A Soulful Journey

 "I have a relative who uses what I call a "frum-o-meter" to measure the religiosity of her family and friends. Those who are less religiously observant or characterized as "goyim." Those who are more observant are fanatics. Only those who equal her style of observance are properly religious." -Rabbi Stanley Schachter These are insightful words for our time  Do we do the same?  Denigrate those whose values or opinions differ from us as uniformed, ignorant or dumb?  Or can we hear ideas which differ from our world view?

"I've learned that most problems aren't rocket science, but when they are rocket science, you should ask a rocket scientist. In other words, I don't know everything, so I've learned to seek advice and counsel and listen to experts. I have learned that an achievement that seems to belong to one person probably has hundreds, if not thousands, of people’s work behind it, and it’s been a privilege to be the embodiment of that work. I’ve learned that Russian has a more complex vocabulary for cursing in English, and that it also has a more complex vocabulary for friendship. If you learned that a year in space contains a lot of contradictions. A year away from someone you love both strains the relationship and strengths it in new ways. …. I’ve learned the grass smells great and wind feels amazing and rain is a miracle. I will try to remember how magical these things are for the rest of my life." Scott Kelly, after a 3...

Konrad Adenauer was from he Rhineland and had ambivalent feelings about eastern Germans.  In later years he traveled to Berlin and as the train crossed the Elbe River he muttered, "Now we enter Asia." When we are far from what is familiar it almost seems like we are entering another continent, or planet.  Yet people everywhere have the same wants, foibles and needs.

“In the depths of the depression of the 1930s, a government agent visited the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. The federal government was making small allotments to the impoverished farmer for stock, feed, and necessary equipment.    The agent came upon a mountain woman who lived all alone and try to grub a living from 2 acres of land. She had no floors in her cabin (save for the packed earth and just a few sticks of homemade furniture.) Daylight streamed through the chinks in the cabin walls. The agent looked around and then asked, “if the government gave you $200, what would you do with it? The woman weighed the question for moment and then replied, ‘Reckon' I'd give it to the poor’.”   -Hal Brady, quoting Harold Koh, The Tinsel and Hay, 1968

Doctor Bloom, who was known for miraculous cures for arthritis, had a waiting-room full of people when a little old lady, completely bent over in half, shuffled in slowly, leaning on her cane. When her turn came, she went into the doctor's office, and emerged within half an hour walking completely erect, with her head held high. A woman in the waiting room who had seen all this walked up to the little old lady and said, "It's a miracle! You walked in bent in half and now you're walking erect. What did that doctor do?" She answered, "Miracle, shmiracle. . . he gave me a longer cane."

A couple drives for hours, trying to escape the big-city rat race.  Winding down back roads and narrow country lanes, they end up in a very small town.  Shaking their heads at how peaceful everything is, they enter the town’s tiny general store. “The country is so nice and quiet,” they say to the store owner.   “t’s so much better than life in the city.   Don’t you agree?” “Can’t rightly say,” replied the store owner.  “Never lived in the country – always lived right here in town.”   Franklin Escher in Reader’s Digest

The complex variety of perspectives reminds me of a story I once heard about a father and his son driving to an engagement party.   The father, impatient, asks, “How far have we gone already?”   The son, looking forward to his bride says, “How much more do we have to go?” Because of their inner world the father and son perceive the outer world entirely differently.   They are both correct.

Not so long ago before the Russian revolution, an advisor to the Czar and his general were assassinated.   The assassination was set off by a bomb, which tore through the carriage, slew the horses, and killed the prince.   Some reactions at the time: The Imperial Guard mourned their general.   A coachbuilder bemoaned the destruction of his artistry. The prince’s horses, the finest in Europe, horrified a horseman.   A New York Times reporter wrote, “The old regime is dead; a new order is born.”