AFTER MUCH CONSIDERATION, I HAVE come to the conclusion that of all God‘s creations or man’s adjustments thereof I should most like to be a rock; not so small as to be skipped by errant boys nor so large as to make the blind stumble, smooth enough to sit on but too rough for graffitti, blended with the landscape yet not so much as to be entirely unknown, not so corporeal as to be uninteresting but solid enough to watch the world slide by for a few thousand millennia. Slow rock thoughts — bird chirps and rainsfall and mountain chains rising like silent supplicants — and under all of it, the constant whirling thrum of Earth’s viscous spin.
Let others become astronauts and firefighters, nurses and movie stars: I shall be a rock, simple and content, my inside like my outside, one with the passing stars and the clinging lichen. (After all, one needs someone to talk to.)
Aside from each evening — each moment — being unique and therefore different from any other before or since: On all other nights, the world rotates from sunlight into darkness. Tonight the world will rotate from the sunlight into candlelight, as millions (B”H) of Jews light the Pesach festival lamps in a wave of 24 one-hour slices. (Some say this low-frequency, high-amplitude wave is the secret of Jewish survival. Considering Pesach’s generational emphasis, that’s a difficult point to refute.)
However you celebrate — full-blown seder or full-moonlight revel — and however mired you may be in your own personal Egypt of depression, worry and stress, may this season of freedom bring you opportunities and opening doorways.
FUNNY THING ABOUT DEFINING GOD: Despite the impossibility of the task, it does draw one’s imagination and eloquence (or directness, if you’re lucky). I made a stab at it in https://metaphorager.net/working-definition/, tried to understand my understanding in /four-points-of-contact/ and reflected on how I got there in /judaism-as-art/. But waking from a nice Shabbat nap this afternoon, the thought occurred:
James Sputnik Gjerde: 1/24/1962 - 12//27/2002The attached photo of you arrived from a mutual friend two days ago, on what should have been your 48th birthday. I say “should” because it’s a primate conceit that the world be arranged according to our convenience. Were that the case, I’d likely be talking to you now, and about something differently substantial, instead of typing into some corner of the void you’re now a “part” of.
This is your famous, default and well-known “ohc’MON” expression which, although the photo is dated 1990, remained unchanged (though perhaps just a wee bit more crinkled around the eyes and soul) when you died in december of 2002, some seven years and a few lifetimes ago. The email which carried this photo also carried a few words typical of those for whom your death was — is — very difficult. I’ve written about it, and so has Ann — this groundbreaking (in the sense of earth-shattering, in the sense of a whole lot of people suddenly feeling the ground drop out from under us when we heard we’d no longer all sing, hike, complain, dream, contradict, listen, drum, dance, argue, plot, scheme, critique, criticize, comfort and sharpen together ever ever ever again) death of someone who was everyone’s best friend. They say things like “never before or since have I experienced such a profound personal loss,” “a sane freak, and you must understand that the term “freak” is a compliment” and “God, I miss that little sh*t!”
Anyway, you missed a few things — chief among which was that the lightsaber battle we wanted to see since we were 16 was far, FAR cooler than we EVER imagined, although it paled a bit given what’s become the cultural context of SFX in general. But on the other hand, that cultural context has become a lot more coarse than we thought it would back in the summer apartments of 1981 and 2 when we thought wulgarity for wulgarity’s sake was funny doody. Meanwhile: full frontal nudity isn’t yet on the MAJOR networks; the jetpack problem alas remains unsolved; our futuristic disaster scenario seems to be ecological rather than an alien menace (although don’t forget Apophis!); and you won’t believe what you can do with a cellphone nowadays.
In return, we missed you. Still do — me, mostly when I want to bounce an idea, or check a perspective, or gloat. And we will continue to miss you, despite this sudden, beyond-the-grave exhortation for all of us to get over it. You don’t know how tempting it is to lament that you left the party before it was over, raise a glass to absent friends, and collapse in a puddle of elegies — but you’d just flash that grin again, knowing that at some point in the future, we’ll either all meet again or something else as makes no difference.
I remain, Sir, your humble and obdurate Colleague,
(sans apology to and/or connection with Messrs. Jarry et Ballard)
THERE ARE THE HARLEY RIDERS. They would not dream of owning any transportation they couldn’t twiddle with or hack. Every knob, every switch, every gear is known and its connection to the whole machine is understood, monitored, adjusted. Their dreams are the smooth metal touch and smell of clean oil, with a beckoning horizon.
THIS ONE’S TRICKY FOR ATHEISTS, so in the interests of universality, let’s assume we’re not talking about the Cranky Old Man raining smites and frights whom we learned to scoff at in Hebrew school but rather Something a good deal less childish and not at all definable. Whatever It is, one can only ever relate to the what-some-people-call-“God” on one’s own terms. (Mine are at https://metaphorager.net/2007/12/working-definition/ but also includes That Which Inspires Awe Through Beholding.) My rabbi, Jack Gabriel, likes to call It “God As Context.” A good friend and I have been discussing It since high school; he sees It in the elegance of mathematics and the physical world. Ann once said It’s what compels firefighters and other rescue workers toward situations of unforeseeable survival. Although I’ve never heard a final, explains-everything, non-paradoxical description of It, one thing seems certain — everyone’s an expert.
Exercise: Ponder who it is who is pondering Who “It” is.
Of all the apparent opposites which Judaism wrestles to reconcile — free will v. predestination, universalism v. particularism, applesauce v. sour cream — one of the most paradoxically fertile is words v. the Wordless.
Maimonides, the great 12th century rabbi and commentator, wisely stayed out of this fray — he was more comfortable describing God in terms of what God wasn’t than in telling people what God was. Maimonides wasn’t the only one who felt this way; in fact, much of our liturgy describes the indescribability of God at great and poetic length.
Take, for example, the following words of the Chatzi Kaddish, which our ancestors loved so much they used it to mark the transition between different parts of every prayer service (translation from the new Reform siddur, Mishkan T’filah): “Blessed, praised, honored, exalted, extolled, glorified, adored, and lauded be the name of the Holy Blessed One, beyond all earthly words and songs of blessing, praise and comfort.”
Even more to the point is Nishmat: “Even if our mouths were full of song as the sea, and our tongues full of joy in countless waves, and our lips full of praise as wide as the sky’s expanse, and were our eyes to shine like sun and moon; if our hands were spread out like heaven’s eagles and our feet swift like young deer, we could never thank You adequately, Adonai, our God and God of our ancestors, to bless Your name for a ten-thousandth of the many myriads of times You granted favors to our ancestors and to us.”
If that’s the case, then why bother? If God can’t be talked about, why do we keep talking?
One answer, from Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, is, “A little is also good.” Since nobody can really appreciate God on a Godly scale, that means a level praying field for everybody. But just as each thing helps us understand its apparent opposite, perhaps our seemingly ceaseless God-talk is also one half of a whole picture: and why our most central prayer, repeated twice daily, begins: “Shema … Listen.”
I looked up from the computer, wondering about the “thump.” Then I saw the robin on the patio — fluttering wings outspread, struggling to get up.
Outside, through the gate, into the side-yard. “Are you okay?” I asked reflexively.
She wasn’t, at least at first. Her beak and eyes were wide open, and she was panting — or do robins always breathe that way? She seemed dazed but unhurt (no broken legs or anything), so I sat down next to her and babbled softly: “You poor thing. We’ll get you fixed up, give you some nice worm broth and pyracantha cobbler,” etc. Continue reading “Thump, Flutter, Gak”
… of its content, this might have been posted 12/28/6, the day I wrote and sent it to my coworkers. But it wasn’t:
Friends,
If you can imagine a universe-sized sponge made of galaxies surrounding bubble-like voids, congratulations: you’re hip to the current scientific model of the Big Picture.
We humans don’t always do too well with the Big Picture, though. Our tiny brains like to slice reality into assimilable, us-sized bites. Instead of Limitless Space, we distinguish between Here and There; instead of Eternity, we think about Then and Now. Sometimes, we even think about Later.
Every time our planet completely circles its star, many of us commit to doing (often changing) something as we travel the orbit to come. (That orbit doesn’t actually start on January 1st — that’s a date as arbitrary as the alphabet I’m using to type this email — but as the man draining the swamp said, “You have to start somewhere.”) If it’s your custom to do that, may you have the strength to live up to your commitments. If it’s also your custom to become frustrated with yourself a week later, take heart — it’s a big universe, with enough room to start over and enough time for patience.
NOT ALL MITZVOT TURN INTO ghost stories — but when doing holy work, it’s always a good idea to expect the unexpected.
Ann and I are members of the Sonoma County Chevre Kadisha, which literally means “holy fellowship;” it’s a centuries-old Jewish institution committed to preparing the dead for burial. Doing this is considered to be the most selfless of all mitzvot (commandments), partly because there’s no way the beneficiary can pay you back.
In 2002, we joined a crowd of about 50 at Cotati’s Congregation Ner Shalom where, over the course of an afternoon and under the tutelage of Rabbi Elisheva (Sachs) Salamo, we learned — as one participant put it — to “gift-wrap people for sending them back to God.” Continue reading “Message From Beyond”
