Tag Archives: Relationship

December 30, 2020

Why should I change?

By Ruth Schapira
 
 

How different am I this week than I was the week before?

The chameleon has it relatively easy. Spending not too much energy, he gets a whole new look and adapts well to his environment. The visible outer change is prompted by a detailed inner process. We can learn from that.

Every week, I meditate a bit with a kavannah (stated intention) before ushering in Shabbat’s glowing candlelight. It is a brief glimmer of time to check in with myself. Did I progress this week? Was I kinder? More giving? More attentive to loved ones? Did I procrastinate less? Did I do what I set out to do? Did I change?

Sometimes the answer gives me a sickened regret for time not well spent. Rebbe Nachman of Breslov minces no words when he says:

If you are not a better person tomorrow than you are today, what need have you for tomorrow?

Thankfully, I will get another chance. As I usher in Shabbat, I focus on the beautiful teaching that all that was unfinished from the week is considered complete, the culmination. So, I get a reprieve. I get to pretend for a full 25 hours that all is as it should be. I love that teaching.

In a few days, we will welcome the secular New Year 2021 with arms wide open, ready to put 2020 to bed. On countless fronts, the year has been incredibly challenging. The only think left for us to think about is how, in 20/20 our eyesight/awareness might have changed for the better. And we can be grateful for that.

So, the same contrivance that works so well on a weekly basis–thinking that all is well and complete just doesn’t hold true for almost an entire year. 
 
This sounds crazy, but for this reason I find myself oddly hanging on to 2020 a bit, like a person who is not quite ready to let go of the lifeboat in order to climb aboard the rescue ship. What? Have I totally lost it? I am being saved, why am I languishing around?

It comes down to not being quite sure that I actually did enough of what is truly important in 2020.

Despite all the zooming, tik-tok’ing, cooking, baking and cleaning—I am not sure that I journaled enough, prayed enough, talked to God enough.

I am not sure that I cleaned enough of my own soul’s ‘shmutz’ (Yiddish for dirt, rhymes with “puts”) that tends to block my inner being.

For me, being on a path of growth means just that…being committed to going from one place to another. And I have to leave the old place in order to start anew.

It is in our tradition, we are a people that leave places to start again in new ones. We have thousands of years of journeying in our Jewish DNA, beginning with Abraham and continuing on in almost every story in Genesis…we leave and finally arrive.

It’s been our history, chased out by pogroms, massacres, Inquisitions, death marches. We begin again.

So, I will begin again. I will get into the rescue ship, glad to leave 2020 behind, committed to undergoing chameleon-like change in the year ahead.

Starting with my inner soul, hoping that my outer behavior will be a reflection of my new colors.

 

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December 21, 2020

Sacred Relationships

By Ruth Schapira
 

When we encounter another individual truly as a person, not as an object for use, we become fully human.

Martin Buber

The middle-aged grocery store clerk was puzzled for the third time by the vegetable that moved down the conveyor belt. I felt a little bad that she had to interrupt her scanning rhythm to look up the price yet again for an unknown vegetable.

After I told her what they were (leeks), I ventured “You must have to remember a lot of different vegetables”

Yup, especially since I don’t use any of the produce here. I don’t cook…

Really, how do you manage that?

In great detail she told me that her father lived with her, his health situation, her obligation to care for him, and her choice to buy only frozen food, since she only wants to prepare what she can ‘stick in the microwave’.

I tried to convey concern through understanding looks and responses, made more difficult by wearing a mask. Still, as we spoke, her face got more animated and her eyes brightened.

She revealed so much about her life to me in such a short time and in the process, made me more sensitive to her life situation. All in a few sentences, with a pitiful amount of effort.

It is so unbelievably easy to bring a little humanity into our interactions.

Martin Buber (1878 – 1965) writes about two kinds of relationships in his book I and Thou. First is the type he identifies as a transactional relationship, which tends to be utilitarian. You’re just a waiter/teller/cashier/delivery person) so I don’t really need to interact with you. What can you do for me? I don’t have time, but just give me the bill/receipt/total/message.

Buber calls this type the “I – It” relationship and describes it as ‘monological’, meaning each person is talking at someone, not really with someone. It’s like a conversation we might have with a bot in a chat box. Each party says what they want to say, and nothing about the interaction contains any personal recognition.

This one-way ‘broadcast’ honors neither the speaker or the listener.

However, the “I-Thou” relationship is one that Buber calls “dialogical”; when two people relate to each other beyond the one-dimensional. They honor each other as people made in the Image of God —B’tzelem Elokim. The highest form of this relationship is when we converse with God.

The people in the relationship recognize the holy in each other, and that special quality is a palpable sacred presence when two people get together. God is the electricity that surges between them when two people relate to each other authentically and humanly.

It is the meeting not just of two entities, but of two souls.

Questions you might want to ask

Think about the relationships in your life. How would you describe them using this paradigm?

What about the quality of your relationships would you consider to be sacred?

What might hold you back from relating in this way?

For the full text of Buber’s I and Thou, click here. https://archive.org/details/IAndThou_572/mode/2up

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December 15, 2020

spirited prayer from an unlikely source

By Ruth Schapira
Several years ago, on a lazy Sunday morning toward the end of a weekend getaway, my husband and I were strolling down the main street in Annapolis. The quiet was a presence in itself since shops were still closed, and the street was bereft of its usual bumper to bumper traffic. We took in how different the sleepy street seemed compared to the hustle and bustle of the night before.

As we approached a nondescript brick-faced building this amazing jazzy music from a live band filled the sidewalk space with inviting and energetic sounds. Saxophone and trumpet, along with piano and drums rhythmically provided a counterpoint to the quiet.

I wondered aloud what bar would possibly be open on a Sunday morning. I looked above the glass doors for some signage, but there was none. Not a single hint of what was inside. This was so strange.

But the music didn’t let me go.

So we lingered awhile, taking in the phenomenal music. I guess we might have been there a bit too long, because a bouncer-type person approached us through the closed glass doors, his arms muscular and huge, wearing a crisp white shirt and necktie with pressed pants.

Opening the door, he asked if we wanted to come in.

Since I couldn’t actually tell whether he was, in a nice way, asking us to move along and leave, or offering a genuine invitation to enter, my expression most likely said ‘thanks, but no thanks’.

All kinds of things ran through my head. Was this a gambling hall? An illicit private party?

Curiosity got the better of me. Almost as we were getting ready to move along I asked “What’s inside?”, probably a little too naïvely and not hiding the doubtful look on my face.

“Ma’am, we’re a Baptist church, wanna come in?”

What, a church??? Not what I thought at all.

“Uh, we were just listening to the music, it’s fantastic…so amazing….but we’re Jewish, but thank you….”

“You sure? It’s not a problem, you can come in and visit anyway.”

“But we’d be interrupting…isn’t there a service? Besides, we can’t stay long…we would have to leave…..” Of course, I was envisioning the services I was used to, when on Shabbat it would be almost pointless to arrive after the Torah service. We didn’t want to be disrespectful.

“It’s no matter at all, stay as long as you like, leave when you want. No pressure.”

Wow, this was a different concept.

So we entered slowly as he ushered us through heavy wooden doors. We found ourselves in a wide open room, filled with long wooden pews speckled with about 100 people or so. I was relieved to see that the surrounding walls were totally bare, no visuals or images that would have made us feel instantly uncomfortable, prompting us not to stay.

We sat in an unoccupied pew, toward the back of the room, trying to be inconspicuous. Right. We looked around and instantly felt so underdressed in our athleisure wear. We were a stark contrast to everyone’s Sunday best. Both women and men wore hats, and the women’s were works of art; feathers, sequins, and netting. We were also the only white people in the room.

This was another world entirely. A spirited chorus on the stage (bimah?), dressed in white robes, joined in for the next rhythmic rendition of a prayer, and everyone started clapping, slowly rising from their seats, energetically singing along. The lyrics melted into each other but nothing of what we heard was squirm-worthy for us. In fact, I hear more objectionable music around the winter holidays than I did that morning.

The music picked up and the excitement was palpable as the oak floor pulsed with the beat and as the stomping grew louder. Arms waved to the rhythm and it was evident that each person was making the experience personal. There seemed to be no peer pressure to behave in a certain way. This was striking.

Everyone was ‘all in’ and personalizing their experience. They were communing with a higher power, and it seemed as if that’s what they cared about and what they were there for. No one was looking around to see if their behavior was out of line, or too spirited.

There was no way I wanted to leave, even though I was an observer, because before my eyes were deeply spiritual people who were so involved in their prayer experience that I was mesmerized. I had never experienced anything like it.

The service continued in that way while people began noticing us. Some turned toward us and smiled, with kind and understanding looks that seemed to say “yup, we know you’re the only white people here, but don’t you bother about that, just enjoy.”

So we did. We listened to the minister preach as his arms emphatically gestured through the ups and downs of his message, which was about love and being true to the Lord and true to yourself. His passion grew to a crescendo, and his sermon ended with more singing and praise. If I took the word “Jesus” out of it, the message had meaning for all.

For the rest of the time that we were there (we didn’t stay for too long after that) there was no part of the service that wasn’t energetically sung or swayed to. They were there to gain spiritual nourishment not approval.

We left with an indescribable fulfilled feeling, and an appreciation for what we just witnessed, people who were enthralled with their faith and not shy about showing it, even to two outsiders.

When immersed in a truly spiritual experience, you are lost to thinking about time and the judgment of others. The purity of what you’re feeling surely carries you, and I think it is what we all strive for in our prayers, an untainted experience of the Divine so powerful that others can feel it.

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November 18, 2020

Funny, I only hear from you when you need something

By Ruth Schapira

A little while ago, before you moved away, you had a very close friend. You spoke almost every day, and sometimes you finished each other’s thoughts. Often, there wasn’t even a need to say anything. You related to each other on a feeling level. If anything bothered you, you reached out. But time has passed, and your conversations are far fewer. You don’t share as much and so the details of daily life don’t seem as relevant. You pause before calling. You second guess yourself. When you do speak, the conversations are polite, but not as rich as when you spoke every day. How is that so? Wouldn’t you have even more to talk about now? But it doesn’t work like that. The more distance you have between times of connection, the more distant you feel.

The same is true of your relationship with God. It is difficult to muster up the emotional content you need to develop a relationship when you connect only a few times a year.

Prayer is about relationship. [Continue reading here…]

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