“I tried but the gates were locked”
I tried, but the gate was locked, all three.
It would be at least an hour
Until the gatekeeper, the guard, would show up to allow folks in for services.
I realized that for much of my life the gates have been locked.
Like Jude the Obscure, whether the university walls or the heavenly gates,
I have not had the access codes,
All these gates were locked.
I paced up and down the outer walls of the shul and noted the wording above etched in
Jerusalem stone:
What is the remez being sent to me?
No access to my seforim left last night inside…
My ‘quota” prior to davening….
Now a prisoner of outside the walls of the Beis Midrash.
I begin to pace, and gyrating my stiff hips,
Up and down the sidewalk alongside the gates.
At least I will not waste the time standing idly,
rather work out the stiffness in my joints
A daily ritual to resolve the arthritic shoulder and hips, expected at this age.
The sense of failure grows as I realize my “appointment”
with the Chabad Rabbi
To learn the Alter Rebbe prior to davening,
would not happen, my Likutei Torah “fix”
Each Shabbat morning, that sets the high bar for what the day demands,
The expectation of the Rebbe beyond all my human capabilities,
Yet framing my Shabbat nevertheless.
The gates are thick black-brown already tarnished iron bars welded together
make the shul an impenetrable fortress,
unlike the European shuls that are almost invisible from the outside.
Here the Jerusalem stone stands out from the neighboring buildings
nevertheless the iron gates protect it.
Outside the gates I have nothing, no texts, only my mind…
and the deep sense of exclusion…outside the locked gates.
Then the Rabbi shows up!
And wonders why I am standing outside the gates!
Showing me that the shank had not gone through both holes
And in fact
The gate was open all the time!
I had not tried to open the gate
Thinking the padlock was functional.
He opens the gate with ease and I follow him dutifully;
But my heart bleeds and I start weeping inexplicably,
For not only was I excluded and access denied for 45 precious minutes,
My sense of exclusion was now entirely a myth…
my self-denial was false…
the gate had been open the whole time.
The tears flowed from the very failure of my failure.
Jude could not have walked right in to Christminster,
But I could have opened the gates of the Lord.
In my illusion of being locked out,
I spent 45 minutes drowning in the self-indulgent
Misery of exclusion and sense of inadequacy.
I was fooled by my lack of investigation,
Seeing the lock as open, in assuming I was locked out.
This assumption was so real
that the dramatic opening of the gate with such ease
Cause this flood of emotion, a reverse catharsis that only revealed
Just how excluded I was…
I was excluded from the very exclusion!
A reversal of the very validation of my sense of failure
Even more painful than the original feeling.
This only revealed the fool
The incompetent
The inattentive
A lifelong inattention to detail.
Yet another character flaw.
We enter the shul and he grabs the text and begins to learn.
We study the mystical meaning of Zecharia’s vision of the menorah
Its meaning and message in Likutei Torah.
And the two olive trees on either side of the menorah:
And I am thinking ..
Is this the very bifurcated scene of the high priest
standing before the angel of God on one side
and the Satan on the other?
Is this not precisely the same Satan who subverted me this morning
What is he teaching me?
The illusion of my self sabotage?
The accuser pointing out the two olive trees pulling me apart
The gates are now open
But the inner Kritik/Satan is alive and well
And Jude the Obscure remains outside the walls of Christminster.
