Building Up Spirituality for Ground Zero

"Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis

vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:

Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo." [1]

“I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.”

“The awful daring of a moment's surrender

Which an age of prudence can never retract

By this, and this only, we have existed

Which is not to be found in our obituaries

Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider

Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor

In our empty rooms”

T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

“The blows of his chisel, which hurt us so much, are what make us perfect. The suffering in the world is not the failure of God's love for us; it is that love in action. For believe me, this world that seems to us so substantial, is no more than the shadowlands. Real life has not begun yet.”

C.S.Lewis [2]

“The mold in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it -- made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

From Ground Zero

From No-thing

Ayin

Small steps only are permitted

“Marche a petit pois”

we begin again.

From the wastelands of old theologies

the broken shards

prior suppositions evaporated in the winds of heresy

from the shadowlands

prior self-bloated opinions

deflated in the power of the rational

the prowess of the Id having been once again

demonstrated

We start again..

ever so still

קל דממה דקה

awake in the dark night of the soul

nailed to the cross of Simone Weil

the psalter of Das Niemandsrose

“Sprache, Sprache. Mit-Stern. Neben-Erde”

Paul Celan ever present,

“Non, je ne regrette rien”

Piaf is my teacher here.

So, having put away the daf

Having allowed the obsessive guilt to subside

(For it takes its own toll)

I face the empty sheet on the desk

In the middle of the sleepless night

I face the t’fillin bag lying in front of me

And the circumcised lips

Silent

Unable to pray Tikkun Chazot

The words like molasses will not emerge from the mouth

Silent.

Fully emptied of the sheer mass of Rabbinic corpus

For a while, thankfully

Not buzzing through my head

The inner kritik

Not pointing out my apikorsus

For a moment.

Allowing myself to see the obsessive halachic disorder

With more clarity

In the dark stillness

(despite my father’s voice ringing:

“it has survival value for the observant”

and..

“Uncle Strauss (his partner circa 1959) will not sit in the same portion

of the next world as I….who rise during the cold wet freezing winter mornings

in the dark, to daven in shul daily (for uncle was reform)”

Is it possible now?

To see this as mythical behavior

These rituals?

Born over centuries of accretion

To return to them in a mythic key say of G minor?

Without the obsession? The encrustation?

Take what makes sense,

Leave what is unethical,

Leave what does not make the bar of your inner sense of mythical right?

(“her” critical voice ringing “it’s a package deal! None of this choosing what is

convenient!”) in front of the kids!

of course drowns out the voice of the father

Le Nom du Pere!

Small steps please!

Don’t jump the gun!

We’ve been here before

Any act performed for self, ego, the other,

To be condemned

Impress nobody

Motive is everything

Purity of spirit is the yardstick

Examine each cranny of the mind for residual pomposity

Remember your Viennese roots

Where everything is for show.

Hubris permeates all desire

Pride is the very yeast of the doughy self image.

The “ich zog” must be forever abandoned for its delicious self righteousness.

Once more agree you just can’t walk away from decades of study

The archive is so ready for access,

the neuronal circuits are ingrained,

The midrashic tropes are so present

Like soldiers on parade

A Military Tattoo

Each one waiting to be called forward

To be used when the situation arises

Stepping forward with a quote from the Tanach

And its wonderful midrashic twist

Those late antique Rabbis knew a thing or two about the divine!

Revealing how human God really is!

Resisting the philosophical opposition to anthropomorphism

Oh how I loved to sport those specific naughty parables

Of God’s weaknesses and foibles.

It made the pain tolerable

And the post-Holocaust nightmare abler to survive

Yet the sheer weight of rabbinic training

The heaviness of parental and mentors

Lies on the aging shoulders

And the Apollonic guidance its wisdom

And the Sybilian price to pay for ignoring youth

(Each grain of sand another year

Each grain of sand another blatt)

I, like her in the cage

Shrinking in mind and vigor

Pointed at by passers by,

Paying the price for having engaged the gods

Guiding this inner soul to places where I should not have visited

Now condemned like her, until nothing is left but her voice.

Silence of thought mind and deed is the purifying waters

The order of this New Years Day.

"You shall have your wish, and with my guidance you shall see the

dwellings of Elysium and the latest kingdom of the universe; and you shall

see your dear father's shade."

"Here I am, the plain-speaking Sibyl of Phoebus,

Hidden beneath this stone tomb.

A maiden once gifted with voice, but now for ever voiceless,

By hard fate doomed to this fetter.

But I am buried near the nymphs and this Hermes,

Enjoying in the world below a part of the kingdom I had then."

The Sibyl to Aeneas. Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.110

[1] This Sibyl was not a goddess, although she was seven hundred years old when Aeneas met her. But Apollo (she

said) offered her endless life if she consented to the god's love. And she, as if accepting his gift, pointed to a heap

of sand, and prayed that she might have as many years of life as there were sand-grains in the pile. However, she

forgot Youth, without which immortality is worthless, so the god, hoping that she would yield to his love, promised

endless youth as well; but she, having spurned the god's gift, was fated to became the prey of a long Old Age. For

the amount of sand-grains were one thousand.

[2] In ‘Shadowlands’, a play by William Nicholson