Music and the Messiah
Our souls are strung out on a musical stave
Each a musical note and its harmonics
Some crotchets, some minims, some quavering in the fleeting wind
Each a distinct sound in time and space and comforted by the rest
between them That allows each to breathe and exist.
Our lives are devoted to searching for the ultimate musical
sequence that mirrors our inner soul architecture like a
resonating drum.
And when some exalted piece
approaches us, our hearts quicken, the pulse races and
we feel faint.
I remember well the first time I heard the
Marche Funebre of the Eroica at the memorial to the
Israeli Athletes at the Munich Olympic games; or the
Brandenburg Fifth while my friend’s mother lay dying on
her white silken bed.
Or Mahler’s fifth which awakened me
to post-classical music.
I can literally correlate events in
my life with each of these moments of awakening.
My biography littered with a list of musical sequences I
stumbled upon; that arrested me in my tracks, phrases
and harmonies that melted me.
Each musical piece feels
like I am coming closer, ever so slowly, to the ultimate
musical sequence I will not be able to bear and my soul
will finally expire to its glorious melody.
So too with the Tzaddik whose soul.
We are told, is a
“general transpersonal soul” whose life is a pursuit of the
ultimate niggun the perfect Levitical music that
encompasses the sequences and harmonies of the
spheres and the secret of creation itself, whose musicality
will herald the Messianic era precisely because his tune
will melt all hearts.
Reb Nachman was seeking this melody and his ten
psalms reflected the complex character of the genres of
literary characters each mirrored. He realized the power of
music to transform and heal and spoke of music of
primordial archetypal tones that resonated with my senses
as I feel when such melodies pass me by.
In the final days that score will be revealed and we shall
discover that it turned out to be the very key by which the
letters of Torah could actually be played on musically.
Rustling
A new musical form
Each leaf a solo instrument in a green orchestra
A quartet on a twig
A chamber group on a branch
A symphony orchestra this forest.
The conductor, the wind, equalizes all
She gently caresses each leaf
Giving exactly what it needs to sing
Beginning gradually to a crescendo of rustling.
I watch, reading my-self into this musical text.
When she gets agitated
The whole orchestra rises to the occasion, even branches
bending and twisting
Reflecting her sense of discomfort.
Yet each leaf retains its identity
Since there is an added participant in this musical morning
The brilliant sun
Whose rays reflect off each and every leaf, differently.
And the combined effort of wind and sun cause a
kaleidoscope of lights
To reflect off the tree adding light to the total sound experience
The more it rustles in the wind the more light it flickers
The more it attempts to reflect the son-et-lumière of its
own nature.
This rustling, this interaction of music and light, is healing
for my soul, in the darkness of my not knowing
Having come to acceptance of my ignorance, my
mediocrity, and my powerlessness over forces greater
than me, that wish to dominate me from within and
without.
I have not mastered the art of gnosis in anything- least of
all sacred science.
So this morning, in this glorious morning on the South
Lake of Chicago
Brilliant sun in the deep azure vastness of eternity,
I surrender, to this light, to the sense of His secret
Presence -malchut- for it flickers and rustles now here now
there, mati velo mati reaching touching but then gone in a flash.
A metaphor for any achievement in the past, momentary
images flickering like in an old super 8 home movie.
In the light I know I must leave this tortured self,
The tyranny of what might have been had I done this or that,
to be free like those sparkling leaves, to sing His song
without the fettered past.
I learn this from the orchestra above, the rustling is so
fleeting, ever changing, and temporary
Yet that this is OK too.
Teach me how to learn daas in this hastara.
(L.M. I :56.)
La Stella Luna
The natural satellite of Earth, visible by reflection of
sunlight and having a slightly elliptical orbit, approximately
356,000 kilometers (221,600 miles) distant at perigee and
406,997 kilometers (252,950 miles) at apogee. Its mean
diameter is 3,475 kilometers (2,160 miles), its mass
approximately one eightieth that of Earth, and its average
period of revolution around Earth 29 days 12 hours 44
minutes calculated with respect to the sun.
As salt resolved in the ocean I was swallowed in God's
sea, Past faith, past unbelieving, Past doubt, past certainty.
Suddenly in my bosom A star shone clear and bright; All
the suns of heaven Vanished in that star's light.
This gorgeous moon has finally appeared
Still covered by a misty cloud But in its full glory It is the
15th of the month And we have not blessed it as yet We
waited for Tisha B’av to pass But it was so cloudy since
Now it revealed itself to us on this last opportunity to bless
Before it descends Representing the waning of our
fortunes and the cycle begins again.
I love this evening moon I cannot leave it I watch it ever so
slowly mend its way across my front door Tracing its
celestial path yet so close to me tonight. La Stella Luna he
told her in Moonstruck, “when the moon hits your eye
like a big pizza pie...That’s amore!” we sang with the kids so
often when things went well and we were on top of the
world. Usually driving somewhere. Nothing could defeat
our family We were the best we could be.
It does have a face, really! And it has moved so many men
to rhyme and poetry Its grace and ivory quality In the
darkness of the cold universe, so close to us, beckoning
its wisdom. I wait each month for these few moments
when it is full, so round you could draw a circle with it No
blemishes, no shadows, no fault lines, no reflections of my
own failures Rather fullness and mad dogs and craziness,
Even Shakespeare referred to the moon as "governess of
the floods." Those crazy tides In his dreamy midsummer
night play, But elsewhere in Othello she is blamed for
making men mad by coming too close to earth. Lunar
madness, lunatics, we all go crazy in the fullness of her
mid-cycle presence.
I see why, it is truly hypnotic.
In the liturgy the ecclesia of Israel is also compared to the
moon whose fortunes rise and fall in history. Ancient
midrashim point to a moment of creation when the sun
and moon were equal And the moon complained only to
be lessened in stature.
She is so silent this one I hear no music of the spheres!
What was Holtz on! But I prefer the solitude She too is so
lonely and we two are together this night I am sure she
sees me watching her.
In her face so many have written In her presence so many
have cried Her topography is truly marked by the
landscape of human memory Etched with the tears of
loving hearts and yearning souls.
We too pray for her return to her former glory Equal to the
burning mighty sun For I am sure she will remember all
those who prayed for her monthly Who cried for her
diminishment, her waning half the time Her disappearing
and absence before resurfacing What was she doing?
What abuse did she suffer while gone from our gaze?
Maybe we loaded her with too much baggage For after all
Jews and Muslims use and abuse her for calendric
purposes She is weary now with all the battles over who
was right and who was wrong Who was closer to God
Who had the sacred text that was divine and who had the
heretical text. Tired from all man’s fighting over hegemony
Missing the importance of loving rather than being right.
She needs rehabilitation as well! A re-birth of a different
sort A renewal of spirit Not the pagan wicker stuff mind you
Rather a re-imagining of cycle and womanhood, fecundity
and birthing
The monthly cycles that woman understands as to the
tides The truth of the ebb and flow we have all seemed to
have lost in the hustle for security The bleeding and
fatigue the pain and the bloating the mood swings and the
relief She understands all this well.
Our future needs her now Needs to integrate her methods
and cycles not for mastering some ancient text or race Not
for controlling other’s behavior when to daven or not, when
to light or not, Rather to succumb and surrender like she
does To meld and wane To accept this fully in silence To
endure To hold all opposites tightly without letting go
Appreciating all there is however disparate
This is her secret We need it badly!
Meditations at Night
It comes to me at night
Those thoughts
Your stories
Your suffering.
In the darkness well suited for such machinations
I realize my inadequacy.
For all I can really do is to listen.
Make small indentations here and there
In the utter progressiveness of disease towards its ultimate desire
To destroy and disintegrate
To annihilate by slow death the flesh of us all.
In these stories of suffering and anguish
My own past rekindles itself
Ignited in kind
My own heart bleeds
For I too have experienced all this
And remain powerless in the face of it.
The past and future combine
The horrors and torture the slow death and fleshy pain
Into a history of story-telling and narrating
To overwhelm the small hours of the night.
My parents and grandparents going back
What were they thinking, my namesake, when being driven in cattle cars
How did they pray and believe in those last moments, the
gas rising ever so slowly.
Generations after generations until this last bloody century of genocide.
And inevitability I think of God
That personal being who made promises in the Bible.
And His goodness and this world of pain.
And countless thinkers before me struggling with the claims
Of His mercy and love.
In the darkness I find no solace.
What do I tell this beautiful new and first grandchild?
As I hold him now and as I will be asked by him, no doubt
That I too failed to make sense of any of it
That I too follow the rite and ritual in the hope of
That in deference to the faith of my ancestors and the
memory of those who died sanctifying His name in
Sobibor and Belzec extermination camps I still maintain
The customs and prayers, the ablutions and Mitzvot
How do I comfort
How do I maintain faith despite
The evidence is overwhelming for the victory for the demonic forces
Despite modern medicine and comforts
The dark side always seems to emerge from the good.
Where do I turn him towards, for answers that I never found?
In teachers and clergy that failed me long ago, surely not!
In platitudes and moralistic-pietistic neologisms that I long ago rejected!
At least let me hand on something genuine!
No it must be in the secrets of Torah
Those codes available only to those who have undergone
the ritual and moral purification demanded
The code of spiritual discipline that teaches the body to speak
The secret that all is encoded in the body
And precisely there the paradox of life manifests itself.
For in the moment of birth and growth
Is encoded the lifespan and genetic map
Of where and whom and when things will take place within
The diseases and loves, addictions and desires
Right there within, albeit cellular.
Yes I must turn him towards the inner space
Where the paradox of micro and macrocosm remains
Where the divine remains accessible through refining the
ancient arts of listening
To the pulse the breath the flow of body fluids
Even in decline and especially in illness
His presence is felt most.
And maybe, just maybe he or his children will understand better
Will grasp the true meaning of the paradox of human
suffering and divine pleasure
And all of our worship and effort thought the generations a long chain
Each link vital in transmitting those secrets
Embedded in the sacred texts and rituals
Will have contributed to their future understanding.
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
