The world is too much with us, according to William Wordsworth. I couldn’t agree more. There is such a swirl of frenetic activity all around us, much of it dark and foreboding. It creates a kind of low-level anxiety that is always playing in the background. Dripping like a faucet, we can’t seem to get it out of our heads, even for a little bit.
But… tonight is the first snowfall of the season. It is a quiet snow, and everything looks beautiful in the glow of streetlights. As it covers the street and the sidewalks I begin to recalibrate a bit. I breathe.
Despite a creeping sense of vulnerability following Pittsburgh, the murders in Thousand Oaks followed by unparalleled fire damage and fatalities, missiles, and mortars in Israel, Ebola reappearing, and so many more disquieting facts and situations… the snow looks beautiful. What does this prove? That even in a dark, ugly time, there is still exquisite beauty in the world, still things that bring us a feeling of gratitude and even, dare I suggest it? – a sense of hope.
Elie Wiesel once wrote, “I believe it is possible, in spite of everything, to believe in friendship in a world without friendship, and even to believe in God in a world where there has been an eclipse of God’s face. Above all, we must not give in to cynicism. To save the life of a single child, no effort is too much. To make a tired old man smile is to perform an essential task. To defeat injustice and misfortune, if only for one instant, for a single victim, is to invent a new reason to hope.”
Wiesel was always my touchstone of hope. His ongoing testimony to the capacity of men and women to commit abominable acts of cruelty, and his affirmation of life and living was a tightrope walk I have long appreciated and learned from. It’s never just one or the other. Even in Hell, there is a not-Hell. Even amid sadness and loss, there is not-sadness and not-loss. Life and the blossoming of new ideas and the embrace of friends and family and community members are waiting.
This all comes as I watch the snow falling, remembering the fantastic joy the first snowfall brought me as a child. As lost as I may have felt, as vulnerable as I truly was, getting out there to the snow was an urge that pulled me from my sadness and worries with profound magnetic force. The sounds of nylon and zippers and buckled boots, the feel of the hat and the gloves, the edge of being overheated before getting outside, this is a transcendent mélange of memories.
Along with the snow is another fact, another memory set: Thanksgiving is coming. In less than a week, Liza and I will host a yearly convocation of the kids, the grandkids, and dear old family friends. We will sing and laugh and laugh some more. We will eat a fabulous meal that I will cook, and we’ll think about where we’ve all gone since our first meal together for Thanksgiving decades ago. And we will sing from our songbook and laugh some more. And all this: despite the slow spread of neo-fascism, the dreaded effect of climate change, the fire fatalities, the new normal that no longer chokes on mass murder and guns, and… well, fill in the blank…
All we’ve got is this world and this life. And all we can do in it and with it is to make decisions that affirm life, justice, dignity, and equality. It is, sometimes, next to impossible to know what to do. But leaning into righteousness is never wrong.
Enjoy your Thanksgiving. And for God’s sake, before you dig in and celebrate, take a moment to give thanks: for love, laughter, community, resilience, and each other.
Shabbat Shalom
rebhayim
Before Shabbat 