Friday, March 25, 2011

nobodysgod

I just came across a piece I wrote some time ago about the "American dream." I have no idea what the occasion was, but it doesn’t take a huge incentive to get me talking about this country. I’ve got a love for America that I suspect I was fed with my mother’s milk, because to both of my parents this was the Promised Land.

Given that, what I said there about the "American Dream" didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was how intimately my thoughts about making that dream a reality in one’s life relate to another cherished part of my life. I’m talking about faith.

In the piece that fortuitously came into my hands, I wrote that the American Dream "is not something you have at night, it’s something you do, day by day." That could well serve–and serve well–as a description of how I think about faith. How I experience it.

To me, faith, like the American Dream, isn’t something you have. It’s something you do. That right, day by day. As the American Dream requires rigorous effort, so does faith. At the outset, for both, we can, if we’re inclined to be attentive to the world around us, find. . ideas. . .people...actions. Little pieces that we can work with, which may turn out to connect readily–or with sweat-producing effort–to each other. Eventually, perhaps, to shape into a way of life that is rich with possible joy It can’t happen overnight–obviously–because, as I said, it is not something that happens when you’re asleep. So it takes wakefulness, work, time.

Which is why, understandably, for almost all of us, there is a sporadic temptation to give up on the American dream–or on faith. The daily effort required turns out to be more than we think we can bear–or, certainly, feel like putting out when the outcome isn’t even guaranteed. We decide to give up on the dream, or on faith, and move on. But dreams and faith can both be stubborn. You may let go of them, but they may not let go of you. They may insist on your attention. And, eventually, that you renew your intention to make them come to life.

My folks willingly–enthusiastically–took on the hard work of making the American dream a reality in their lives. Once my father thought he came this close–and it collapsed on them. But, painfully slowly, my mother and father emerged from the rubble and tried again. And again. They never brought the whole dream to life, but neither did they give up trying. And, it seems to me, that the trying itself may have tasted to them a lot like the dream fulfilled would have. After all, it’s called the American Dream because it could only happen here. Here, the place they called, without irony, the Promised Land.

With faith, it seems to work something like this. If–when–we give up on it, faith seems to drift easily away, in no time becomes quite distant. And yet, it can return at any time, tap us on the shoulder, or kick us in the butt–announce itself as present. Let us know, in no uncertain terms, I may be small, but I’m here. And you really ought to consider letting me into your life again.

Building a life where faith is the everyday reality can be as hard as my parents’ experience of America. But–no, and–every bit as fulfilling.

Truth is, I’m counting on it.

Friday, March 18, 2011

nobodysgod

In my last post, I said that I saw prayer as a way of keeping in touch with God. I think that phrase could use some clarifying.

You know how some people "keep in touch" by sending one another an annual holiday card? Or sending an annual family "catch-up" letter? My idea of keeping in touch is definitely not like that. To me "keeping in touch" means maintaining–sustaining–a relationship in an everyday way. Being present to the relationship in an ongoing way. Sometimes intimately, sometimes with simply an awareness that it’s there, a part of your life.
And with any other good mutual relationship, when you really need to know it’s there. . . you know it’s there. You don’t need to squander time or energy "catching up" before you bring up what’s troubling your mind or
heart or spirit. Or are facing a terrible event.

My mother’s dying night was like that for me. Our relationship was "clean"–there was nothing to bring out or up which had been shoved under the rug, so to speak. There was no need to tidy up our relationship. We had no loose ends to try to tie up. The only thing I had left to tell her was that I loved her, which I said many times that night. Words said not to inform, but in an attempt to be present to her even as she became less and less present to me. I was not saying it in hopes she would tell me she loved me too, because I knew that as surely as she knew I loved her. In that, as in every other way, it was our habit to keep in touch. Thankfully, that was our reality, because, well before morning, she was too far away to speak.

Maybe that’s when I learned the value of always keeping in touch with those who are important to you. Whom you love. I am pretty sure it’s why I do my best now to keep in touch with God–Whom I didn’t know back then. In the years since He came into my life, my wish is to be as present to Him as He is to me has only grown. So that when He needs me to be truly kind to someone, I will be ready to hear that from Him. And when I am impelled to alert Him to some emergency in my life or the life of a friend, He doesn’t dismiss my prayer with some divine version of "I know, I know," He allows me to think for the moment that He had to hear it from me. When life rebounds to normality, I can admit to both of us that I knew He knew what was going on, and was "on" it. I just had to remind myself of that.

Today, I know the Shekhinah–God’s softer, maternal half–is holding Japanese babies especially close to Her. Against Her very breast. I know She’s with them. Still, I pray for that. It reminds me that I need to keep them close to my heart, too.

Monday, March 14, 2011

nobodysgod

I didn't write anything to post last week because, when life piles on too much too quickly, I try mightily to put first things first. The past week was one of those. And while keeping to my blogging schedule is high on my to-do list, this week nothing on that list--including the earthquake--outranked one wholly unexpected event close to home. The twenty-six year-old nephew of a very good friend had a heart attack Tuesday, a whopper of one. I watched the earthquake on television, and the tsunami, and the fires and hoped I cared enough, but was pretty sure I fell short. On Friday, my friend's nephew underwent quadruple bypass surgery. Late Friday night, I heard: he came through the surgery well--which sounds as though he passed some difficult graduate school admissions exam. But I heard through the stock medicalese that it was time to take a deep breath of relief--and let gratitude in.

Over the weekend, morning by evening, day by day, I heard that a tube had been removed, he was sitting up, yet another tube was removed, he walked a bit in the hospital corridor, he ate something. I did not give short shrift to any report, knowing that bit by bit is precisely how one reclaims a life. I have been told, and it makes sense, that from this point on in his recovery, being young will help. But wasn't he too young to need such radical intervention--to need to reclaim his life?

The television chides me: look again at the children of the earthquake, the infants whose mothers were carried off by the tsunami or fathers burned by fire--the young of Japan whose fight to reclaim a life will be far, far slower, if it happens at all.

My heart takes over chiding me. For my friend's nephew, I did what I could. All I could. I prayed and prayed and prayed. So now, while I continue to pray for his full recovery, I need to make space inside me to pray for those Japanese children. And the old there. And those in the middle. All who have survived. And those who have not.

I don't know what prayer does, other than keep me centered and relatively sane. But I believe it does more. I believe it reminds God that I know He is there. And I'm counting on Him to do what He can. Just as, I believe, He counts on me to do my part, which is to pray. To keep in touch.

Please note: Whenever I come to a place where it is appropriate to use a pronoun rather than "God," I use the male pronoun. In numerous Jewish settings, including my own synagogue, to avoid using the male pronoun, "God" is repeated. Sometimes, a descriptive phrase-name (such as "The Ineffable") is substituted for "God." I am averse to either method of avoiding the use of the male pronoun. The English language includes pronouns for a reason. They allow language to be fluid. That is not a small matter to me, both as a wirter and lover of language. But if I take a somewhat narrow view of usage, my view of God is not narrow. Both my mind and spirit know that God is not male exclusively. Both my mind and spirit know God as both male and female. I hope that my persistence in using the out-of-favor male pronoun will not prove an insuperable obstacle to your reading this blog. If you want to argue about it, I'm open--write me here or on my Facebook page.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

All my adult life, I have been a supporter of the right to free speech. How could I not be, when my parents came here from a country where speaking freely could cost you your life? Even when the First Amendment permits hate-filled people to vent their hatred, I know that their rights are important to protect. But this week, my belief in the sanctity–in the beauty–of the First Amendment was tested. And I flunked the test.

This past Wednesday, the Supreme Court voted 8-1 that the morally hideous signs held aloft by the Phelps family outside the funeral of Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder were protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. The majority decision said that, because the Phelps family’s demonstration was "political, public and peaceable," it did not fall outside the First Amendment’s protection. Sympathy for the grieving Snyder family was noted, but irrelevant.

I have no doubt that was a correct interpretation. But to be correct is not the same thing as being right. And something about that ruling didn’t feel right to me. I wondered how it felt to God, Whom the Phelpses’ placards listed as a supporter.

Then I remembered a question that is–or ought to be–part of our national memory. During the Army-McCarthy hearings, sixty years ago–miraculously televised by ABC–Senator Joseph McCarthy went after a young lawyer named Fred Fisher. Fisher wasn’t even present, because Mr. Welch, Special Counsel to the Army, had decided not to use Fisher's services when the young man admitted that he had as a still younger man belonged to the Lawyers Guild which apparently had a Communist connection. Despite the fact that, due to Mr. Welch’s caution, Fred Fisher was not in any way involved in the hearings, Senator McCarthy, out for blood, brought up Fisher’s youthful mistake. He chewed on it and chewed on it, would not let it go. Finally, in a voice that can never be forgotten by anyone who heard it, Mr. Welch said to Senator McCarthy, "Have you no decency sir, at long last?"

Why did the Supreme Court ruling bring to my mind the increasingly heated exchange between Joseph Welch and Senator McCarthy? The connection is found in Welch’s use of the word "decency." The way Phelps and his feral family behaved may have been constitutional, but it wasn’t decent.

In this country, most of us hold dissent very high among our democracy’s virtues. I’ve read that the 8-1 decision this week may help the cause of free speech, and some say that there’s never too high a price for that. Maybe. But should not dissent be leavened with humanity? With, yes, decency? With enough simple decency to allow a fallen marine’s family to conduct his funeral service in peace?