The Loneliness of Pain: Steps in Self-Recovery
Alone in the pain, dis-connected from loved ones in anguish
The limb the head the heart autonomous from my will
Each beating its own rhythmic lashes
On the most sensitive face of my soul
This inscription of the soul's hidden desire
And the body as instrument of torture.
What can this message be?
I remain alone even in deciphering the code
Some payment of a moral debt maybe
A ritual infraction, a long forgotten hurt maybe?
I rack my throbbing brain to think of something that will do
justice to this interminable
Suffering.
Is it possible for a moment for there to be no meaning to it all?
No ultimate design, no satisfaction by some accusing angel?
No district attorney waiting his smile to break
No judgement meted out by the gavel hitting the wooden
desk? At the end of the day?
Merely suffering for its own sake like the rows of bodies
wrapped tightly in grimy blankets
Along the sidewalk of Bombay streets as I speed to the
airport to escape these teeming masses
Each one surely in pain
Each one desiring a better life
Each one doing his or her own reckoning with the almighty
as to the meaning of their circumstance and its justice.
"Resist that at all cost, my mind interjects
For is it not more important to suffer for a reason
Can one at least bear it better?
With dignity even
But even this is too much for me as I situate myself once more
In a post-Holocaust age of technology and indifference
Suicide bombings of Pizza Huts in Jerusalem and Twin
Towers burning, bodies falling, etched in the soul forever.
No, for me meaning is a luxury I cannot afford and must
rest with the brute force of the facts, the reality as-it-is,
allowing it to work its devilish desire on my mind, yes I resist
For the sake of their memory
For the sake of my patients
For the sake of those who's suffering was pointless
'A mere act of nature' they said
'The force of Revolution' they said
'Social upheavals' they said
'The price we must pay for progress' they said.
Even 'what we must do to hasten the Messiah' they said.
For my mission is to remain in that space between the
Twin Towers, where meaning is as yet unclear,
I am the boatman who takes people across the river
I am the doorman who allows my patients in to this next corridor
With their baggage in hand
Making that path a little easier.
In this loneliness, of your pain
I reach out to you
I put my hand on your shoulder
I bless you to suffer well.
You are not alone
For in my soul I make space for you to enter
To feel my protection and care
To feel me feeling your anguish as real
I hold you close and wish you would feel more secure, so
that somehow you will take that leap into the abyss,
Knowing I'll be there for you,
Not letting go
That is my promise,
So you can fall well, into the abyss
Knowing I'll be there for you
Into the space of self-knowledge as prelude to a new awareness
Into the light of a new realization
That somehow in its typically uncanny way
Your soul knows
In some deep way
That this was meant to be
That this was not meaningless
That in some deep as yet impenetrable way
The travesty of this was appropriate
That there is a message to the pain
To the anguish
Yet to be unearthed
But present for you.
And that together we walk this path of pain
In this space I now hold you
Soothing your wounds along the way
Like a pregnant father sitting by the head of his wife in labor
Gently wiping her forehead with a wet cloth
And whispering loving words to ease her pain
To distract her spasms
Before the new life emerges.
In this space I know hold you
Soothing your wounds as best I can
But even more in the knowing
You and me
The wounded teaching the healer all along more than he
could ever learn alone
In that space between the Twin Towers
Between us
The divinity of presence
Between us
The sacred space of non-absurdity
Where we share the awareness of meaning and hold the
dignity of our suffering.
Blessings and Miracles
About 3 years ago I went in to this Rabbi for a blessing.
"He said why don't you bless your patients!"
I looked incredulously at him.
Are you kidding?
Me! Bless my patients!
What do you take me for!
Some clergyman!
And even if I do
They might think I'm giving them the "last rights" or that I
have some how given up on them or even having failed as
a physician! so instead am resorting to prayer instead of
medication!
But he persisted...
So, out of respect for him
I began to mutter words like "God Bless" at the end of
every session.
Those two words! At first embarrassed I kinda got used to
them after a while!
My gosh what a difference it made...
I had no illusions about myself - make no mistake
I remained a flawed human being
With no "sacred credentials" to presume such sanctity
As the power-to-bless...
All I was doing was following the advice of this Rabbi.
What is a blessing?
What does it mean to bless another
How can a blessing mean anything today, in the context of
technological and medical power, those incredible
advances we have made in medicine and the human
ability to cure disease?
How come we need to resort to age-old rituals and sacred
words in an age of such
advanced scientific medical advance?
To bless is to first and foremost to give
To give of one's inner self
From the depth of one's being
Beyond one's professional capability and medical or
diagnostic prowess.
To give from that place of vulnerability and woundedness
we all share
To give in a posture of humility
To lie side by side with the patient on his or her side of the
aisle
To relinquish the power invested in as a doctor
To become a healer and carry the burden of this suffering
in those words
Then it is to invoke
To surrender to the Higher Power that guides us all
To admit defeat in the presence of Him who givers life
To admit we can only do what we can do
To realize the limitations of our science and art and the
craft of medicine
To see the limits history and current research places on us
To admit we have only gone so far and no further
To surrender to our own limitations as human beings and
care-givers.
Then to it is to ask
Always asking for the gifts
Of life and light
Of healing and repair
Of the heart
The pure heart
To remove all resentment and fear
To bathe us both physician and patient
In the warmth of knowing and feeling the Presence
The gift of Providence
That all will be taken care of
That He is Present to this pain and suffering
That it has meaning after all.
Finally it is to bestow
The deeper connection
That I as healer am present in ways beyond the
prescription and the injection
The prodding and the poking
The examination and the words
The diagnosis and the categories
The X-Rays and MRI's
The mastery of the human body and pathology
The abilities and the lack
That I am present in my own woundedness and frailty
In my own humanity and mortality
For you the patient.
To connect in this deeper way
In the knowledge of my limitations
In the realization of my own pain
Reaching to yours.
And miracles?
Can these occur?
Are they real?
Can they be measured?
Can't everything just go away
Can't things go back to what they were before this crisis?
Can't we just make this a bad dream?
That never happened after all?
Maybe, just maybe
This terrible sickness is a gift
That shows you and I
In such a devastatingly real way
Just how miraculous our ordinary life was and is
What we took for granted all the while
As ordinary
Now seems so desirable and miraculous
The morning breeze
The deep blue sky above with white puffs of clouds
whispering by
The green, deeper-than-green lawn after a fresh rainfall
The flower that recently sprouted outside my window
The fresh scent of lilac or ivy unsuspectedly wafting by me
on a walk
The child giggling and cooing to its mother
The sounds of Glen Gould's Beethoven
The beauty of art and architecture
The magnificence of the largest body of fresh water
stretching to the horizon on a calm day, that incredible
Lake Michigan!
And the raging sea washing up on the rocks, such
awesome power.
The trickling sound of a brook as it cascades down a fall
The taste of goose pate as it first touches the palate in its
complexity of flavors
The deep red wine full of body and vigor sliding down so
creamily
The strength of good single malt with friends
The night sky full of myriads of stellar beings
Each looking down at me form such a distance they no
longer exist
The warm touch of my wife's hand unconsciously passing
over my face during the night
The feeling of that first hug when my darling children
return home
The feeling of safety when I am with my parents
The tear that wells up when a Pete Seeger song
accidentally crosses my consciousness (when flicking the
radio dial), surprising me from out of no-where!
The sense of holiness by the grave of the Saint in a godforesaken
hole in the Ukraine!
The sense of gratitude in waking up each morning alive
And that first conscious breath
That delicious sense of being
And knowing that I have been privileged to live yet another
day.
These are the miracles for me
The miracle of the ordinary-yet-not ordinary life
As I live it
The life I desire
The life I wish to return to
The life I took for granted for so long
For so many years
The life I now see as so precious
And so miraculous
I ask to be granted a little more time
To live that life
That is the miracle for me.
The Four Who Entered the Orchard
The Rabbis taught: Four [Sages] entered the Pardes
[literally "the orchard."] They were Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma,
Acher [Elisha ben Avuya, called Acher -- the other one and
Rabbi Akiva.
Rabbi Akiva said to them [prior to their ascension]: "When
you come to the place of pure marble stones, do not say,
'Water! Water!' for it is said, 'He who speaks untruths shall
not stand before My eyes' (Psalms 101:7)."
Ben Azzai gazed and died. Regarding him the verse
states, "Precious in the eyes of G-d is the death of His
pious ones" (Psalms 116:15). Ben Zoma gazed and was
harmed [he lost his sanity -- Rashi]. Regarding him the
verse states, "Did you find honey? Eat only much as you
need, lest you be overfilled and vomit it up" (Proverbs 25:16).
Acher -- the other one- cut down the plantings [he became a heretic].
Rabbi Akiva entered in peace and left in peace.2
1The Talmud (Chagiga 14b), Zohar (I, 26b) and Tikunei
Zohar (Tikun 40) report the following incident regarding
four Mishnaic Sages.
2Tikunei Zohar adds details not mentioned in the Talmud.
The ancient Saba [an old man] stood up and said [to
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai], "Rabbi, Rabbi! What is the
meaning of what Rabbi Akiva said to his students, "When
you come to the place of pure marble stones, do not say,
'Water! Water!' lest you place yourselves in danger, for it is
said, 'He who speaks untruths shall not stand before My
eyes.' But it is written, "There shall be a firmament
between the waters and it shall separate between water
[above the firmament] and water [below the
firmament]" (Genesis 1:6). Since the Torah describes the
division of the waters in to upper and lower, why should it
be problematic to mention this division? Furthermore,
since there are [in fact] upper and lower waters, why did
Rabbi Akiva warn them, "do not say, 'Water! Water!'" The
Holy Lamp [a title accorded to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai]
replied, "Saba, it is proper that you reveal this secret that
the chevraya! [Rabbi Shimon's circle of disciples] have not
grasped clearly."
The ancient Saba answered, "Rabbi, Rabbi, Holy Lamp.
Surely the pure marble stones are the letter yud -- one the
upper yud of the letter aleph, and one the lower yud of the
letter aleph [an aleph in script is formed by an upright yud
at the top to the right, and an upside-down yud at the
bottom to the left, joined by a vav, the diagonal line
between them]. Here, there is no spiritual impurity; only
pure marble stones, and so there is no separation
between one water and the other; they form a single unity
from the aspect of the Tree of Life, which is the vav in the
midst of the letter aleph. In this regard it states, "[lest he
put forth his hand] and if he take of the Tree of Life [and
eat and live forever] (Gen. 3:22)...
The four
This group of four
Entering the orchard
The very unknowing of what might emerge at the end,
Fearless but with some trepidation no doubt,
Armed with only the desire to see and behold
The Schechina, in Her pristine ness
In Her glory and beauty
Powerless over this desire
They enter fearlessly
Together, then silence.
We remain ignorant as to what actually happened inside
Were there cries and screams?
Was there silence? or noise? of pain?
Inside, during those eternal moments
Inside this orchard, this paradise
Left with only a trace
The effect of that decision recorded in legend and text
Their lives inscribed in Talmud and Zohar
And liturgy, embellished in the matrix of sacred history
Inspiring countless generations of spirit seekers
Warning others to beware
All because of that fateful decision to enter, to taste to
experience the forbidden.
These men
These four men
Never the same again.
The experience to alter their lives forever
Only one emerges unscathed,
Only one picks up where he had left off
Back to school, teaching class
The weekend over,
The trip completed,
Return-to-work status.
But what of the others?
And why?
What really took place there?
We know little except
By all accounts
They were scarred for life
One dead, the other insane, another heresy,
This is what became of those less fortunate three.
So what did they "see" or experience
Could we speculate as to what happened?
Today drugs might do this.
Patients of mine on LSD have reported similar visions
and post –acid hallucinations lasting years.
Surely drugs can affect a person in such a way.
But I prefer an older metaphor
They saw such a trauma
They descended into such a hell
That only the demonic could have affected them so
violently.
(However we speculate can we agree it was violent?)
Four entered into Hell
Four were taken to Sheol against their will.
I mean who would want to go there voluntarily?
Surely we can surmise it was a forced migration
Transfer, deportation and Final Solution.
Yes; let us agree it was deportation or worse a death camp
What they beheld would make three quarters of them
insane, mad or heretical.
Four entered into Auschwitz, Belzec or Sobibor
Four entered but how many emerged whole? Only one.
Theoretically that could be the tentative meaning for this
place.
The term Paradise is then merely an expression used by
the Rabbis to hide the true character of the
trauma...lashon saginahor
A cleansing expression this "orchard" euphemistically
referring to a garden of delight
But so violent and horrific that the Rabbis spared us the
particulars, the facts, the trauma..
And of Akiva what happened?
Do you really think he came through ok? Yatza beshalom?
Wait!
Listen! Fast forward!
To the culmination of his life
His martyrdom
We think so holy
But for him it was nothing compared to a living hell
The lonely survivor of this 'orchard experience'
We know about survivors and their burdens
We know about the nightmares and long-term effects
We know about Post-Traumatic Stress disorders
(DSMI, II, III, and IV-category diagnosis after all;
Officially sanctioned by the American Psychiatric
Association-therefore it exists!)
And for some
Who survive
The better strategy is psychosis
For others, self-mutilation.
So the Romans raking his skin with iron combs and
crucifying him
As they burn him alive
Oh that story,
That martyrology, we read on Yom Kippur
Must be woven into this one;
The orchard on the one hand and the torture and death of
Akiva on the other.
For him this might have been less than we feel when
reading, less of a horror...
After all, he actually continues to teach his students during
the torture
About mesirus nefesh and the Shema our doxology
What gives him this power?
Of course
We may now understand his pain
For now he will be relieved of the living hell
A survivor alone without his three companions
after that so-called 'orchard experience'
Even this Roman hell is better than continuing.
Alone.
Four entered the orchard
One went mad
One committed suicide
One became heretical
And one yatza beshalom came out 'in peace'
But then could not continue to live in peace.
That is our post Holocaust Midrash our 'take'
On the Holy Rabbi Akiva
The single survivor
Four entered but in reality no one escaped Hell
Unscathed
None were the same again.
Only in Tears
The Vurker Rebbe got it right.
Only in tears.
No words. Insufficient. Duplicitous, devious, cannot do it
justice.
Entrapment by words,
words that indict,
words that sentence,
Words that mean two things,
language that conceals more than it reveals,
texts that remain forever opaque to dissection.
Like two lovers embracing, on a city bench, hard wood,
overlooking the River seine, at dusk, the bridges lined with
Victorian lights that flicker, these lovers have no need for
words, just clasped in each other with tears that well up,
tears of yearning longing and desire.
No words needed at the beginning and end of life,
for joy there are tears:
for grief there are tears.
Words remain inadequate at the two ends of life.
So too with God, all the praying, supplication,
benedictions, petitions, Glorias, Sancta's, Hail Marias,
breast-beating confessionals, all these sacred words
remain inadequate, failing as they do, to describe or even
approach the grand Paradox of God.
God in history, God in nature, God in psyche, these
oxymoron, non-sequitors, those meaningless word games
philosophical jargon, betraying only the fraudulence of the
author.
Subject/object, transcendence/immanence, incarnation/
tzimtzum polarities of good and evil faith and Auschwitz
these binaries pale before the atrocity of logic and
decency in the mind of the ultimate software engineer.
Even love, as our two subjects on the hard wooden bench
seem to demonstrate, even love contains such paradox
that cannot encapsulate the sublime experienced by the
groping arms, feelings simultaneously lived in, such as
fear, hatred, powerlessness, attraction, joy and death.
So the Rebbe invites us to jettison words and embrace
tears.
For each drop that slowly wells up in the corner of the eye,
waiting to grow until it descends down the mountainside of
the cheek to leave a trail of white salty tracings lined
vertically and in parallel, etched in the landscape and
contours of the maxilla like the ski marks in snow, contains
within a myriad of feelings most mutually contradictory.
Most sufficient to do justice to the complexity of human
emotion, unlike words.
It is these tears that provide the refraction and prism by
which to look out into man and history, God and dying,
love and hatred, joy and slow painful decline, and see the
utter enigma and uncanniness of it all, in a way that feels
right.
Through the distortion of the pear-shaped teardrop lines
begin to bend, reality curves, that which appeared
symmetrical, aligned, in focus, logical, now appears to no
longer give certainty as to what is real, what truly
represents history and truth.
In such a teardrop all the safety of rules, theorems, laws of
mathematics softens and gives way.
In the lived experience of the tear, its distortion,
I see the only possible strategy to hold my own paradox,
of sanity and
insanity, competence and failures, lies deceits and
betrayals,
To hold on to history and man to have faith in life despite
the horrors of torture and death.
In the tears of the Vurker Rebbe, the deepest torah is
revealed.
Powerless Over My Pain
Finally something I just cannot control
MY PAIN!
Until now, I thought I could control all those little things in
my life.
Until now, I did!
My spouse, my in-laws, my kids, my boss,
Ways I could control by hook or by crook.
That was, until now.
This pain,
This bloody pain,
Will not leave me alone.
Despite the vicodin, the therapy
It eludes all manner of treatment.
Despite the doctors,
Despite the therapists, and pain management
The injections and epidurals
The pain lingers;
A gnawing aching, -at times- sharp like a knife,
At other times, a slow constant reminder of my own
mortality.
It defies me like no other.
It is demonic,
It charms and betrays me
Opening my darker side and my flaws
Like a crack in an otherwise flawless marble.
How could I possible see this as a friend?
As a counselor, as a teacher, as a gift?
Ridiculous!
But there you have it.
That which I cannot control
I must surrender to;
Like in battle. There comes a point when every
commander must make this decision.
To surrender or lose all.
This pain makes me go to places I never wished.
It forces me to confront spaces within I'd rather leave
alone.
Old wounds from childhood, memories from old traumas
There is no escape now.
I am forced to revisit all of this, my package, that which
makes me ME
The good and the bad in the mirror. I wish to see only the
bright side but this pain forces me to see the darker
image.
Old wounds now resurface, the abuse, the violent speech,
the abandonment perceived or real, it matters not now, all
come crowding in with this crazy pain.
All come to pay respects like a cast of characters in a play
after the final performance.
And it is in this powerlessness that I come to surrender.
An unfamiliar experience for me-the control freak.
So painful to relinquish anything to anybody since that
tender age, when abandoned by the fierce demands of
mother, and the failure of father to stick up for me, I made
that solemn oath NEVER again to rely on anybody,
anything, anyone, for my emotional health. Never again
could I TRUST the outside world never to surrender.
Yet here it is I am forced on the precipice between insanity
and pain
To surrender despite my oath.
To surrender my whole self-perception
That is what is being asked from me.
My illness, my pain is teaching me how to surrender.
Teaching me that I need to surrender to some Higher
Power and rely on that which is beyond me. Like a
prisoner I need to release all the old perceptions of self
and give in to that which I have no control of.
And slowly slowly to the degree to which I surrender to this
Higher Power I begin to feel a release, not more pain as I
had assumed, more a release from the grip of it, from the
lancinating knife going through me. And I begin to realize
that healing is taking place.
Not curing for there is no cure for my pain, but the
integration of my pain into something bigger than myself.
The slow realization that I being held by a larger thing or
archetype that allows me to hold my pain along with all the
blessings in my life.
The gift of my pain, the paradoxical gift of my life in all its
facets. This is what is being asked of me.
The Body In Pain
How to construct a new image
In light my recovery and divine intervention?
Re-visit old myths and texts in a new key.
That of salvation
For I have been saved
Not in the local spiritual meaning, far beyond that
But physically, emotionally and soul saving
In a divine act of grace and charity.
Within the pain I watch the body react
And see and perceive the miracle of daily improvement
The breath becomes longer the weak legs get stronger the
aching spasms of the left chest wall remain but respond
better to the heating packs
I also need fewer painkillers.
And realize that I am so powerless over everything in my
life, the accident as well as the speed of recovery,
privileged to have those who love me care for me in
powerlessness,
That these processes are set in the laws of physics and
molecular biology over which I have no control, that I am a
mere participant through which these laws are incarnate
yet I am able to document and watch closely as if I were
interpreting a text: The body as sacred text.
But how to live with the gnawing fact of something divine
in my salvation is the challenge; you know my tradition
does not handle salvation and crucifixion talk well! But
there you have it, a sister canonical text that embodies
notions of suffering and passion, salvation and new
insights. (Simone Weil may have seen this better than
anyone in the last century), but today I prefer Elaine
Scarry's meditation on pain and its currency in the
mythical and political landscape.
And how to live each day differently in the face of this
dimension?
For me it is clearer as the days go by¦
Live my vocation better
I am a healer
And in my healing I must add this new dimension of grace
and blessing;
For as I healed slowly and painfully daily
I realized the blessing came in and through the body of
pain and nowhere else.
Only in the body of pain could I locate meaning and
divinity
Not beyond
Not out there but very immanently within.
The incarnation is active and well. Tzimtzum has a new
dimension.
So my task is clear
To bless others and open their hearts to their pain
To see the divine within themselves albeit paradoxically
Feel the pain its length and breadth its quality and duration
and in the feeling
See something a message of grace.
For as Rabbi Nachman tells us God hides in the very
hidden spaces where you expect Him least
And not only that He hides His deepest secrets there! In
the most unexpected places to avoid the "Other side".
Yes I must teach my patients from my own pain
How see their own divine nature within
By blessing more
By being a conduit for blessing and divine succor.
Prayer of the Survivor
Rabbi Nachman's foremost disciple and scribe, Reb
Noson, explains: "When the verse states 'ein ode milvado,'
it means to say that nothing exists but God. Above and
below, in heaven and on earth, everything is absolutely
naught and without substance - although this is impossible
to explain, but can only be grasped according to the
intuition of each person" (Likkutei Halakhos, Matnas
Sh'chiv me-Ra' 2:2).
Lord,
It is difficult
After all that's happened,
to hold on
To that experience of closeness to You
I had in the ICU
Life becomes ordinary
The grandfather clock keeps on chiming in my living room
And the morning mist returns each day now that it's
autumn round the corner
And selichos weather is about to descend with its early
chill as I leave the front door for shul.
But it cannot be the same
I have seen the angel of death
He looks like the front of a semi, in my car seat!
And my cracked ribs and shortness of breath
And persistent sleepless nights attest to his mark…
I have also experienced Your grace
And Your helping hand
And the kindness of your creatures the compassion of
your nurses and aides
All those who helped me
My children surrounding my bed
My wife and all my friends and well wishers
The prayers of the community and patients.
So how to live on after all this...
The feeling of bliss inside the pain
The knowledge of being alive in the haze of morphine
The sense of Your presence and privilege of having
survived
This ordeal
What now.
My Tikkun Chazot
My daveing
My immersion
The Tikkun Klali
The Hitbodedut
Uman
Those rituals that assisted me in purification
From a life steeped in the flesh
To loosen and jog and separate
Make a little space for another sensibility
Open the soul to the void and the silence
What becomes of them
Now that I have seen the 'other side'
And have come so close to death.
Where do I go now
That is my question
Post Trauma Depression
Loss
Slowly the awareness of the post period
That space in time after
The aporia
Returning to normality but
It cannot be the same.
Funny how the inner spirit has its own time and periodicity
My 90 days of abstinence for instance
Did Not coincide with Elul and Teshuva neatly.
In the absence of Uman
The fall comes quickly
What was it about that pilgrimage?
Just the trip and the obstacles?
Just the suffering of the place?
Was that what helped?
Anyway this year I remained
Locked into my pain
My chest and ribs the arbiter of no-journey
And the fall came quickly.
Trying not to condemn right now
Trying to see the light within
As divine
And the importance of listening to this inner voice
Over that of authority
Didn't I always have this problem with authority!
Where to go now?
Don't I still need those tools that helped me in the past?
Breslov, recovery, analysis?
The trinity of spiritual aids?
Or do I need a new therapy now
To help me through this post trauma?
Some new abstraction
Seeing the divine in the pain and wound itself
Gives one a new authority
A new way of seeing the world
In the body of pain.
Behind the Body In Pain
Behind the body in pain
Behind the swirling thoughts
As to where, why, and what
The future, the past, and survival
Beyond the bed and the paralysis
The body in pain
Beyond even that
I felt a presence
An inner spirit behind all that
Present to whatever was taking place
A sense of awe
Despite
And this spirit was not "out there"
No, it was within.
Since then I have acquired a new authority
Not in any material sense
Nor even that of power
Morality or hierarchy
Merely an inner authority
As if I wish to be present to that place
And in contact with that spirit
I had never known before.
The Godliness within you may call it
Divine immanence
"memale kol almin"
But I fell into the trap
Thinking that now these new spiritual credentials
Would allow me off the hook
Free now of the things of this world
Free of all addictions to work and love and objects out
there
But the evil one is there too
Waiting for moments of weakness as usual
Waiting to jump in at a moment's notice
To trip me up yet again.
So here after the fall
The post trauma fall
I am vaulted into reality once again
I have not changed essentially
The old ruminations and obsessions can return at anytime
The grandiosity and self-bloating
The feeling that the world revolves around me
The me-ness of it all
That which I felt as only superficial in that ICU bed
That which was in the front of
Not behind the feelings
Not the spirit within
Not the real Self
So back I go now
To the old and tried tools for recovery
The meditations and devotions
The ablutions and the prayer
The rituals that move
The immersions and baptisms
The song and connections to the brotherhood of fellows
The pilgrimage and confessions to the saints
No, I am not above this
Despite the fools errand of thought
Despite my new credentials
And near-death experience.
So humbling isn't it!
No free rides even now
After it all
No easy road to heaven
The toil and spiritual work begins anew
Like the New Year
The Shadowy One
"Perhaps everything that frightens us is something
helpless that wants our love." Ranier Maria Rilke
Despite running to PT massage even chiropractic and
acupuncture I feel whipped. MRIs confirm the objective
facts But there remains a deep gap between the pictures
and my experience of the pain.
Yet I was trained to treat other’s pain so expertly! And daily
go about listening for the specifics of their disease Years
and years of listening to pain then diagnosing and making
differential diagnoses What it might be what it could be
ruling out this or that... then To decide where and when my
intervention might alleviate their suffering. But for my own
pain, despite the knowing! Powerless!
So what is this disease teaching me? You may ask. Slowly
it dawns on me that despite the knowledge of the pain It
still will not go... the pain continues... As if had I gone to a
psychoanalyst and heard the root cause for my emotional
disorder That in itself, the very understanding of the
process and etiology of the disorder Will NOT make the
neurosis go away! One needs years of analysis!
So what will make this go away! Maybe, just maybe The
incarnation of the knowledge IN THE BODY A kind of body
awareness, not mind awareness The way the pain and
illness was originally incarnated into the soma Into the
symptoms, into the very corpus I call my body So too the
healing must come from the body and be released from
the body Letting go of the pain in the body.
I cannot do this alone. I can only accomplish this by
surrender. The little 10 year old, arrested in his or her
development must be taken by the psycho- analyst in the
above example, By the hand, loved and caressed despite
the behavior and neurosis... What we call “transference”...
and allowed to mature over time, ever so slowly In the
safety of the therapeutic relationship.
I think here too my pain must be allowed to be felt fully, to
ripen and mature And be surrendered to (see my essay on
mesiras nefesh and Rabbi Akiva)
This is the Higher Power we call divinity This is what
prayer is about Surrender and turning this pain over to
Him. King David’s Psalms are full of pain!!!! (Psalm 23
attests to his utter surrender despite the pain) And of
course, lest we forget
The psalms are meant to be sung! The rabbis wonder as
to why some of them are called psalms at all!! rather call
them dirges! Some of them! Yet the paradoxical answer is
that it is precisely in the pain That David sings to God Of
his pain and of his pursuit by his enemies and his hunger
and thirst Of all this he sings!!!
So here is my answer too To sing of my pain, paradoxically
To surrender to it Not fight it Not medicate it But listen to
the crying child inside who wishes to be heard Listen to his
message Above all, listen For being ignored is worse than
death for this little 10 year old.
And God said to me, Go forth: For I am king of time. But to
you I am only the shadowy one who knows with you your
loneliness and sees through your eyes. He sees through
my eyes in all the ages.
-R. M. Rilke, Book of Hours
Seeing In The Void
In this silence
I must find You Lord
All I have are the longings and the desire
All I want is the certainty of You
It would make this journey so much easier
After my trauma especially
To help me make sense of why and how
And what is being asked of me now
I feel so inadequate
So ordinary
So unfit to have survived
If only
A message
Something
Yes You do speak to me
Through holy angels such as Dad "Uman is out!"
My sponsor; such judicious timing!!
My holy children; who inspire me
My wife; whose Chesed is unparallelled
Oi those nights she stayed up with me!
Throught the writings of the Tzaddik who understood my
darkest soul
Through the sobs of Bienenstock in the hineni Uman's
musaf
Yes I want more
Of You
In the very void we are asked to cross over and see You
despite...
This "challal hapanui" is so real; an empty void
But I fall short
I fail here
I am no Tzaddik.
I do hear the silence on a summer's day in the corn fields
The wind rustling the tips of the golden sheaves
And the leaves play a symphony of green being conducted
by the breeze
The grass even feels soft to my barefeet
The lapping water on the boat's side in the middle of the
quiet lake
Here I do feel Your Presence
And when a patient says "the pain is gone!" your magic is
delivered
When a good shiur is over and my students connect, the
glow in their eyes
The "aha" of connecting with truth, You are definitely there
In my tears and broken heart when I feel I am alone in this
world and the only one who senses the insanity of "out
there"...
But mostly in the humdrum the routine there is silence
In the silence
In the absence of You
In the suffering of all broken bones
In the senseless violences in Your name
In the pietistic Holier-Than Thou scholarship of your
sacred texts
In the hair-splitting legalisms masquerading as Spirit
I still must see You
Even in the darker side of my own soul
My betrayals and lies
The deceipts and indifference
The sloth and laziness
In all this I must learn to see You.
Help me to see through
The materiality and silence
To hear You
And see the message encoded in reality
Help me feel You in my life
In my ordinariness
In my mediocrity
In my grandiosity
In my brokeness
In my rote-ridden halachic rituals
In the void
The silence of the expanse
Not a sound
Deafening
Please hear the screams
Failed In My Pain
Six weeks and more
The pain abates imperceptibly slowly.
Day by day punctuated by waves of relief then irritation
I am reminded of it daily.
A wrong move
A twist or turn
Lying the wrong way
Sore reminders of a worse period of intensity.
But I feel I have failed it
The pain inscribed in my sinister leg and back
I have missed somehow the message it contained
Written into the C1 fibers as they emit their strong
message top the cord and brain.
I have not decoded the written message, the Morse code
that would banish the need for them again.
As if I still don’t get it
As if I must interpret the body as pointing to something
beyond itself
Why not just accept the body as is, for itself
An automaton, independent of mind.
Listen to the waves, the character of pain the triggers, the
sensitivity
The paresthesias, the dysesthesias the hyperpathia,
each a different quality of pain and sensation, listen to the
symptom,
stop interpreting, stop reading the body.
But that is my way!
The body as text
Sometimes impenetrable
Often inscrutable
To be deciphered like a sacred manuscript,
Musty and wilting, letters almost disappeared
But then what parameters are we to use in our
hermeneutic quest!
What Middot or rules of interpretation, 6, or 13, or 32!
Each points us in a different direction!
Each leads to a different oral text, a different imagined
body.
Reading is one thing
Interpreting a different art
Translating is something else
As Benjamin said; translating is violent; creating or
destroying in its path
I must not be a good interlocutor
Or maybe good at listening to others but stomped when it
comes to my own body.
Have I let it down?
Have I failed yet again?
I need more patience for sure
To allow the voices to percolate up
From the depths and the memories
Patience is such a rare commodity these days.
The work is hard
Journaling recovery mediation and prayer
The quartet of song
The medium by which the feint voice may just surface
If allowed
I will wait more.
Patience Patience
From Webster’s dictionary:
_pa•tient
Pronunciation: 'pA-sh&nt
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English pacient, from Anglo-French,
from Latin patient-, patiens, from present participle of pati
to suffer; perhaps akin to Greek pEma suffering
: bearing pains or trials calmly or without complaint
: manifesting forbearance under provocation or strain
: not hasty or impetuous
: steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity
a : able or willing to bear -- used with of
b : SUSCEPTIBLE, ADMITTING (patient of one
interpretation)
- pa•tient•ly adverb
Main Entry: 2patient
Function: noun
a : an individual awaiting or under medical care and
treatment
b : the recipient of any of various personal services
: one that is acted upon
As a patient myself I recently had much time to reflect on
the meaning of the word.
My illness required the utmost patience! Paralyzed by my
pain, unable to move I had plenty of time to reflect when
not consumed by the pain!
My illness demanded endurance beyond my expectations.
For the first time I was bed bound and powerless over my
body. Trying to imagine the pathology within, the facture
sites and the mashed lung tissue old memories from
medical school path classes needed to make sense of all
of this. Bloody tissue slowly being resorbed into the body
through the white cells, release of toxins etc etc.
Lying on my bed face up, fluorescent lights glaring waiting
waiting, the nurse comes, the therapist oh no not her! She
will cause me immense pain with those bloody breathing
exercises. I want to leave my lungs alone I do not wish to
stretch anything! Alveoli bronchi whatever, leave them
alone! Then the waterworks, change of dressing plumbing,
water in yellow fluid out, measure measure. Then blood
pressure, the squeezing of the upper arm, more
discomfort, the pulse the thing in the ear for the
temperature etc etc. the day fills up rapidly with these
measurements the pill time the food time the X rays visit
downstairs over the agonizingly uneven floor, each bump
anticipated but never as bad as the actual bump, sending
shivers of pain through the back. The day fills rapidly.
Food tray arrives, negotiating the space between the tray
and the mouth without pain, not wishing to eat, no
appetite, being pushed by the staff and family.
Patience is demanded and learned quickly and painfully.
Patience for the process of healing
Body time
Slow time
Agonizingly slow time
Healing time
Time to ponder
The insanities of one's life
Time to think about relationships past and present
Resentments and fear surface quickly to fill in negative
space
Time to pray and make sense of this on a higher level
Why me
Why now
This is not what I needed!
But it is
Precisely what the "Doctor" upstairs ordered
"go learn patience" He said with a smile
"go be a patient for a while!" He said.
Looking back the body leaves its scars
Things do not work like they used to
Aches and pains arise form places I never thought existed
on my topography
And the therapist now hits more tender spots than ever.
If anything I have learned about mortality and fragility
And how lucky I was
And nevertheless I did not come away unscathed
In the psyche scars are also left
The depression has still not lifted
And I cannot will it away
Nor will I medicate it
I must watch it closely and not allow it to become anger
And learn to remain hand off
Allowing it to percolate and dissipate with respect.
I learned how close I needed my children
how angelic my wife was throughout
Arising at 3 am once home to lift me up to a sitting position
which was still agony.
Night after night without complaints.
Love in the trenches.
I learned what a small community the town I work in is
And that even now patients ask me how I am doing
And that people still care.
I learned what angels the nurses are day after day self
sacrifice in ways doctors have yet to figure out.
I learned how paradoxical this God of mine really is
That He teaches in unexpected ways and painful too.
This I must still teach
Having experienced it myself
To my poor patients in pain and suffering
To remain patient
To learn to endure
To suffer well
To listen to the body and its message
For it will arise no doubt.
Bonded In Sciatica
I stroke Tsiona's neck slowly as she is absorbed in her
pain.
This sciatic pain leaves its trace, as she bears the next
generation, the first of my grandchildren...
totally at one with her body, its pain its pathway but also so
connected.
an organic union of spirit and flesh. I can relate to her and
her tears, my beloved daughter, always have.
My uncle Eric (London) held me back from running amock
in 1953 at my aunts wedding. I was a terror! You can see it
from the black and white fotos. You see he is my hero,
loving to all despite everything. Now at 80-something, he
hobbles around with one gammy leg from a severe
arthritic hip and or spinal stenosis. Today on the phone to
Eric he has that same tone of voice telling me "Julian don't
worry so much" with an "ah" that pierces me as to how
similar the voice is to Tsiona's compassion.
Eric has suffered too all his life, parental rejection, BBC
Symphony Orchestra-years of work to acceptance after so
much abuse, now body racked in pain as he limps on his
Jacobean arthritic hip…
I, representing the intermediary generation...with my
baggage (we need not rehearse yet again the litany.) limp
at times and feel that curvy nerve after hours in traffic as I
fidget and squirm in my seat.
Joined between three generations -Eric, me and Tsionawe
have forged this moment in a bond of knowing. So this
is the genetic transmission… this is how that spirit gene
worked its way through the family tree web of Ungars and
Sargons.
Tears that bind us three together, tears of knowing, the
body in pain, the soul in anguish
We know in ways...there is something Divine about it, we
have this unconscious awareness of things as they areand
what is wrong-and who is responsible.
We three carry this burden together, knowing God's
unbearable pain-reality as is-and being as unacceptable.
Yet accepting it as is.
In The Bosom of God
After that our father Abraham had seen, and pondered
over, investigated, and understood these things, he
designed, engraved, and composed them, and received
them into his power (hands). Then the Lord of all appeared
unto him, took him to His bosom, and kissed his head, and
naming him after his own name, called him his friend; and
as it is written, completed a covenant with him and with his
seed forever, who then believed on God, the
Tetragrammaton, and it was imputed to him for
righteousness.
Sefer Yestira Chapter 6 Mishna 4
Into the Bosom of God
God taking Abraham into His bosom and kissing his
forehead and calling His beloved
What does it take?
An Abraham of course!
But he included us Abraham's descendents forever into
His bosom.
That is the covenant the Brit.
To be enveloped near the heart so close one can hear it
beating
To be enveloped with both arms; the right signifying
unconditional healing, the left a stricter yet caring love.
Held close until the breath gets short
Feeling the intensity of desire of the Father/parent.
Tears begin to flow
So this is what we were searching for, for so long
Filling our hearts with every kind of substitution including
work food drink
Rage false loves and desire
Only to find out that in the surrender the arms were waiting
all along
The bosom opens warm and receptive
And the breath full.
Sobbing for all the pain caused others
All the selfish pride and arrogance
All the denial and self delusions along the way
Too late for most
Many still smarting from the damage done years ago
Children in therapy for the demands to fulfill some ethereal
notion of success.
Parents harboring pain for abandonment at critical
junctures when needed
Absent for siblings emotionally
The litany continues on and on,
Heaving cries for a wasted life
Spent in illusion, missing the point
Chasing the life style not the content
The trappings of wealth and culture
Even the pursuit of academic credentials for other ends
Not an end in itself
The defiling of religious virtue and praxis
To impress others to impress period
But in the end not fooling oneself
The dark nights tell all
The restless awakenings
The legs keep moving though the body is still
The mind keeps racing
The thoughts never end with no peace…
As a child of Abraham
Whose grandfather was Ellis Abraham
Whose grandson is Abraham Menashe
Who’s added name is Abraham born out of the current
trauma
Four generations no doubt more ancestors as seen in the
cemetery in Cochin
Surely we too have the right as his descendants
To make claims
To beg being taken I
Into the bosom of God!
Avinu Malkeinu.
May this child of God grow to fix things
His ancestors as yet were unable to accomplish
What a weight upon those little shoulders!
But that is the price he pays
Another Akeidat Yitzchak
The altar of expectations this time
Poor thing.
It Doesn't Get Better Than This
18TH TISHREI YOM HILULA of RABBI NACHMAN BEN
SIMCHA
It does not get any better than this.
He places his head in the nook of my neck-dozing yet
Still clutching me with his short arms.
It does not get any better than this,
A happiness I never experienced before-deep penetrating
satisfaction- simchah, an experience that echoes 'this is
what have lived for all along-for this very moment'
All has been worth it for this little child, all the pain of the
past the discomfort in being alive, the deep wounding, all
worth it.
It beats even love-making!
So this is naches!
The Divine Child lies on my shoulder-what a zechus.
I feel so blessed. I cry in joy. Thank you God!
For this moment, thank you! I am truly at one with this
Child-of-God, I wish only to nourish him, his growth, his
becoming, my desires melt away- he is my only focus now,
the future, my flesh and blood, my kinsman, I would truly
die for him.
Another moment; another head lying on me,
This time it’s my father in law's.
The white-haired Patriarch lies in my lap, in the succah,
second day Yom Tov, after suddenly feeling feint. The
normal chit chat suddenly broken by an impending sense
of foreboding, all goes quiet as we busy ourselves in his
immediate care. The succah becomes transformed making
way for the ambulance crew, the stretcher and the
paraphernalia of medical equipment. Such is the norm for
the management of near-syncopal episodes in modernity.
A strange feeling and a bond, my teacher, father-in-law,
mentor, often feared, now lies flat on makeshift chairs
cradled in my arms. White beard squared at base, pasty
forehead, still possibly unconscious, ashen-faced. Is this
the end-so much history between us! Has it all come down
to this moment? I too am powerless over his life.
Ambulance on its way we wait and listen for its siren in the
neighborhood streets. There is a strange calm in the
succah now, nothing to do but wait. So ironic that his life,
his purity and obstinate righteousness, his halakhic
precision, his erudition and Talmudic mastery, his delight
and sense of pride at having married into the Beis harav,
Malchus, now lies prostrate in this succah on my lap, in his
83rd year, face up, almost fearless, as if accepting
gracefully whatever is in store.
Life is so fragile, and I lie strung between the two of them,
one a child, an infant less than a year old, the other a
patriarch-hoary headed and a sage of a generation,
respected by all. Both heads lay on me, strung between
generations, one in the nape of my neck, filling that
angular gap perfectly with his little keppie, the other
cupped in my palms as we cool his forehead with cold
compresses. One the past-full of tradition and erudition,
Rabbinic splendor, the other a promise of the future, a
knowing look in this infants eyes when he gazes upon you
as if he has the secrets-a compassionate eye- followed by
a royal gestured wave.
Do I even remember dada holding me as an infant? My
other grandfather was killed 8 years before I was even
born. I have no memory as I search for body imprints of
such paternal connectivity. I only remember Nana in my
body.
It does not get better than this -
Chained before and after in a link of fathers and sons I
have finally found my place this succos in this long line
that stretches back into antiquity and forward into the
misty future.
I am so grateful to God for this
I am so grateful for this simchah in my heart
I feel equally privileged to have served both sage and
grandson holding their heads, their beings, in my hands.
For this alone
For this moment in time
It was worth having been created
It remains eternal.
Chagall, Marc: White Crucifixion, 1938 Oil on canvas 60 3/8 x 55 in. The Art Institute of Chicago