Tuesday, September 12, 2017

TTAD 12 -
I once heard Rabbi Kalman Pacouz say that the only thing that stands between us and us is us.
Sometimes great, yet flawed people become more popular after they died. It recently dawned on me that this is because they've gotten out of their own way.
Maybe an underrated part of teshuva is getting out of our own way. I think this is well articulated in the quote I cite below.
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A dear teacher, friend, and mentor introduced me to her in 1982. I was struck by her faith and her ability to express herself in a real surreal, seriously funny, other-wordly down to earth way. She was an anchor for me when I was in my early twenties even though I thought I had rejected the likes of her. She died young long before I met her.
She brought me comfort again, as I read this, as her lips moved gently from her grave. In her early twenties she shared these words only with G-d:
"Dear G-d,
I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth's shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear G-d is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing.
I do not know you G-d because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside..."
- From "A Prayer Journal," a posthumous book by Flannery O'Conner

1 Comments:

Blogger Rufus T said...

I love this. Shalom and thank you.
Rufus T

September 27, 2017 at 12:44 PM  

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