CRUSH

BS"D
8 Av


I am sick at heart.
Tonight & all day tomorrow we Jews face the fact that, almost 2,000 years ago, G@d, The Holy One, Our Beloved, finally said:
"I love you, but I just can't live with you anymore."

Thus we began our trial separation. Where we both wish to reunite, but not before some changes have been made, some healing done. The work of sacred relationship.

Well, as of this writing, we aren't done yet.

7 years ago at this time, I sat with a British rabbi I had just met on some shady grass in Oregon. I offered to him that I "understood" the 9th of Av in my head, that I acknowleded it. But that no matter my practice, I had never been able to truly "feel" in it my heart. I didn't feel guilty about this - it's just the truth of where I was at - but I also knew I was missing some part of Jewish relationship with G@d. The destruction of the Holy Temple, after all, didn't only happen once a long time ago. It happens again each day that we don't return to G@d.

He looked straight through my soul, this rabbi I had just met, very wise, much older than me, & gave me a brakhah. & he said:

"May Tisha Be-Av enable you to shed all the tears which you have not yet been able to cry."

I was awestruck. & I hesitated before I accepted his blessing, before I said "ameyn".

It worked. I was a mess. We took a plain, hardboiled egg & a glass of water for our last meal, smeared ash upon our foreheads, & entered the dark tent where a thousand Jews wailed & shouted Eycha, the Book of Lamentations. The whole planet bled.

You see? Nobody needs drugs - we just need the right blessing.

As my nightmares this week continue, & as my nausea at facing this day turns to soul-desolation, then, G@d willing, to Divine comfort all within view of the Har Ha-Bayit, the Temple Mount as I sit in white, barefoot on the stones of the Old City without food or drink, I pray that all Humankind take even one small step towards tshuvah, repentance. That we can welcome the Messiah, or Messianic Consciousness, or whatever it is that G@d wants to gift us with, in the manner of love.

Not like this. Please.

An easy fast to you all, may peace spread over the whole world under the wings of the Holy Presence.




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