A Soulful Journey

" E verything is exactly as it is for a reason. The crumb on your table is no mystical reminder of this morning’s cookie, it is there because you have chosen not to remove it." Richard Bach This is the way of life.  We array the things and then live with the consequences.   No one else is to blame.

When the curators of London’s National Gallery suggested that the paintings of the Old Masters be cleaned there was an outcry.  The accumulated grime was essential to the pictures, they reasoned.   Any art historian will tell you that accumulated grime does not enhance the artist’s creation, it diminishes it.  Yet there are some who claim that nothing should touch what has become old.      Every thing, every moment, and event should be looked at as novel.  Innovation, while not abandoning the past, should not be seen as dangerous.   We grow from each new experience under heaven.  Look with fresh eyes at God’s world.  Peel away the layers of dust and detritus and you will be richly rewarded for seeing the universe as was intended, not though smudged glasses.

A gentleman was enquiring for a room in a boarding house in Poland. "Tell me," he asked the landlady, "are there any fleas in the bed?" "Well," she replied, "where else would they be?"  - Friday Nite Book If you have to ask... Life is demonstrated by actions.  We are what we do, how  we behave. That is why the Torah is so insistent on how we treat ourselves, treat one another and revere God.

Once when Hillel left his disciples, they said to him, "Where are you going?"  He replied, "To do a pious deed."  They asked, "What may that be?"  He answered, "To take a bath."  They asked, " That is a pious deed?"  He responded, "Yes, for if the man who is appointed to tend and wash the images of kings which are set up in theatres and circuses, received his pay for so doing, and is even raised up to be regarded as among the great ones of the kingdom, how much more is it obligatory on me to tend and wash my body, since I have been created in the image of God?"  -Leviticus Rabbah, 34:3 Everything we can do can be Godly , especially since we are cast from His image.   This is the path of holiness.

G.K. Chesterton said the good thing about staying in hot water is that you are always clean. -Louis Jacobs One should always feel as if you were being observed; that no act could be done in total isolation. W i th that mindset, who would do wrong?  Perhaps that is why Pirkay Avot says, "Know what is above you -- an all-seeing eye," and sin will n ot touch you.