Ninth Nisan - Perplex

I'm going to slip this in, under the wire, for PERPLEX, the prompt for ninth Nisan in #blogexodus.

I am perplexed by much of the story of our redemption, our Exodus from Egypt. Why did it take 400 years for God to finally hear our cries? Why would Moses, let alone God, expect this newly freed people, who had only known a taskmaster's lash, who had not tasted the sweetness of freedom and the joy of being bound to God - why would they expect the Spies to behave any differently? Trust? After all that history, on a seeming whim? Really? Why does it appear that Aaron got off scott free after the gossip transgression, while Miriam was doomed to suffer and be exiled from the community, until she was healed, until she was deemed fit to re-enter? Why was she not mourned?

I am perplexed about so much of our story. But today, I really don't so much care about the tangles of our story. I really don't care about its themes of redemption and hope and freedom and binding.

Today,.I am perplexed by a world that tacitly condones murder by hunger, by medical need, by neglect and indifference. Our texts are clear - there shall be no needy. Yes, yes - there will always be needy. Our text comments on that as well: If there are needy, give them what they need, with open hands and open hearts. I am, again, perplexed that we can be so blithe and blind to the ravages of need.

I am perplexed at the murder of anyone. I don't understand, in any way, the killings that we witness, every day. My mind absolutely boggles at the battlefields we have made of our homes, our cities, our seas.

We witness these murders daily: in Syria and Russia, Paris and Turkey. Senseless and horrific, they are atrocities, because of their scope and numbers. In Chicago, where I live, there are parts of this glorious city where children must walk through war zones to get to school and back; where innocents become collateral damage and we tag the murders of the not-innocents as something a little less than murder, and more like just desserts. As if the death of ANY person does not diminish us all.

We witness these deaths - murders and killings and atrocities - and we shake our heads, draw our families closer (even for just the moment, grateful that we can). We feel genuinely bad: shocked, perplexed, angered, saddened. We are indignant, and demand that something be done, dammit! All the right things, all the civilized, compassionate feelings. We witness, we feel. We know, down to our bones, this is a great and terrible wrong that must be stopped.

And the next day - hell, the next hour - we witness it all over again. Our perplexity consumes us.

Here's the thing: I don't have an answer. There is probably no one answer anyway, in such a complex, worldwide, ancient sin of ours, of all of us humans. I know that you have to feed people. Make them healthy. Educate them, clothe them, give them skills and jobs and hope. And you know what? In my naivete, I can bet that if we were only to place our efforts in saving people over making profit - if a human life were actually more valuable than an ounce of gold - we could change the world almost overnight.

How about this - how about we treat a person, not a need? We talk about the Hungry, the Poor, the Other, as if each need were a monolith of sameness, as if every person there were exactly the same, needed in the exactly same way. Every person in need is a person - a face, a heart, a soul, a voice. We want to create a little box, control it tightly, fit all the people with Need A into the box labeled Need A, then slap a lid on it, tie it up with string, and put it on a shelf, as we dole out a solution crafted to blanket the box - but not the people we've put there.

Those people - and the very fact that we can say "those people" is testament to the problem - are faceless. Those people are numbers. Those people are Them, inherently different from, less than Other. We reduce a person to a need, so we can discuss the problem of that need at a healthy, intellectual distance. We can provide solutions, that, if they don't work, we can shrug our shoulders and know that at least we tried - and then return to our regularly scheduled lives.

Forgive my broad brush here. Forgive the soap box upon which I've climbed. Notice that I say "we," not "you." This is my sin as well. Here's a novel thought: how about we unpack those boxes, and really see the people for who they are? How about we understand that we are all made from the same dust of stars and earth.

I am perplexed by how easily we can reduce people to the lowest common denominator - and then find even the trap door to that.

The people who were murdered, most likely by their own government earlier this week, whose homes have been made into bombed out shells, who have been forced to flee, again and again, until there were no roads left upon which they could flee - they are not Syrians, or Muslims or Christians or whatever label we attach to them to make them something Else - they are humans. They deserve our respect and compassion. They are not a sad little box to put on a shelf already over-crowded with other sad little boxes filled with human fodder and faceless Others.

They deserve honor. They deserve their names. Zichronam liv'rachah, may their memories be for a blessing. May their names be remembered.

\

1. Molham Jihad al-Yusuf

2. Yasser Ahmed Al-Yousef

3. Child- Ammar Yasser Al-Yousif 7 years old

4. Child- Muhammad Yasser Al-Yousef 10 years old

5. Ms. Sana Haj Ali, wife of Yasser

6. Abdul Karim Ahmed al-Yusuf

7. Child Ahmad Abdul Hamid Al - Yusuf 9 months old

8. Child Abdul Hamid al -Yusuf 9 months old

9. Ms. Dalal Ahmed Al-Sahh, wife of Abdul Hamid Al-Yousuf

10. Ibrahim Mohammed Hasan al-Yousuf

11. Child Muhammad Hassan al-Yusuf 11 years old

12. Ms. Hind Turki Al-Yousef

13. Omran Suhail Al-Yousef

14. Ahmed Suhail Al-Yousef

15. Nihad Ahmad al-Yusuf

16. King (Malak?) Turki al-Yusuf, wife of Nihad al-Yusuf

17. Nur Nihad al-Yusuf

18. Hassan Mohammed Al-Yousef

19. Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Yousef

20. Imad Al-Din Al-Qudh - Pharmacist

21-23. Children of Imad al-Din al-Qudh We did not get their names

24. Turki al-Qudh

25. The wife of Turki al-Qudh

26. The child Hind Turki al-Qudh

27-28. My baby Turki Qudh We did not get their names

29. Ms. Raja Mohammed Al-Mohammad

30. Anas al-Khalid - Teacher

31. Mr. Fatima Al-Sousi, the wife of Anas Al-Khalid - a school teacher

32. The child Mustafa Anas Al-Khalid

33. The child Alaa Anas al-Khalid

34. The child Shahd Anas al-Khalid

35. The child Abdul Rahman Ans al-Khalid

36. The child Khadija Anas al-Khalid

37. Ahmed Khalid Halawa

38. Khaled Halawa

39. The child Shaima Ibrahim al-Jawhar

40. Ahmad Shahoud al-Reem Abu Muhanna

41. Abu Ayman al-Jawhar

42. Ms. Safia Haj Kaddour, wife of Abu Ayman al-Jawhar

43. The child Meyar al-Mari

44. Amer Al-Naif- lawyer

45. Alaa Al-Naif

46. ​​Mohammed Al-Naif

47. Alaa Mohammed Al-Naif

48. The wife of Alaa Mohammed Al-Naif

49. Wife of Alaa Mohammed Al-Naif

50. Jamila Hafez Al-Qasem - A pediatrician.

51. Dirar Al-Aliawi Abu Emad

52. Mohammed Jamal Al-Qassem

53. The wife of Muhammad Jamal al-Qasim

54. Fatima Jamal Al-Qassem

55. son of Mohammed Said Barhoum

56. Hayyan Al-Ali

57. Wife of Hayyan Al-Ali

58-59. Children of the children of Hayyan Ali

(found on the Facebook wall of a friend)

Monkey Bars and Faith

I am stuck. Really, really, really stuck. The cemented-in-place kind of stuck. You know – the kind of motionlessness that you used to get when you were a kid, sinking low in your seat when your teacher asked a question, laser eyes searching through the sea of desks, looking past all the waving arms, all the eager faces demanding attention, demanding they be given their chance to show off and shine. And of course, the teacher looked past them, through them, looking for You, the one kid who so did not know the answer, flop sweat soaking through your shirt and making your skin clammy, where you begged silently, “don’t see me, don’t notice me, pass me by, pleasepleaseplease,” knowing that if you even thought about motion, you would be caught, noticed, called on to answer that unanswerable question. So you made yourself small and held yourself still. Unmoving. Willfully stuck.

And you got called on anyway.

I don’t like being in this place, this needy and scary place. I want to be in control, captain of my life, captain of happy. I was talking a friend, who told me that the only thing left for me to do was to ask for help. Not from a person, but from the Universe. God. Whatever I might choose to call that thing that is bigger than me, outside of me. She said it was now a matter of faith.

Too many people are talking about faith to me these days. And it’s not as if these folks are regular faith talkers. In fact, they’re not. I can mostly depend on them to not talk about faith. More, I can mostly depend on them to not remind me to act on my faith. So what gives? Is this God’s little joke on me? Am I getting what I need, even when I want anything but? And where is my faith? I had it just a while ago. I was floating on it, sustained and strengthened by it. It is so much easier to depend on faith when life is good, isn’t it? It is the question I have been asking my Sunday school kids for years – how do you approach God in the face of joy? In the face of despair? And everything in between? I thought I had answered this question, dammit. I thought I had learned this lesson. I could have sworn I had had my long dark night of the soul, years ago.

So my friend said that this was about faith. And asking for help – but asking differently. And she said that it was okay to not know the lesson I could be learning.

But it’s still scary. It still seems so large and consuming.

I hate that she may be right.

I am so used to being alone. I am the strong one, dammit. You learn, cynically, that help doesn’t come, that there is no knight in shining armor and you’re no damsel in distress, but mostly that you are alone in your need and hurt. And then you get stuck, trapped in this endless loop. So you just stop asking, because the pain of being alone is always greater than whatever need you have that’s driving you to ask for help.

I am the Fixer of Broken Things. I do not get healed. I slay the dragons and exorcise the demons and forge paths and light torches. For others. Because I don’t know how to ask for myself. I don’t know how to say I am in need.  I get wrapped up in the story of stuck, of the big and scary stuff. I don’t always leave room for the other stuff – the small stuff, the happy and good stuff. I need to be reminded to talk about the things that are surprising and filled with grace. The things that have made me smile, that took my breath away because of their beauty or their simplicity.

So what is my good stuff? Because I need the reminder that life is not quite as heavy as I make it, I must remember the stuff that awed me or made me laugh. The stuff that got me out of my head, because I can set up camp there, live in a burnt out slum there, where I regularly mug myself. It’s about faith, right? And this is part of that expression: there is good stuff in the universe – there is light and hope.

There is faith, faith enough to carry me, comfort me. Faith greater than my fear. Maybe. Perhaps. I am willing to believe that possibly, my faith is enough. That if I reach out my hand, leap into the chasm, I will be caught and held. Cherished and loved. That this dark and cold place, silent and singular and solitary, this is illusion, smoke and mirrors that are shattered with a single laugh, a kind word. I am reminded, in my faith, that it is enough to go to God and ask for help. My prayer does not change God; rather, it changes me, and my heart.

So tonight, I will act as if. Some people, some cynical people who like to dress all in black and smoke cigarettes off in the corner looking disdainful (not that I know any of those cynical people, at all), they would call it pretending, not acting as if. But they would be wrong, damn them. They would be bitter and unhappy people. They would not wear their hair in pig tails and swing from the monkey bars. They would not know how to laugh; they would merely snicker.

So tonight, I will act as if and laugh and swing from the monkey bars. I will act as if I live in that bright and centered spiritual place. I will act as if I am happy and unafraid. And in my darkness, I am shown, in surety and faith, that my fears, real and scary and looming large and all-consuming, that they are made of cobwebs and dust motes. And I breathe; I move, with infinite slowness and subtle grace. I move, and it’s okay to not know, to ask for help. I am not alone. There is God. There is a light. There is hope.

28 Elul 5773: Give

"You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give." Winston Churchill

That's what it's about really: not the hokey pokey, but making a life-- one that matters. Why else bother with this exercise in forgiveness and redemption? Why else make this breathtaking journey of diving deeper and bending the light a little differently? Why else gather together at the gates, waiting and expectant, to ask that we be let through, to ask that we find joy and sweetness and life? Why else walk with God, listening for that still, small voice that rises up so gently, to shelter us and give us comfort as we go forward, one breath, one heartbeat, on step at a time?

Why else indeed?

We give of our time. We give of our talents. We give of our treasures. Head, Hands. Heart. We give, and slowly, we build something beautiful-- a kehillah kedosha, a holy community. A life that matters.

There is so much need in this world. One could drown in it. The need is everywhere-- halfway around the world, on the other side of the country next door. It is not bounded by color, or sex, nationality or religion. And the need grows, daily== Hunger. War. Unclean water. Disease. Poverty. Ignorance. Fear. Want. devastation. You know the list as well as I. There are (sadly) no surprises to it. It is a symphony of dissonance and discord, harsh and hurting, played on a very delicate and very human stage. It saps our resources and drains our spirits. 

Lo Alecha ham'lachah ligmor, velo atah ben chorin l'hibatel mimena: we are not required to finish the work; neither are we free to desist from it. (Pirke Avot 2:16). The work is vast. The need an endless chasm. But we give. We build a holy community, we build a life that matters. 

We stand at the gates and we open our hearts. We give, and so we change the world, and so we ourselves are changed. Head. Hands. Heart. B'tzelem elohim, we give, we change, we are redeemed.