A Spiritual Perspective
I reflected on what I had written for my last posting, feeling liberated, as if a place of clutter had been cleared away inside of me. I didn’t understand the experience. Generally I can name the emotion, sad or scared, resentful or angry, joyful or elated, even if I cannot yet quite comprehend its immediate significance. So I felt rather at odds with myself and somewhat confused.
The experience was similar to how I felt the other morning when I awoke, after having read a collection of the “Friends Journal: Quaker Thought And Life Today.” Sue, my collaborator, also called “Quaker Sue” by some of our associates, had been clearing away her own clutter lately and had given them to me. Sue and her husband, Paul, are in the midst of moving these days. De-cluttering is thus common practice for her right now. So once again, perhaps, Sue’s trash become my treasure? One can only wonder at that.
Nonetheless, after reading these journals, I awoke feeling mystified and confused. I was unable to pin down how and why what I had read on these pages had evoked a feeling of such utter amazement in me.
Eye-opener: There were actually real people nearby who thought through the congruency or incongruency of their values, behaviors and feelings and how they lived these out with one another as community. People, like my “Quaker Sue,” that had been there all along. But I had been too distracted by the contention I saw around me in the local Jewish community to even see them, except for Sue.
After all, other Jews were my landsman, the people of the land from whence I originated, my heritage. Were we not all supposed to be as one? And, if other Jews would not be for one another, where was that One-ness to be found?
It would take too long and be too complicated to explain what I mean by this comment here. Besides I don’t know that I understand what these journals evoked in me well enough at this point to articulate yet.
But the time will come as finally it did, after the adventures of my vacation had settled. I am confident of this more and more, only this past week or so. What I have to say and express through New Horizons and my writing and speaking efforts will find expression in due time. Even when my writer’s block appears to be a terminal illness, I know now, with greater confidence, that it will soon pass.On one thing I am already gaining clarity:
I do not want Barak Obama to be president!
And, the very notion that I would think this, much less voice it stringently, feels as an anathema for me. Thus, along with the myriad of other changes now going on in my life, I am somewhat mystified presently.
A values clarification is, indeed, occurring at what feels to be the deepest levels of my being. I trust you, too, may be as bewildered these days as am I; a sign of the times, don’t you agree?
Beyond the collective, one slice of that whole pie that I have come to call ME has, over the past two years (In fact right before your eyes on this blog, if you’ve been following it.), I have recovered from being an anti-Semitic Jew. I have come to take pride in my being a member of such an illustrious tribe. For a tribal Jew is what I now feel myself to be.
Forget religion as the issue. Forget Israel as the issue. I am a member of an ancient tribe with a rich heritage. And, though it be based on illusion and a somewhat childlike belief in what my grown-ups said, I grew up believing that Democrats in America helped protect my people from extinction, albeit quite late for the six million of us who were exterminated.
If the Republicans take office, who will protect my tribe from extinction? It is too big of a job for us alone. Like all else in this global village of today, we need good leaders that we can trust and rely upon. Leadership!
Where is that for us, as Americans, and as Jewish Americans?
Letting go of Obama is, for me, letting go of a vision of leadership I had believed in; the vision that brought me to Washington, D.C., as if to Camelot many years ago.
But no more! Gone!
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