These times, of all times
It can’t be this many years that we’ve been experiencing an alternate reality. I’ve been feeling for quite some time that we’ve been in a torrent of horrid times. At once it feels endless and yet that time has been condensed, like a tiny bouillon cube that once crushed, makes an entire quart of stock.
These are times of anguish. The times that get written in history books —- only you can’t believe how people actually lived through them. Or that we are living through them.
I try to envision how recent events will be written in the history book of our times. The bullet points alone are beyond anyone’s belief:
an epidemic of epic proportions, corporate greed and failures, wildfires, racism from trusted enforcers of law, devastation from climate change, antisemitism, sexual trafficking and harassment, lootings and rampant stealing, dead animals washing up on our shores, the rise in popularity of dictators who are thirsty for authoritarian rule, the attempted overthrow of our government, invasions of democratic countries, massacres of innocent people…
The list is just too unbearable to write, let alone read through. And there is plenty that I missed.
These can’t be our times.
Are we just headline victims or are the recent events really of biblical proportions?
Yet, if I truly believe that Time functions not in a linear fashion, but in an upward moving spiral…passing over events in layers, then I have the sense that ‘we’ve been here before’, but are repeating them because we haven’t yet unlocked the secret combination that we are tasked with.
According to Torah, we were given the blueprint for life. We have it. We are told to choose life, the good and the just. To raise up those not whom we consider LESS than ourselves, but those who HAVE less than ourselves. The difference is the regard for the sanctity of human life. Judaism picks no favorites among those who choose to live their lives honorably, respectably, with a reverence for that which is beyond…the connection between all life.
Yet, we know that other faiths disagree on the sanctity of all human beings and therefore, that their souls have a path to the World to Come.
This week’s portion, Noach [Noah] offers us a pretty painful scenario of humanity sinking so low, it cannot be distinguished from animals. Behavior is so bad that there’s no turning back from utter destruction.
Can we assume today, that if all were to regard every single human as containing a spark of the Divine that war would be preventable? And once (and if) humanity truly believes we are all connected, how can people murder for the sake of that higher power?
We do have the choice that is put before us now, and we can be who we are meant to be.
I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life—if you and your offspring would live— Deuteronomy / Devarim 30:19
Choosing LIFE means regarding each and every person as being created with a soul, a connection to a higher force beyond ourselves.
We have the capacity to redirect our paths upward, to move past repetition into new territory. We start by honoring each other.