Leaving sick in laws
I bring with me the prayers of others,
A burden that relieves me of the guilt of my own faithlessness.
Kvitlech, little chits of names
People's hopes and dreams for a better outcome
Illness poverty suffering
I am the bearer of these chits
And pidyonos
Those dollar bills for the zaddik
For the poor.
Another pilgrimage
Another decade
So many failed attempts at overcoming the ego
The serpentine drives
The needs to leave a mark and trace
Once again
We arrive penniless morally
Bankrupt spiritually
With nothing to show.
Yet this is precisely what draws me to the Zaddik
So far beyond my own moral compass...
Maybe, just maybe, it takes a Zaddik of this calibre
To rescue one like me...
As Rabbeinu stated , this Zaddik, Reb 'Meilech
Was figured in the beggar's tale
Bringing bread to the lost children in the forest.
Only such a Zaddik worries about filling the bellies of children
Before lofty spiritual states,
Maybe he might listen to mug broken life
Like the strings of a broken violin
And hear a melody I cannot
In this failure
This brokenness
I bring him.
via Krakow of course
To pay deference to the Ramoh
Reb Moshe Isserless
And my father
A "Ramoh Yid"
And my beloved grave of the Megale Amukos
(Pi shalosh from the Ari hakadosh)
Who had written "Giuliani Eliyahu" on his tombstone.
this journey
This trip
In the middle of all the tumult,
Medicare, Obama, EMR, etc...
The lived life
In the middle of it all.....
Paradoxically this seems appropriate
A counter balance to the false pursuits
That plague me...
Reorienting me
To the reality
Of life and aging
Of simplicity
And connection to all those
Who suffer the awareness
Of how precious this all is...
And how fragile and fleeting.
Here I see and feel the truth
And the, lived presence of life
The good and the bad
The glory and the darkness
The light and the inner snake.
The Zaddik and the Nazi officer
Who in 1941 insisted on opening his grave
Looking for gold.
I am coming closer to his living presence
To rescue my failed life.
And bring him the chits of others who entrusted me with
Their woes and hopes.
