Category: religion

I’m Looking at the Man in the Mirror

Like so many, I am frustrated.  In large measure, I am frustrated with myself. It is me who needs the work.  Privilege, whiteness, racist and similar words or phrases can be jingoistic, masquerading in a cloak of empathy.   They really have no weight until I confront who I am with honesty and vulnerability.  I have struggled with what I can only describe as our own hypocrisy; far too often we preach and we teach, but we do not fully live the Jewish values we espouse.  How could this not be at the forefront of everything I do for as long as I have been doing it?  What took me so long, why now?  I think back at those interesting words at the beginning of Exodus: And God heard their cry and remembered the Covenant God made. What took God so long?  There were 400 years of suffering and oppression.  What took God so long?

It does not assuage my guilt to take solace in the human time it took God.  Despite knowing I cannot change the past, I struggle with how I affect the future. This only adds to the frustration of knowing I have not done enough to bring us farther along.  And do I really believe in what I proclaim?

Do I have the fortitude and courage to look deep within and grapple with who I am and what I must do to change?  Only then will I be whole enough to join in the battle that our society and humanity as a whole must wage to create the world I profess to believe in.  Will I cross over or find contentment on this side in my narrow but for the most part comfortable space.

We have had opportunities before.  We have moved forward, slowly, haltingly, stumbling often one step forward and two steps back.  In actuality, we have lived with the opportunities to make change continuously.  What makes this moment different?  Will I be like Nachshon, wading deliberately into the unknown Sea of Reeds or be one of those longing for the land of Goshen, that narrow harsh place, whose evils are known but tempered by our thoughts of powerlessness?

Prescriptions are being bandied about. Some might be curative and others little more than a bandage.  Everywhere there are now lists of things proposing changes ostensibly serving to right society’s wrongs.  How could these lists be created so quickly?  Seeing these in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s murder makes me wonder if the answers been known all along. This would imply either the problem is not that complicated or we did not have the strength to enact these prescriptions. We need to ask ourselves which it is.   Or is the problem so deep and thorny as to render it all but impossible to unravel? And we have left the status quo because we are overwhelmed at the enormity of the issue.   At this moment in time are we willing to find out?  Will this time different from all of the other times?    Am I up to the challenge?

 

 

 

This Christmas, Let’s enjoy what we have

Each year I hear the following:

~Put Christ back into Christmas

~Get materialism out of Christmas

~Don’t Mix Hanukkah and Christmas

Do this, don’t do that; lots of proscriptions  and prescriptions.  But maybe we might pause and  appreciate it precisely as it is.

Christmas is more than the birthday of Jesus.  Indeed, as we all know, it is not the day of his birth. That Christmas is more than the  marking of Jesus’ birth is not new.  The idea that we may universalize the message of the holiday has been at the heart of a Christian message, softly spreading of the values at its core.  I have always been taken by the beauty of the idea expressed in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son…”  It is a message of love and light and our world does not have enough of either.  The message is enlightening and one I can deeply appreciate even if I do not embrace the theology.

To those who attend mass or use this as a moment of sacred holiness,  I stand respectfully quiet.  To those who decorate homes with all kinds of festive lights, I drive by like a tourist taking in the spectacle, even grading for taste, presentation, originality, and use of the secret ingredient (with deference to Iron Chef).  For those who gather the family to share a meal and time together, I only wish we had more reasons to do that.  For those who give gifts, no matter how big or small, I hope that each gift is an expression of love and caring for both the giver and the receiver, bringing both close together.

Christmas in America is beautiful, even those parts some of us just don’t get.  But that is okay.  So, to everyone,  a very Merry Christmas (and a Happy New Year)!

 

Living a Meaningful Life, we begin Elul with Parsha Re’eh

In the Torah, Moses sets out a choice for us this past week.  Blessings and curses.  It is a deceptively easy binary choice.  Given good stuff or bad stuff as alternatives, it seems like a no-brainer.  I opt for the good stuff!

But it’s really not so simple.  For what does that mean for us to choose the Blessings,  especially to us in the modern world?  That is the fundamental question to consider in the month of Elul, leading up to the Yamim Noraim, these special High Holidays.  Perhaps we, like our ancestors, are metaphorically also on the verge of entering into our own Promised Land. It is more complicated than: Choose Blessings and you go in; Choose Curses and you stay out.  Because it is about more than entering The Land; it is about living fully while there, possessing it and becoming one with it.

During Elul, as we prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we ponder the choices we make in our lives.  As we reflect on the year past, we see successes and failures. And as we look ahead, we use this understanding to chart our course.   Are we on the path we want to be on, the one we should be on, the one we need to be on?  And presuming we have been blown off course by the winds and currents of life, how do we right our ship and get back on our path?

Elul is our time to consider these questions.  Before we can ask for forgiveness we need to know where we went astray and maybe understand why.  Before we can ask to be written in the book of life, we need to know what it means to choose a life of blessings so that this coming year brings us meaning and connection.  Then we are able to approach the Divine to make things right and set a course forward for a year where we deliberately choose blessings, knowing what they are and how we might pursue them.

L’Shanah Tova!