. Rashi’s grandson, Rashbam said it first.

So what?

God caused the Israelites to select Him. The Israelites caused God to select them.

Remind you of anything?

“You told me that silly story, and it made me fall for you.” “You always listened and remembered, and it made me love you.”

God and the Israelites fell in love.

Love is a connection.

Love involves some rules that make sense: “Don’t cheat on me.” Or “I want you there with me on the best day of my life and on the worst day of my life.” Those make sense. They are logical. Right?

Sometimes love involves rules that don’t make any sense: “I took out the garbage last time, it’s clearly your turn.” Seriously, who cares as long as the garbage goes out?

Love sometimes makes sense, and sometimes it makes no sense at all. But it’s always a connection. It should always be a rootedness.

If it doesn’t have that connection, that rootedness, no amount of making sense will make it work. And, I suppose, if it doesn’t have that completely illogical part, it will be boring.

How often have I missed that?

Welcome to my Elul.

A Very Narrow Bridge

Tag: love

November 19, 2014