Wonder

 Wonderful” starts with wonder.  Can anything be truly wonderful if we do not feel the well of amazement when experiencing it?  

The most deeply religious men and women of history were consumed by “radical amazement.”  They peered at the world through lenses that saw the miraculous in the mundane.  This is the primary difference between the religious and the non-religious.

A colleague tells the story of a child looking up to her father, pointing to the heavens and asking, “Daddy what is up? Beyond the sky?”

“Ether, my child.”

At this the little one crinkled her nose and turned her attention to other things.

The task of an educator (and who is not an educator to a child?) is to enlarge her horizons, not to limit inquisitiveness or crush curiosity.

Make no mistake: Wonder is not the sole purview of children or tzaddikim.  It abides in each of us and must be allowed to swim in the endless ocean of life.  Stand by the shore of the sea or smell a fragrance, the rabbis tell us, and say a blessing.  Why?  Such an utterance allows us to give way to jaw-dropping inspiration.

Albert Einstein wrote that, “The supreme task [of scientists] is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction.  There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them…”

Sit back, gaze at the stars and feel awestruck.  You have not forgotten how to do that, have you?  No, it is like riding a bicycle.  Once you know, you always know.  What draws us away from feeling amazement are the pulls on our time that want to make us believe that they have something more important to tell us.  There is nothing more meaningful than being still, saying a single prayer with kavanah (meaning), hugging love and hanging on to them feeling your emotions overflow, tasting your food, not questioning helping another or being thankful for your eyesight.  That is why the ancient ones tells us that we must utter one hundred blessings each day.  In being aware of the multitude of miracles that surround us we become elevated.  And happier.  Much happier.

The Pathless Path

There is no answer.

There never has been a n answer.

There never will be an answer.

That’s the answer.  

~Gertrude Stein

 

Isn’t that wonderful?

Think Positive

To have an effect on the way a day turns out is no small achievement.

Years ago my young son got into trouble when he stubbornly refused to clean his room.  It was wall-to-wall shmutz.  As he continued to defiantly oppose the prospect of cleaning the room, shaking his head defiantly, he was punished.

Later that day, when he was out playing, he tripped, fell and skinned both knees.  He cried at the sight of the jagged skin and blood.  The pain was made infinitely worse by the horrid look of his mangled knees.

We dressed the leg after cleansing it and then applied an anti-bacterial ointment.  Afterward, he went out to play, much more carefully now and with noticeably less agility.

By mid-afternoon, this seven-year-old had lost his two Ninja Turtle action figures, merely a few hours old.  Together we launched a search mission but met with no success.

After these episodes, my son entertained himself with crayons and abundant imagination.  He played in the kitchen with them the long afternoon. At dinnertime he was positively beaming when I gave him his plastic turtle figures, which I had found on the front lawn.

To anyone but a kid such a day would’ve been devastating.

Compare:

>Having a “tiff’ with our friend or spouse

>Banging our fingers on the door or breaking a fingernail.

>Losing our ring somewhere near the kitchen counter.

What I have personally witnessed such a day would bring many to their knees in despair.  And we all know that the potential for things to go wrong is enormous.

When we get up in the morning Jewish tradition tells us to say the following prayer:

My God.

The soul You have given me is pure, for You created it. You formed it and You made it live within me. You watch over it daily. One day, you will take it from me and bring it to everlasting life.

God and God of my fathers, as long as this soul is within me I will declare that You are the master of all deeds, the ruler of all creatures and the Lord of every living soul.

Blessed are you Lord, who brings life to the lifeless, exhausted body.

Perhaps one the greatest human achievements is to allow the 10 wonderful things that happen to us every day, to outweigh the one negative event.

Choose Joy

Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, included as a part of our new democracy the right to pursue “happiness.“  

With all the grousing that we see on the nightly news, read in our papers, hear on radio, listen to in the aisles of the supermarket, and in conversations between friends you may begin to believe that happiness is a rare phenomenon.  Listen to what we talk about.  The weather is terrible, so-and-so has cancer, the next-door neighbor is a braggart, personal betrayals, unsatisfactory jobs, dishonest politicians, and someone’s dog always goes on our lawn.  Is finding happiness really that difficult that its opposite seems to fill our days?

People define personal happiness in a variety of ways but it seems elusive. 

Rebbe Nachman, a particular hero of mine, wrote, “The human’s image-making faculty is the source of all temptation.  If it becomes dominant, it results in depression…one forgets one’s purpose in life.  We have to fight back and aim to be continually happy so as to break the power of our imagination.” 

Nachman was indicating the idols we craft and the danger they create.  When we equate “things” with happiness we are making idols that will doom us to sadness.  No thing has the power to make us happy.  That which makes us happy is purpose.  And, of course, there is no greater purpose than the goal of proximity to God.

Why would closeness to God create joy?  There are several possibilities:

1.     A relationship with God is not self-defining or physically enriching.  It is a search, a question, and deep concerned thought.  It is direction, purpose.

2.     It is quiet.  Connection with God is meaningful moments of solitude and reflection bringing us focus and calm.

3.     Prayer is a paradox.  At once it elevates while another time it carries us to new sobering realizations about the self.  We do not necessarily get what we want but we get what we need.

4.     Closeness to God is not automatic.  It comes because we desire it.  The want to be close to our Maker pushes away the idols, which we have given too much attention to and have made us mostly unhappy.

Happiness is a choice, reveals Rebbe Nachman.  It is both a choice and takes ongoing effort.  It is also something our Founding Fathers believed was connected to God.  After all, that sentence in the Declaration of Independence includes “the Creator” as a part of that right and path to happiness.  It almost goes without saying that the Torah leads us to that same conclusion time and again.   Isn’t every tale we read in Genesis - from Adam to Joseph – about the human path to happiness including God?

Eleventh century scholar, Judah HaLevi wote, “Your contrition on a fast day is not more acceptable to Him than your joy on the Sabbath and holy days, it if is the outcome of a devout heart.”  Yom Kippur is surely a great day of reckoning and awe.  Yet, what God knows, and what He wants us to learn, is that the joy of life is supposed to outweigh the “oy” of life.  In the faith of our ancestors we actively seek the light of joy.  Drink a toast to God on Friday nights.  Light candles and bless Him and the ones you love.  Say a prayer for someone.  Sing the Sh’ma as you put your head on your pillow.

Happiness

Happiness is temporal. It tends to come in washes. As soon as happiness sweeps in it is drawn back into the vast ocean before the next wave comes.

As a society we are obsessed with happiness.  We want it.  Buying more things is supposed to bring happiness and it usually does until the joy of newness wears off.  Then we go shopping once again for the happiness fix.  The same can be said for the completed business deal or quota exceeded or beating our rival.  All these things bring a brief helping of happiness.  Then what?

 Julius Lester wrote, “I don’t like it when gentile and Jewish friends greet me at Rosh Hashanah with “Happy New Year.”  Rosh Hashanah is not the equivalent of January  1.

“I have never understood what “Happy New Year” is supposed to mean.  I’ve never been sure that I want to be wished happiness.  I’m not sure I know what happiness is, or that it is as important as we think.  Happiness feels better than misery, but some of the most important periods of my life have been the ones of profound unhappiness.  For all the feelings of well-being that happiness bestows upon us, it is not the goal of life.”

For our faith, happiness is not found in the goal but the process.  Achievement is usually seen as the end result.  Did we score the sale?  Did we beat the competition?  Yet, as we learn in life (and as Judaism tries to teach), it is the ‘meantime’ that matters most of all.  How we get there is more important than our arrival.

Our sages, of blessed memory, tell us to be conscious of kavannah.  Kavannah is the how of life.  How we pray is important.  That we pray is important but when the act is meaningful, worthwhile, said with fervor, it becomes a powerful life-changing force.

How we speak to other people makes a great difference.  The words may be correct but when facial clues do not match the spoken word, the communication is undermined.

How we eat matters.  How we work, behave, do tzedaka,  or dress may be more important than what we do.   Disingenuous acts do not nourish the soul - neither the giver’s or the receiver’s.  Yet, when we act with kavannah, what we do takes on great meaning.  In fact, the way deeds are executed is the pathway to holiness. 

Shavuot is coming.  It is the anniversary of the Giving of Torah.  Traditionally we study throughout the long night of Shavuot because it is a time of seeking God.  It is the seeking, the quest, the kavannah that is the ultimate and most enduring happiness. 

An old Yiddish saying: “When the head is a fool, the body is in trouble.”  With thought and deliberation even the most insignificant acts become meaningful.

Investing psychic energy into our actions enables them to become holy.