A Soulful Journey

"In back of every achievement is a proud wife and a surprised mother-in-law."  - Brooks Hays

“Holding a grudge is like letting someone live rent free in your head.”   - unknown “Forgive others, not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace.” – Jonathan Lockwood Hule “Do you think peace of mind can be found in holding a grudge…or harboring resentment…or wallowing in thoughts of what could have been? Me neither.” – Dr. Steven Maraboli “Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”  - Malachy McCourt

I've travelled all the roads that are And I ain't through travelin' yet. Lord, if there's a spree I haven't had It's the next I'm goin' to get. So I'm roaming free tonight And my heart is beatin' fast For the fun I'm goin' to have somewhere That ain't a goin' to last.   - Sada Applebaum

"...Caracalla [second century Roman ruler], who, having instigated the assassination of his brother, consented to the latter's deification.  Let him be a god, as long as he is not alive!"  - Salo Baron There has always been sibling rivalry, as far back as Cain and Abel  The lesson is obvious: we are not ready to improve ourselves, let alone the world, until we learn to get along with our family.

"When a young man marries he divorces his mother." -unknown

Once upon a time there was a prince who had only one daughter whom he loved deeply. When the girl came of age the prince found for her a worthy husband and prepared the wedding. On the eve of the painful separation, he spoke thus to the young husband: ”I give you my daughter as wife and I have no more right to retain her at my side any more.   But you must understand, my dear son-in-law, how hard is the separation for me. Therefore I beg you to take good care of my dear child and to keep a small room in your house always ready for me. Then I may rejoice in her company from time to time. Similarly, God gave away the Torah to the people Israel with the following warning: “I entrust to you this treasure with the hope that you will take care of it and you will have where are you dwell, a place, a small temple, where I can stay near my only daughter.” -Midrash

“A King had empty glasses. The king then said, “If I put inside them hot liquids they will break; cold liquids and they will contract. So what the king did was to mix hot and the cold together so they were able to coexist. So said the Holy One blessed be He, “If I create a world with only the attribute of compassion there will be much sin. If I create a world with only justice how will the world be able to stand?  Rather I am creating it with the attributes of justice and mercy so that it should stand.”  - Beresheit Rabbah 10

When God confused the speech of the builders of the Tower of Babel, He said, ‘In this world, by reason of the evil inclination, my creatures are at variance; they are divided into seventy tongues. But in the world to come they will all be equal.  All with one accord will call upon my name and serve me, as it says, “For then will I restore to the nations one pure tongue that they may call, all of them, upon the name of the Lord and serve Him unanimously."    - Tanhuma, Noah May the day  come  when we serve God by treating Him with reverence and one another with respect.

A rabbi in London received a letter from a bridegroom he had recently married.  It read: "Dear Rabbi, I want to thank you for the beautiful way you brought my happiness to a conclusion." May your love know no end.

'Do I wither up and disappear, or do I make the most out of my time left?' . . . He   told his friends that if they really wanted to help him, they would treat him not with sympathy but with visits, phone calls, a sharing of their problems, the way they had always shared their problems, because Morrie had been a wonderful listener. . . He was intent on proving that dying was not synonymous with uselessness. . .  'Am I going to withdraw from the world, like most people do, or am I going to live? I decided I'm going to live, or at least try to live, the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with humor, with composure.'. 'Dying is only one thing to be sad over, Mitch. Living unhappily is something else. So many people who come to visit me are unhappy.' Tuesdays with Morrie

While Rabbi Meir was holding his weekly discourse on Shabbath afternoon, his two beloved sons died suddenly at home. Their mother covered them with a sheet, and forbore to mourn on the sacred day. When Rabbi Meir returned after the evening Services, he asked for his sons, whom he had not seen in the synagogue. she asked him to recite the havdalah and gave him his evening meal. Then she said: ‘I have a question to ask you.  A friend once gave me jewels to keep for him; now he wishes them again. Shall I return them?”           “Beyond doubt you must,” said Rabbi Meir.          His wife took him by the hand, led him to the bed and drew back the sheet. Rabbi Meir burst into bitter weeping, and his wife said: “They were entrusted to us for a time; now their Master has taken back His very own.”          -Midrash Mishle, 28 All  life  is a loan.

"Come to the edge."  "No, we will fall." "Come to the edge," he urged.  "No, we're afraid we'll fall." "Come to the edge," he commanded. They came to the edge.  He pushed them and they flew. -Guillaume Appollinaire Sometimes we need that push to learn how to spread our wings and soar.

"He who wants to enter the holiness of the [Sabbath] day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life. He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man. Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else…. The seventh day is the exodus from tension, the liberation of man from his own muddiness, the installation of man as a sovereign in the world of time…. The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is a shrine that neither the Romans nor the Germans were able to burn…"   -Abraham Joshua Heschel,  The Sabbath: Its Meaning

Donna Schaper quoted W.H. Auden: "Any marriage however prosaic, is more interesting than any romance, however passionate."  She added: "Even Auden did not call marriage a promised land.  He said, instead, that it was our last, best chance to grow up."  -from "Sabbath People"

There is the famous story of Shimon ben Shetah, whose disciples went to buy him an ass. They bought one from an Arab, and they rejoiced when they found that there was a precious jewel attached to the animal. Shimon asked them, “Does the owner know of it?” When they said “no,” he told them to give it back to the Arab. They argued with him that there was a law that “if you find something belonging to a non-Jew, you may keep it.” Shimon said, “Do you think I am a barbarian? I purchased an ass. I did not purchase a precious jewel. I would rather hear the Arab say ‘Blessed is the God of the Jews’ than to possess all the riches of the world.” They returned it to the Arab, who proclaimed, “Blessed is the Lord, the God of Shimon ben Shetah!” (Yerushalmi Bava Metzia 2:5; Deuteronomy Raba, Ekev, 3:3) . – Rabbi Reuven Hammer T his is the way of peace and becoming.

“A student of Rabbi Eliyahu Dushnitzer relates that once while walking with his teacher, the two became involved in a deep discussion. At one point they stopped walking and stood in the same spot for a long time.  Without realizing what he had done, the student tore off a leaf from a nearby tree. Rabbi Dushnitzer grabbed his hand and censured him, “What did you do?  Even if the value of what you took is less than one “prutah” it is considered stealing.” - Mordecai Katz Nature is our responsibility to live in, appreciate and use, not abuse or take for granted.  That is why we have blessings that we recite when seeing magnificent aspects of nature, God’s work.

We are neither too weak nor few As long as one man does what one man can do As long as one man in the sun alone, Walks between silence and stone And honors manhood in his flesh, his bone We are not yet too weak, nor too few.  – Archibald MacLeish Be brave.  In being good, we side with the many.

Why did Joshua, in ordering the sun to stand still, use the word "dom" (meaning silence) rather than "omade" (still).  The Midrash Tanhuma answered that as long as the sun continues to move it sings praise to God.  When it ceases to move, it ceases to praise. All nature sings to the Lord.  Even at this moment, praises abound, ascending toward the Holy One, blessed be He, from the most tender shoot to the cosmos.

“Wonder, or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man’s attitude toward nature and history. One attitude is alien to his spirit: taking things for granted, regarding events as the natural course of things. To find an approximate cause of a phenomenon is no answer to his ultimate wonder. He knows that there are laws that regulate the course of natural processes; he is aware of the regularity and pattern of things. However such knowledge fails to mitigate his sense of perpetual surprise at the fact that there are facts at all.”  “Awareness of the divine begins with wonder. It is the result of what man does with his higher incomprehension. As civilization advances the sense of wonder declines. Such a decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of happiness lies in understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.”    - Abraham Joshua Heschel

In The Crying Game, a doomed British solider tells his IRA captor the story of the frog and the scorpion.  The scorpion asks the frog for a ride across the river but the frog refuses.  "You'll sting me and I will die," he says.  "That doesn't make sense," argues the scorpion, "because I can't swim and if I kill you I'll die too."  The frog thought about it and decided it made sense so he agreed.  But halfway across the frog felt that sharp stab of the scorpion's tale.  "Why?  Why?" he gasped with his last breath.  "It's my nature, "responded the scorpion. Seek good. Do good. But be wise, beware the scorpion.