All and Nothing

I thought my blog was inconsequential. Nothing. And suddenly I received a very worried email from my beautiful everfriend Jayda, who I now know reads me faithfully, and knows I'm fine when I write. I blog therefore I am.
I'm back, and humbled at knowing that I matter.
Perhaps the most important opposite is this one. I am Everything and I am Nothing. Keep a little note in each pocket, I think I quoted earlier. But again, because it matters. One note says, "I am dust". The other, "For me the world was made". Live in the space between these two, both being 100% true.
I love you Jayda. You are always with me. I love that you, my sunny friend, are the one who knows I am sad here.
When I sneeze in Netanya, I hear your gesundheit.
When I cry, you catch a tear and look through it,
seeing the beauty I see

The Truth and Its Opposite are True

Daddy tells me that for every aphorism there is an equal and opposite aphorism. Help me find the pairs:
"Necessity is the mother of invention" goes with "Invention is the mother of necessity" (I can't go anywhere without my cellphone now. Also, yesterday I was in a house with an elevator. The mom had already washed the stairs for Shabbat, so we had to take the elevator.)
"All's for the best in the best of all possible worlds" goes with "If anything can go wrong, it will"
"Spare the rod and spoil the child" goes with "If you baby a baby when he's a baby, you won't have to baby him when he's grown".
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it" goes with "Don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today"
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder" - "When I'm not near the one I love, I love the one I'm near"
Please help me find more!

I'm here! I'm here! Adam's been home a couple of times, and is now returning, tfu tfu, to a less turbulent place. Beit Alfa relatives are joining the Netanya family for a Shabbaton at our house this weekend, and I'm counting the minutes til my first trip to Canada since Aliyah: Nov 7 07. Loving you

This World

If you approach this world expecting everything to be smooth and lovely, it punches you, again and again, and you're knocked down, windless.
Say, instead, it's a horrible place. Know this entirely. There's a calm, an immense relief, in accepting this: that the world is bad. Okay, you say. I know this, so each new badness is not a shock.
It's a bad place and it needs me. I'm useful here because it's a dark and horrible place and I have light in me. Let it be the good that surprises you, jolts your slumber.
Israel can gives you an illusion. You see pretty beaches, waves, fields and flowers, orange trees. It can look so lovely here, you expect to feel wonderful. You expect it to be easy. And over and over again it punches you and you are shocked.
Don't let the beauty blind you. It's a broken place, a needy place. You did not come here to bathe in its light. You came here to bring your light to it.

basic needs

Again, relief and joy washed through me this morning, as I saw "Adam" on the screen of my cellphone, and as I heard his voice, clear, strong, good. He sounds just fine, just regular. There is a steadiness that Adam has cultivated over his years.
I've been thinking about Maslow's hierarchy. My biggest observation, during this time when one's hand is always holding the cellphone, even during classes and movies and speech sessions, in case of a phone call, is that here, you do the top level activities, the SELF ACTUALIZATION, the art, the pleasures, the real living, even when the very basics of breathing, sleep, safety, and security are a question mark.

Life for me is

Someone help me find a quotation, that I thought was from George Bernard Shaw, "Life for me is no brief little flame, it is a blaze......"

Dani Karmi and his son Lavi are on their way to the base to visit with Adam, bringing a change of socks, and a fleece.

 

Do you sleep at night?

Adam asked if I've been sleeping. Seems some of the young men carry the weight of knowing that their moms are sleepless, not functional at times like this. I assured him that, though I think about him constantly, have my hand on my cellphone round the clock, ready to hear from him, I sleep well and I trust entirely. It doesn't take religion to conceptualize an organizing principle that balances the canoe.
"He who makes Himalayas and butterflies' wings knows His stuff. Let him take the paddle for awhile.
My best image for this is the bedtime Shma, a declaration not only of the unity, the oneness, the interrelatedness of all things. Beyond this, in the bedtime Shma you are saying to whatever organizing principle, whatever energy, whatever "Good Organizing Direction" is acting, "I know you're up all night, steering. Over to you. I trust you. Why should both of us lose sleep?"

Adam just called !

What a feeling, when the phone rang this morning, Tuesday, Jan 13 at 8:00 a.m. When I hear the ring, I always think it may be Adam, and it's beautiful family and friends sending love to Adam, and asking how he is, and me telling them I know he's fine, and I'll call as soon as I hear from him. Then today, it really was Adam's voice, strong, buoyant, good. No details, but he's in an army base, Sde Teiman, near Beer Sheva, ready for a good sleep, shower, food. Tov.

6 Hats

When making a decision, look at the issue in turn with each of these hats on your head:
white hat: neutral, facts and numbers.
red: feelings
black hat: all the negatives, what could go wrong
yellow hat: sunshine, the upside
green: creative, new thinking, Alex Jadad's "what if" thinking. Just imagine!
blue: meta, thinking about the thinking. How am I going about this decision?

You may be the answer to someone's prayers

Through bizarre twistings and networking turnings, I have met an adorable three-year-old boy with apraxia, who so far has found no one with my expertise and gift in building speech sounds from the first ah to the mmmmmmmmmmmm, with special games and whistles. I have seen little ones like this boy learn to talk. The process is complex, and needs, of course, to feel only like fun and play for him. And he lives around the corner from me in Netanya. When I met him, he cuddled right up to me, loved my toys and books, and we got started. His parents seem happy and hopeful too. That's what living is about. Realizing that each of us may be the angel that was sent to be the answer to another person's yearnings and prayers. As always, balance this with "dust, I am dust". And, as in all these teachings, 100% this, 100% that. I am nothing, 100%, an invisible speck in the universe, and 100%, I am the answer to someone's prayers.
Posted by nomikaston at 9:28 PM 0 comments

The cerebral cortex is a flash in the pan

This goes for all of us. The good guys. The bad guys. The ones who have God on their side. And the ones who have God on their side. Here is what the rational self is:
a tiny little man riding a huge wild elephant. The enormous elephant is our irrational, real self, powerful, wild, headstrong.
When the elephant is feeling compliant, and feels like doing our bidding, we are rational, in control, calm. We make sense.
But when our wildelephant-self is not in the mood to follow our rational bidding, reason is powerless, just holds on tight and comes for the ride.
The cerebral cortex is a flash in the pan.
The real self is crazy.
And sincere.

I need to quiet myself, and write a personal diary of this unreal, nonreal, surreal, postreal, a-real, too real ten days (How can this be the year 2009, and our world so lacking in the most basic imagination?) But for now, this intrigued me:
Question:

I am the only Jew in my office, so I face a daily barrage of questions about Israel's actions in Gaza. I don't know who appointed me as Israel's spokesman and I am not armed with the answers. Can you help?

Answer:

At times like this, each one of us becomes an ambassador for Israel. Even if you don't agree with everything Israel does, any decent person must stand up for Israel's right to self-defense.

We can leave the military and political issues to the experts, but we should all be clear on the moral questions raised by this war. Let's look at a few of the most commonly asked questions.

Q: How can Israel justify killing civilians if their intent is to crush Hamas?

A: The death of innocents is a tragic inevitability of war. Our hearts go out to all those caught in the middle. The sad fact is that the Palestinian people are being held hostage by Hamas. Just as it is clear that Hamas is morally culpable for any harm done to Gilad Shalit, the Israeli hostage that they hold, so too are they culpable for the fate of Palestinian innocents amongst whom they hide. A civilian who is killed while being used by a terrorist as a human shield is a victim of the terrorist, not the Israeli army, who does not target innocent civilians.

Q: Isn't Israel's response a bit disproportionate?

A: If Israel's purpose was to take revenge, then perhaps the question of "proportion" would apply here. But Israel is waging a defensive war. In war, you don't measure your response to the enemy by what they have done to you in the past, but rather by what needs to be done to stop them from attacking you. Israel must destroy Hamas' capability to continue shooting rockets at Israeli cities. Israel's actions are proportionate to the present and future threat, not just the damage done in the past.

Q: Doesn't Israel understand that they are just creating more terrorists? The anger and fury at Israel as a result of bombing Gaza will only make more people want to join Hamas.

A: Feelings of frustration, anger, fear and rage do not make you into a terrorist. A culture of death and an education of hate does. Israel doesn't need to do anything to create terrorists - Islamic extremism does that - but Israel must act to destroy those who threaten its people.

Q: Hamas indeed has a militant wing, but it also does a lot of good. They are responsible for social programs, educational projects and humanitarian work in Gaza. By destroying Hamas, Israel also destroys all the good they do. Aren't we demonizing a group that is not all bad?

A: If a serial killer also happens to volunteer for his local hospital, has donated money to an orphanage, and looks after his ailing grandmother, he is still a serial killer, and he and the threat he represents must be treated as such. The danger he poses far outweighs the concern for any good he may do.

Q: By using violence, how is Israel any better than its terrorist enemies?

A: That is as ridiculous as saying that a woman who fights off an attacker is no better than her attacker. Israel would not touch Hamas if Hamas would stop sending rockets and suicide bombers into Israel. Israel seeks to live in peace with its neighbors; Hamas and its allies seek to destroy Israel, no matter what Israel does.

There is a world of difference between the Hamas terrorists and the Israeli soldiers. The Hamas terrorist seeks violence as a way of life; his aim is to sow war and death. For the Israeli soldier, war is a necessity, and a moral duty, because Israel's citizens are being attacked and innocent lives are being threatened. The Hamas terrorist seeks to maximize civilian casualties; the Israeli soldier does everything in his power to minimize them.

The Hamas terrorist fears times of peace, because then he has no purpose. The Israeli soldier dreams of a time when peace will reign. Then, the Israel Defense Force will be made joyously redundant, as "one nation will not lift a sword against another nation, and they will no longer learn to wage war".

Being the Mother of a Soldier

to celebrate life, even now

A beautiful yarzeit celebration with all of Abchu and Leah's children, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren, right in the midst of what is happening. The graves are a garden, in the middle of the grapefruit orchards. Ila handed a flower to each child. To life. To life. To life. To life.

With "God" on our side......

"Reason" has no place in this broken world of ours. Religion is too natural, too primal, too ingrained, to be eradicated. Religion propels us into love, and into the worst horrors. We are capable of anything, with "God" on our side. Bob Dylan said it well.
Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come fromIs called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.
Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.
Oh the Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side.
Oh the First World War, boysI
t closed out its fate
The reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.
.So now as I'm leavin'I'm weary as HellThe confusion I'm feelin'Ain't no tongue can tellThe words fill my headAnd fall to the floorIf God's on our sideHe'll stop the next war.
"With God on Our Side" is a song by Bob Dylan, released as the third track on his 1964 album The Times They Are A-Changin'. The lyrics generally address the notion of humans that God or some other higher power(s) invariably sides with them and opposes those with whom they disagree, and thus they don't question the morality of wars fought and atrocities committed by their country. Dylan mentions various wars and events from United States and world history, including the slaughter of Native Americans in the nineteenth century, the Spanish-American War, the American Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Holocaust, the Cold War, and the betrayal of Jesus Christ by Judas Iscariot.

Love to you all

More soon, but for now, know that we are fine here, watching wind and waves, the great equalizers. We hear the same news you hear. Loving you, trusting that reason and the love of peace are stronger than all.