Being somber

77% Weekly Newsletter

FeelDiscomfort
Take a moment to get in touch with your gut when you reflect on the tragedy that happened at the Boston marathon.
When I do, I feel a deep, terrifying void.
Oh, how I would rather think about the events, seek answers and try to make sense.
My gut is so uncomfortable about the horrors of the human condition. My gut is so uncomfortable about the senseless killing, the death of innocents, the disruption to peaceful gatherings.
Oh, please help me to stay in the feelings so that I can develop compassion and mercy. Let me feel my feelings so I can stay connected to my humanity and to those who are directly suffering. My thoughts won’t solve what happened. But our empathy and feelings can make us more connected to our fragile, connected human experience. We can be with the parents of that 8 year old who was killed, we can sit with the terror of those reverberating from the blasts, we can be with those who responded and are still responding. We can be human BEINGS together.
With love,
i best

Me, Rabbi.

✧✧✧   I am a rabbi.   I have a Masters Degree in Hebrew letters and a Doctorate of Divinity, and I am ordained as a rabbi.   I have each credential framed, in my office, just behind where I sit.   They’re not individually affixed to the wall—they lean against one another in a stack.   I like the

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Way Through

✧✧✧ Hugh’s dad died a few weeks ago. Hugh is a dear friend and Presbyterian minister in Waterloo (just west of Toronto), Ontario, Canada. I call, we small-talk for a while, and then I ask, “How is your heart?” “I appreciate you asking. My heart is heavy and sad.” ✧✧✧ I love Hugh.I mean, how many people do you know

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Flash Bang

✧✧✧ My buddy Marc meets me near my house at 3:30 on Saturday afternoon so we can bike to the small park named for Elizabeth Caruthers. I looked her up as I started to write this article. Elizabeth Caruthers was an early pioneer woman whose Supreme Court case led to the 1850 Donation Act—ruling that a woman, married or not,

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77% Weekly Newsletter
77% Weekly Newsletter