Gevurah shebeKhesed Limitations, judgement; spiritual, physical, emotional strength; corresponding with awe within Lovingkindness, grace, compassion, benevolence, loyalty; a quality central to Jewish ethics.
Quality: Parent and Parent; tempering judgement and limitations with lovingkindness and compassion by creating loving boundaries.
Limitations and judgement are rules and boundaries. Offered without compassion they become a regime that traps the setter and the doer. Love and lovingkindness are boundless! Our kindness is empty if offered without our heart; love is meaningless if offered in ignorance. Limitations, judgement, love, and lovingkindness – each without the other birth chaos and rebellion.
A few years ago, I experienced a stunning revelation: I have lived most of my life depressed, recovering from depression, or being afraid I would become depressed. I believe I allowed myself to recognize this truth because I had come through a nearly three-year period of sweet highs and devastating lows without checking into the hotel of depression.
I previously listed all that I went through. The short of it is that among the most stressful things that happened was that my computer hard drive fatally crashed. I remain grateful to Kevin at Staples in Rockville who was honest, straightforward, and refunded my money. I applied to and was accepted into the Chaplain Residency Program at Frederick Memorial Hospital. I worked the program with every fiber of my being. I now meet Life – Divinity – on Life’s terms. Said differently, no argument with life lasts longer than a frustrated nano second, and when it does, I entertain it!
This affirms that Gevurah shebeKhesed, Limitations, Judgement, Love, and lovingkindness, starts with self: How accepting are we of our wholeness within our brokenness? Will we reduce our suffering by being kinder and more compassionate toward ourselves instead of being the strict, unforgiving internalized authority figure? Additionally, we need to recognize that most of our parents were, for most of us, not the tyrants our young selves thought them to be.
When we live in the affirmative, we are lovingkindness within a self that expands our compassion, love, embracing, and acceptance toward others.
Because we learn to be with our own suffering, we can be with another’s.
Because we can be with our own joy, we can be with another’s. Until the World to Come, both are part of the symphony of life.
Approaching Life on Life's constantly changing terms is accepting creation as a constantly changing state. When I embrace this new way of being, I am in harmony and when I argue with it, I suffer. Lovingkindness is loving and being kind with the difficult even more so than the easy.
Blessings!
Sabrina
© Sabrina Sojourner 2020