A few years ago, I took up rappelling, the art of descending sheer cliffs by rope and harness, so that we could explore the red-rock canyons of Southern Utah. After I had begun to learn the basics, Steve, our guide, said to me, “You’re one of those people who wants to speed up when your adrenaline starts to flow.”
Some things in life have to be earned, and some things cannot be. We can earn respect and reputation by our behavior, but sometimes we need help, or forgiveness, or just a break, that we haven’t earned and don’t deserve. And we can also give to others gifts they don’t deserve and don’t have to earn. That sort of undeserved kindness is captured by the word Hesed, often translated as lovingkindness.
The other day I had coffee with Hal, the father of one of our chavurah members. He had just written his second novel, this one based on his amazing experiences as a Jewish-American soldier fighting the Nazis in World War II. We got together to talk about his book.
One of the current terms of religious discussion that I’ve grown to suspect is “spirituality.” I’m tired of hearing people say, “I’m not religious; I’m spiritual,” which often means I don’t have any outward signs of religious or transcendent life, but, trust me, I possess many lofty sentiments.
Chesed or loving-kindness is an essential human attribute, but it’s first of all a divine attribute. If we want to cultivate chesed, we should pay attention to how Hashem exercises it. And God’s chesed is on display at the conclusion of the Haftarot of Comfort, the passages from Isaiah that we read during this period between Tisha B’av and Rosh Hashanah.
"Who is rich? He who is happy with what he has." -- Avot 4:1, Ben Zoma
"Happy are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." --Matthew 5:8
"As the wallet grows, so do the needs." — Yiddish proverb
"Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.'" --Hebrews 13:5
“People where you live," the little prince said, “grow five thousand roses in one
garden... yet they don’t find what they’re looking for...” “They don’t find it,” I answered. “And yet what they’re looking for could be found in a single rose, or a little water...” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." — Albert Einstein
"It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it." — Lou Holtz
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." — Leonardo da Vinci
"There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth." — Leo Tolstoy
"Manifest plainness,
Embrace simplicity,
Reduce selfishness,
Have few desires." — Lao Tzu
"Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair." — Kahlil Gibran
The REI catalogue arrived in the mail the other day and I discovered all kinds of things that I really needed, which I didn’t even know existed the day before. I got some relief after I sent the catalogue to the recycling bin, but later that day in a conversation with a friend I learned about several books that I absolutely had to read and a new movie I should definitely see while it was still in the local theaters.
Use these questions to evaluate your day:
Are you able to open your heart and trust others easily, or are you cynical?
Do past experiences make it impossible for you to trust others who may otherwise be very trustworthy?
Do you trust people too easily? Do you look at a person’s reputation and assess your ability to trust them with reliability?
Are there areas in your life where you can improve so that you may become more trustworthy and relied upon by others?
Do you have a shem tov (a good name)? Does this allow others to trust you? If not, what could you do to improve this?
What characteristics make you trustworthy? Seek to improve on one of those traits.
Do you have anyone who can vouch for your trustworthiness? Does your reputation proceed you and people give you responsibilities frequently? If not, why not?
Use these questions to evaluate your day:
Are you able to focus on your Creator daily in such a way that prayer is effortless? If not, why?
Are you easily distracted? Or do you ignore others when you are doing something that seems important to you? Where is your balance of concentration?
Do you focus your mind energy to complete a task, or are you easily distracted and take long periods of time to complete something?
Do you strive to finish things and finish them well for the sake of Heaven?
Are you able to create long-term goals and stick to them, or do you give up easily when there are obstacles?
Do you make time for meditation? If not, is it because you have difficulty concentrating?
Are you able to concentrate on what is around you and see more deeply into matters? Are you involved in superficial tasks and reading so that you never reach deeper levels of understanding?
Use these questions to evaluate your day:
Use these questions to evaluate your day:
Is there an area in your life (home, routine, possessions) where you struggle with simplicity?
Do you have more than you need (food, home, possessions)? Why and how can you curb this?
Is there a way that you simplified your life today? Are you happier with the simplicity? Did it bring a sense of freedom?
Do you overcomplicate your life with excess? What is this excess? Sometimes the simplest solutions are like lighting a candle to remove darkness and chaos…what simple candle could you light to overcome your ‘darkness’?
Do you find it difficult to be because of all the stumbling blocks you set in your path? Do you have simple goals?
Do you have time-out moments where you can read a book or take a simple walk without technology?
Examine your home. What in your home helps you to exist and what bogs you down?
"Give, and it will be given to you; they will return to your lap a beautiful measure pressed, crammed full and overflowing. For with the measure that you use to measure, it will be measured to you."-- Mashiach Yeshua, Luke 6:38, DHE
Hillel stated: "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah. The rest is the explanation; go and learn."
"Therefore, a man should take care to be generous according to his means, to be magnanimous where magnanimity is called for…weighing all in the scales of Torah." -- The Ways of the Tzaddikim, The Gate of Miserliness, page 323
"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar, it comes to see that
an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." — Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I would rather make mistakes in kindness and compassion than work miracles in unkindness and hardness." — Mother Theresa
"Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It’s the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too."
— Frederick Buechner
"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in." — Morrie Schwartz
"Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive." — Dalai Lama XIV
"Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it’s beauty." — Albert Einstein
Use these questions to evaluate your day:
What were the seeds that started to erode your compassion today? Judgmentalism? Apathy?
Did you encounter anyone today who needed compassion? What was your response?
Do you frequently judge people before you know their situation?
If you were on the verge of being apathetic to someone’s situation, what did you employ that
brought you into their reality and helped you to have compassion?
Were you able to use prayer or meditation to increase your compassion for someone or a situation
today?
Do you often let the news harden you so that you lack compassion? What measures could you take
to prevent this from happening so you can be actively practicing compassion?
Are you compassionate to a fault, or are slow to compassion?
I think I’m a pretty patient guy, but I saw something this week that put my patience to shame.
Last week I had the privilege of experiencing the removal of all four wisdom teeth and one extra tooth that had grown behind one of my top front teeth. The entire experience has been a test of patience.