The Dance of Love and Hate

All life is a dance.  We choose a partner (or series of partners) and begin the intricate pattern of steps. If it is a good match, we compliment one another.  As one takes a step forward, the other moves back.  There is a comfortable synchronicity when both are in harmony with one another.  A bad match is when both partners move in opposite directions at the same time. 

A dance instructor shared with me that the best, most fluid, dancers anticipate the other’s moves and move with them.  These are the pros.  They seem to just skate across the floor.

There are some, I learned, that continually vie for the spot of ‘leader’.  In that dyad, the dance more closely resembles a wrestling match than a rhumba.

I strongly suspect, though, that all dancers experience times when they feel an urgent deed to break out of the set mould.  The follower becomes frustrated and wants a chance to lead.  Or, the leader needs some relief from the onerousness of leading.

This is the dance of life.  It is a series of punctuated moments of progression and regression; of love and hate, proximity and distance.  In every love relationship there is movement toward deeper, more mature love and, then, withdrawal.  One psychoanalyst (Monica) believes that we all do this rhythmic dance in order to preserve ourselves, protect our fragile ego.

 Hopefully, the movement forward will always be more progressive than the steps taken backing away.

Over the past few years incredible progress has been made between Israel and the Palestinians.  Who would have thought that even a tenuous peace was possible after so many decades of bile and hatred?   It was not so long ago we viewed each other as demons.  Now we look at one another with hope.

Who would have thought that Birmingham Alabama would have a black mayor?

Who could have imagined rapprochement with our former Cold War enemies?       

Or reconciliation in Northern Ireland?

Progress does not come without the possibility of regress.   “Two steps forward, one back,” so to speak.  If this backward step is a necessary step for movement toward a greater, more secure peace we will mourn our dead and then celebrate the living.

Commanded to Live

Every generation has its thinkers and thought processes.  Albert Camus defined life in the 1950’s.  His view was anything but optimistic.  In fact Camus viewed the world as a rather dark, insidious place.  Life, he said, is rife with pain and disappointment.  For him, not committing suicide was a great accomplishment.  The sixties struggled with the beatnik generation of wanderlust and discovery.  That in turn gave birth to the rebellious 60’s and 70’s.  Alvin Toffler dove in with his plastic society and the maddening pace of technology.  We grew slackjawed with the Nixon era, reactionary with Reaganism. 

Nowadays, we reach for instructionals that will allow us to feel.  The sad fact is that we are overwhelmed with stimuli and, for the most part, have grown indifferent to life.  That is why bookshelves are lined with ‘how to –

be a good lover,

live a fulfilled life,

understand the other sex,

grapple with God….

       A man began to come to shul with great regularity.  About the time of his second child becoming bar mitzvah, Eddy began to show up every week.  He would linger after services and ask me questions about any Jewish idea that came to his head.  As time progressed he converted his home kosher. So I asked him "Eddy, why the sudden change in your attitude and observance?” 

Thoughtful for a moment he looked at me and finally responded.  “When I was young my wife and I were involved in Buddhism.  We attended Ashrams and learned how to meditate.  One day the Master was coming and we were granted a two-minute audience with him.  I asked the Master, “What road should I take?”  He answered that we must first find out about the faith we were born into, Judaism.

“So we returned to this shul and discovered that everything we had there is available here.  We just didn’t know it.”

There are 613 mitzvot.  They touch upon virtually every imagined area of life, and then some.  Underlying all these concepts is being aware of ourselves.  Everything we think and say, the actions we perform and those we refuse to do, defines us.  If we are tired the antidote is to do a mitzvah, if we are elated the vehicle of expression is to do a mitzvah, when we have time on our hands or too little of it, we engage in mitzvot.  Mitzvot make us alive.  They bring vibrancy and meaning to the moment.  And best of all, they are ours!

“Every person is supposed to view themselves as if they had personally been redeemed from slavery,” declares the Pesah Haggadda.  Feeling is the path to mitzvah.          

Living in the Future

Here is a parable for our lives:

A family climbs aboard a train.  They have no car, no place to call home either.  Each member carries his own suitcase.  The parents have their heavy suitcases full of a lifetime’s accumulations.  The children bear only small packages.

The little ones have a future.  And that future is worth all the massive suitcases in the world.

Yet, in both instances grip our suitcases as if they are the only things in the world.  We live in the present rocketing toward some determined destination.  We bought the ticket, boarded the train, packed our valuables and believe we have taken all the necessary steps for taking charge of our destiny.  But that is far from the truth.  After many years of life we ultimately conclude that we have little power to control our future.

The late Carl Sagan once explained the difference between an astronomer and an astrologer: “An astronomer can predict precisely where every star will be at 11:30 on any given night, but cannot say the same for his teenage daughter. For that, you need an astrologer!”

We all have dreams, visions and extensive plans for the future.   Retirement accounts and insurance are a hedge against our well-devised plans.   And still the unforeseen happens.  Throughout the ages people have turned to divination, necromancy, enchantments, horoscopes, I ching, and cryptic biblical passages that they believe will open the gates of what-will-come.“  Indeed, he does not know what is to happen,” declares King Solomon, “even when it is on the point of happening, who can tell him?” 

In the Talmud, the sage Rabbi Yochanan taught: “Since the Temple was destroyed, prophecy has been taken from prophets and given to fools and children.”  Rabbi Yochanan was warning us against placing faith in our articulately designed plans.  Indeed, countless horrors have been committed throughout history because nations and religions refused to conform their beliefs to reality. Instead they sought to make reality conform to their beliefs, which resulted in terrible events (thank God there were no catastrophes because of the Mayan calendar last year).

Again the wise Solomon advises, “When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider this: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, no one can discover anything about their future.”

Do not live your life trying to peer behind impenetrable curtains.

Seek joy.  Live each day.

Stepping Out

It is always a choice.

A bird steps out from its perch high atop the cliff.  The winds loop, roil, and howl up here.  It is a dangerous first step.  Fear could paralyze the trajectory of the bird.  It knows that if its mind seizes up, everything will become a hopeless jumble; the bird might forget its appointed task.  Dark images begin to crowd to the mind’s eye of how its small body would twist hopelessly through the air not knowing which direction was up or down.  It may even crash into the cliff in the long screech to death.  The plummet would be inevitable.  If that vision were allowed to become concretized in the bird’s imagination it would mean the end for the bird.

Fear takes control.  It breaks the focus and steady contact with our higher self.  Fear disconnects us from our strength.  Fear separates us from us.  Sapping our energy we become pawns to chance winds and malicious designs.  We are prey for evil influences.  At best, we survive.  At worst we fall short of meeting our destiny and wind up despising what we have become.

There is another way.

The bird may gingerly push off from its nook, spread out its wings to catch the breeze.  At once it is in flight, afloat on invisible strings from heaven.  With thoughtful and deliberate motions the wings start to move in tandem with the rising winds.  They are buffeted and pulled upward closer to the clouds.  Upward.  The power is intoxicating.  Soaring, an overwhelming exhilaration takes hold.  It is done. 

“This is who I am!”  “This is my path!” 

The realization brings the bird to the limits of its capability.  No, it brings them closer to their new expanded potential.   The boundaries of the universe have been stretched.

The wings flap and tilt and direction is changed.  Another shift and the flight pattern takes a sudden dive.  Racing even faster than the flow  of air now the bird gleefully pulls out of the rapid descent and once more is borne higher and higher.

It is a choice that has been made. 

Reality itself is a choice.  We choose to be victims.  Or we can be beacons of endless energy and potential.

It is true that there are times we may feel crowded by external factors – people pushing us off the cliff -- but the decision always belongs to us alone.

We decide which road we take.  We choose where we wish to live.  We opt to simmer with rage.  We can choose to forgive.  We make the decision to judge someone favorably.  We can damn them and us.  The endless loops that replay in the mind causing endless bouts of angst are not beyond our control.  

Each of us possess the greatest gift of God; endless potential.

Allow us to step off the edge into the air, Lord Master.  Make us firm in the conviction to trust ourselves and You.   Help us to let go of the earth that binds and constricts our consciousness.  Give us the courage to forgive them.  Grant us the strength to forgive ourselves.  Trust.   Help us to choose, Avinu, our Father, the ultimate path of life.

Derekh Eretz

Certain Hebrew terms convey great meaning.  Yiddish is the same.  Ever try translating ‘shmooze’?  Or ‘noodnik’?   Or ‘oy gevalt’?

The phrase derekh eretz is similar.  It conveys great depth.  Derekh eretz literally means the way of the land.  But the inner meaning of the phrase goes well beyond that.

Our ancient tradition has laws that cover just about every situation we would ever encounter.  We know how much tzedakah to give, how to give it; what kind of spouse to choose; how to litigate; what is kosher and how often to have sex.  Yet the one thing the tradition cannot legislate is derekh eretz.

The Torah tells us what honesty means but it cannot detail the intricacies of facial expression, body movement, or the way we look at one another.  There are just too many variables to consider!

          For example.  The Torah tells us to respect our elders.  It says that we should show them courtesy and deference that.   Yet, what does this mean?  Rabbenu Yonah of Gerona, centuries later, interprets to mean that when speaking to or about the elderly and scholarly we are to use words of respect.  This is derekh eretz.

The Midrash makes a remarkable statement when it says derekh eretz kodma la’Torah, that is, even before the Torah was given, humanity was endowed with a sense of derekh eretz, an understanding of correct behavior.  While the Torah teaches us how to conduct our personal and communal lives it is understood that without derekh eretz all else is devalued.

The Talmud states that a wise person does not open his mouth before being addressed by one much wiser; they do not interrupt another mid-sentence; they do not reply hastily…”.  All these ideas are one person’s attempt to address what is derekh eretz.  It is ultimate common sense.

         A friend tells the story of a newspaper boy standing in the cold rain.  An old man saw the boy shivering in a doorway and went to buy a paper.  “My boy, aren’t you terribly cold standing here?”  The boy looked up with a warm smile and said “I was, sir, before you came.”

         This is derekh eretz.