Malkhut shebeKhesed Shekhinah, Majesty, Sovereignty, Exaltedness, Humility; Union of Opposites; Holding Paradox within Lovingkindness, Grace, Compassion, Benevolence, and Loyalty; qualities central to Jewish ethics.
Quality: The Exquisite Grace of Paradox.
We humans are meaning making machines, and many of us prefer a binary world in which people and things are easily categorized. I apologize in advance for giving you the news that life is complex and periodically to often does not make sense.
For me, the only thing that makes sense about life is that it doesn’t make sense. It is amazingly easy to live with the view that life is unpredictable and out of my control. Embracing this viewpoint – to my surprise, offers me an amazing amount of freedom. I see possibilities I had not previously seen or believed truly existed. I know, and am humbled, when I am in a moment where Majesty intersects, surrounds, and presents Itself as lovingkindness, grace, compassion as well as momentarily difficult or confounding and deeply disappointing.
There are people who have been taught that if they are good people and follow the rules and Divine laws, nothing bad will happen to them. So, when something bad does happen, they put themselves on trial in attempt to identify the bad behavior that caused the bad event(s) to visit them. Survivors of violence are seduced by their abusers – and society that if they were just a little bit more compliant – good girl or boy – all the abuse would disappear. Tyranny, including White Supremacy, depends on us blaming on ourselves when something goes wrong. It's another way fo keeping us compliant. When women or men of color are victimized, the dominant society asks, "What did you do?" "How were you dressed?" "What were you doing there, anyway?")
Life does not seek to blame us. Life is life with great days and not so great days, and everything in between. Very few, if any, of us live life without experiencing some to many up and downs.
How do we regard ourselves and our circumstances?
That is what makes the difference in how we move through the disruption of the death of a loved one, being fired or laid-off, served with divorce papers, arrested for something we did not due, kicked out of store for following the rules, running away from violence in our homes... Can we learn to be with our disappointments and sorrows - traumas - with the same compassion with which we would sit with a dear friend in pain?
When we say yes, we experience the extreme boundaries of harmony. We learn to live with the new absence, new brokenness, new disappointment and experience beauty, lovingkindness. The brilliance of the world remains visible and massages our pain, our ache.
When we say yes to the sorrows that visit us for no other reason than that we are human, we experience the Exquisite Grace of Paradox; the presence of the Shekinah, the Majestic Love that is always present and always available. To experience it, we only need to be with what is so.
We have now counted seven days, one week for Omer.
Blessings!
Sabrina
© Sabrina Sojourner 2020