Connection

  Long ago when my son wanted to play with me, he would use this argument, “Abba, if you won’t play with me, I will not be your best friend.”  Always a good attention-grabber.  Turning toward him, I responded, “I do not have to be your best friend. I am your father.  I love you but I don’t have to be your best friend.”

 

What happens behind the scenes takes place somewhere deep in the psyche – unspoken but ever-present – is love.  My son threatens me that unless I do what he wants he will no longer love me.  Love lies at the heart of this and all relationships.

 

Love is tenacious; it defies all logic and reason.  That much I have learned from the instances of betrayal I have dealt with through the years – where the one who was betrayed refuses to give up.  The adultery for them is like an apparition or nightmare.  Soon they will wake up and it will all be gone, they believe.  Love is also tentative; it is never sure that it really exists and it is impossible to test.  How do you know you re loved?  Because they say so?  Or because you feel that way?  What if that love is challenged?  How do we cope with the assault on our feelings?

 

A woman came to me with a complaint.  Her husband had left her and now in the wake of her abandonment she had problems with giving and receiving love.  There were several relationships sin the intervening years and each was a dismal failure.  She whispered in barely audible voice that she believed life had harden her to the point where she was no longer capable of love.

 

We have all been abandoned at various points in our life.  Doesn’t society tell us to seek out new and separate lives from our families, not in avoidance of love but in self-interest, to develop our abilities.  Families do not eat together.  Time is fragmented.  There are plays, ballet and sports.  Mom works.  Dad complains of overwork,  Even vacations are spent being entertained with specific interest and not as a whole unit.  Travel packages cater to programs for all ages.  The result?  More time spent apart.  Family gathering are infrequent, if at all.  Once grandparents and grandchildren lived together.  Now we are on polite and distant terms.  And love suffers.

 

The word “religion” comes from the Latin root meaning “to bind.”  It is little surprise then that as families have drifted apart so has modernity lost its moorings to faith.  

 

Now and then we encounter moments when loneliness and separation dissipate and we converge, as one.  One such time are the Days of Awe.  We come together as a fragmented, broken family to renew our bonds as distant relations and to God as equals.

 

During the Holy Days we recite a litany of sins:

>For the sin of spitefulness

>For the sin of corruption

>For the sin of xenophobia

>For the sin of lying

>For the sin of evading taxed

>For the sin of lust

>For the sin of stealing

All these are presented before the Master of thew universe, pitiful creatures all, seeking the same thing.  Forgiveness.  Absolution.  Healing the brokenness of our hearts and families.

 

In the midrash God quotes Jeremiah: “I have loved you with an eternal love.” (31:3)  “Note that the phrase does not say “endless love” but an eternal love.  Otherwise, you might think that God loves us for two or three year or maybe one hundred years.  But H=s love is everlasting, to all eternity.”

 

Coming together at synagogue on the Holy Days is the great leveler of humanity.  We come seeking love and acceptance and are given it.  We laugh, cry, shudder and touch one another.  The unspoken question: What has happened to us?  And whereto from here?  How can we turn ourselves into a whole one, not fragmented torn and lonely?

 

It is our tradition that a Jew be buried in their own tallit.  We would do well to remember that life is short.  Give up the ego. Check it at the door or in the cloakroom.  Find yourself with those who also want to find themselves and their lost connection.