And so I begin again. Again, I begin again. I do not know if every beginning has the same point of departure, or if there is some distance, however minimal, between these points. All I know is that I must begin again, and that I must hope.
Could it be that this in itself is part of my soul curriculum? If so, what middah is so woefully out of kilter that I must be confronted with it at every step, at the beginning of the beginning--or even before?
If this kind of failure, a failure that it is the warp to the woof of the process of seeking growth, adjustment, becoming-whole, points at one challenge, it is ANAVAH, humility.
Like many, I always assumed that those of us who are shy, lack social skill (not to say, graces!!), live in constant self-doubt and with the firm conviction of our inadequacy, are somehow immune from the qualities at the other end of the continuum: hubris, self-aggrandizement, arrogance. But it is not so.
In fact, were it not for those feelings of haughtiness, we believe we might disappear, become so insignificant as to vanish from our own lives, unseen and unnoticed by all, even by those who supposedly love us.
The balance is elusive. Balance would mean having arrived, even if temporarily, in that state of equilibrium. But we fly past that point like children on a teeter-totter, racing to the bottom or being hurled to the top, never stopping mid-point, the mid-point being like the state of Schrödinger's cat that is neither dead nor alive, a second when the universe holds its breath.
I stop at that thought. Can "neither dead nor alive" be a state of grace, of peace? Or is it that these are a different category of opposites, or something different altogether?. Love, hate, good, bad, dead, alive... Surely we want to be all good, all alive, all love!
And yet: Maybe the notion of opposites is not appropriate on the path of Mussar. Maybe Jacob's ladder only ever reaches half way toward heaven, because we cannot be all good, all love, all alive, brokenness written into our very being, "They give birth astride of a grave," as Beckett put it so much better.
I begin again. Up or down. Wrong or wronger. And so humility must be the quality left out for now, because it is everything. The "doubleness" of it is unbearable, as though I tried to describe the state of being pre-verbal. It will not do.
So I begin again. I do not know where I am, but perhaps I will know where I have been once I explore the space of my being the way one gets to know someone by running fingers over the contours of his face. Feeling my way, touching my heart, sensing the pulse of God's creation even in the least worthy. Here I am. Hineini.
Could it be that this in itself is part of my soul curriculum? If so, what middah is so woefully out of kilter that I must be confronted with it at every step, at the beginning of the beginning--or even before?
If this kind of failure, a failure that it is the warp to the woof of the process of seeking growth, adjustment, becoming-whole, points at one challenge, it is ANAVAH, humility.
Like many, I always assumed that those of us who are shy, lack social skill (not to say, graces!!), live in constant self-doubt and with the firm conviction of our inadequacy, are somehow immune from the qualities at the other end of the continuum: hubris, self-aggrandizement, arrogance. But it is not so.
In fact, were it not for those feelings of haughtiness, we believe we might disappear, become so insignificant as to vanish from our own lives, unseen and unnoticed by all, even by those who supposedly love us.
The balance is elusive. Balance would mean having arrived, even if temporarily, in that state of equilibrium. But we fly past that point like children on a teeter-totter, racing to the bottom or being hurled to the top, never stopping mid-point, the mid-point being like the state of Schrödinger's cat that is neither dead nor alive, a second when the universe holds its breath.
I stop at that thought. Can "neither dead nor alive" be a state of grace, of peace? Or is it that these are a different category of opposites, or something different altogether?. Love, hate, good, bad, dead, alive... Surely we want to be all good, all alive, all love!
And yet: Maybe the notion of opposites is not appropriate on the path of Mussar. Maybe Jacob's ladder only ever reaches half way toward heaven, because we cannot be all good, all love, all alive, brokenness written into our very being, "They give birth astride of a grave," as Beckett put it so much better.
I begin again. Up or down. Wrong or wronger. And so humility must be the quality left out for now, because it is everything. The "doubleness" of it is unbearable, as though I tried to describe the state of being pre-verbal. It will not do.
So I begin again. I do not know where I am, but perhaps I will know where I have been once I explore the space of my being the way one gets to know someone by running fingers over the contours of his face. Feeling my way, touching my heart, sensing the pulse of God's creation even in the least worthy. Here I am. Hineini.
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