A Soulful Journey

While we were in Berlin, Franz often went to our local ark in Steiglitz. Sometimes I went with him. One day we met a little girl.  She was weeping an appeared to be in complete despair.  We spoke to her, Franz questioned her, and we learned that she had just lost her doll. At once he invented a sufficiently plausible story to explain the disappearance of the doll: “You doll has simply gone on a journey --  I know because she’s written me a letter.”   The little girl was a bit suspicious: “Have you got it on you?”  “No, I left it at home by mistake, but I’ll bring it with me tomorrow.”  Intrigued, the child has already almost forgotten what made her so upset in the first place.  And Franz went home immediately to write the letter.  He set to work with the same seriousness he displayed when composing one of his own works, and in the same state of tension he always inhabited at his table, even w...

"If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without ascending, the work would have been permitted."  - F. Kafka Why does Kafka write this?  Is it because the mutual project was good but only when they wanted to storm heaven that it became a travesty?

In Muritz, on the Baltic coast of Germany, Franz Kafka was vacationing with his sister and her children in 1923.  One evening at a table for dinner one of his nephews fell down.  Embarrassed in front of his friends, Kafka said at once, "What a clever way to fall and what a clever way to get up again." Sometimes it is better to say nothing than make lame excuses.

I once read a description of the difference between representing someone in ordinary legal matters and in legal matters of this sort, and the writer expressed it very well. This is what he said: some lawyers lead their clients on a thread until judgment is passed, but there are others who immediately lift their clients onto their shoulders and carry them all the way to the judgment and beyond. That's just how it is.  -Franz Kafka, The Trial Be my lawyer.  Be my friend.  Carry me when I need it and I shall do the same.  And we'll call each other friend.

"But take another Abraham.   One who wanted to perform the sacrifice altogether in the right way and had a correct sense in general of the whole affair, but could not believe that he was the one meant, he, an ugly old man, and the dirty youngster that was his child.   True faith is not lacking in him, he has his faith; he would make the sacrifice in the right spirit if only he could believe he was the one meant.   He is afraid that after starting out as Abraham with his son he would change on the way into Don Quixote. "    – Franz Kafka This is really not about Abraham, it is about us.  it is about our state of mind, our faith, our belief.  That is why God's Voice continues to reverberate throughout the ages: "Where are you?"   Will lack of faith keep us from answering?