I just spent
Passover together with my family at home, including three adult-children who
normally live overseas, sharing many formal abundant meals, playing board
games, and walking in the local forest (still allowed in Australia) as
expected. Actually, not quite as expected. I played fewer board games with my
kids, slept later and had more naps than I had expected. On reflection,
Passover with my family was both draining and joyful. I think having unrealistic expectations might have something to do with it.
In messages
from my Christian colleagues at Together For Humanity I heard about how their
families have been celebrating Easter, with sweet-filled coloured eggs and
“Easter trees” as usual, but challenged by the absence of physically
participating in the normal church services.
With both of
these special times just behind us, I think it is a good time to think about
how we deal with unmet expectations. On one hand, it is useful to recognise
that many of our expectations can become like an undefined implicit ‘contract’
between us and family members, life or God. The trouble is that neither our
family members nor God have ever agreed to deliver everything that we think
“should happen”. When this reality sinks in, at whatever level of loss, there
is a temptation to swing to the opposite extreme and fall into despair and
declare “our bones are dried out, and our hope is lost...” (1).
That last
sentence is part of one of my favourite Passover texts: the prophet Ezekiel’s
account of the resurrection of a valley of dry bones (2). As a teenager, I
first engaged with this story at a talk by the late Lubavitcher Rebbe. The
Rebbe spoke movingly about our responsibility for each other’s spiritual life.
He referred to the part of the story where the prophet was instructed to speak
“the word of God” to the dry bones and in response to the word the bones came
to life.
The Rebbe
passionately implored his followers to reach out to Jews whose relationship to
Judaism was dead and had completely dried up (3), to inspire them with the word
of God (4). A few days later I remember looking at a High School basketball
court and thinking about how some of the players, estranged from their Judaism,
might be those 'dry bones' and my responsibility for my fellow Jews to speak
the word of God to them. My sense of responsibility has evolved since then, but
it continues to be fired with a belief in the great human capacity for change,
despite the evidence that people often choose not to change much at
all.
There is
some debate whether the dry bones story is just a metaphor, and if it was
non-fiction, who were the people whose bones were in the valley? (5). I am
particularly interested in the opinion that the dead had been a group of people
who desecrated the holy temple walls with drawings of insects. Their implicit,
very dark message was that human life was meaningless. Human life, their
grafiti argued, was as transient as that of short lived insects, who have no
bones and thus leave no trace after their death (6). One feature of despair is
that one can never be disappointed again, because one expects the worst. Of
course, despair also means abdicating all responsibility to do anything that
could alleviate suffering and improve things.
The
resurrection of these very same individuals was a repudiation of their nihilism
and an affirmation of hope. Human life can be meaningful and beautiful.
Ezekiel's words still inspire me and others millenia later, as does Abraham
Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg (7). Lincoln asserted in that brief talk in 1863
that “the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here”, yet his
powerful words about sacrifice and “government of the people, by the people,
for the people” still moves people today.
At a time
when humans are confronted by our mortality, and how that highlights the
animal-like struggle for survival, it is important that we not lose sight of
our capacity to be sublime. Some will not rise to the occasion, and this is to
be expected, but others will. Contrary to the defeatist views of the insect
themed graffiti artists, the human spirit can soar to high places, even in
difficult times. Hope is not a denial of the reality of death and
disappointment, it is the deliberate decision to forge on despite pain, because
a better future, although not certain, is possible.
Notes
- Ezekiel 37:11
- .Ezekiel 37:1-14.
- Talmud, Sanhedrin 92b
- Schneerson, Rabbi M. M., - the Lubavitcher Rebbe (1986), https://www.chabad.org/therebbe/article_cdo/aid/2511571/jewish/Dry-Bones-Before-and-After-A-Call-to-Shluchim.htm
- Sanhedrin, ibid.
- Maharsha commentary to Sanhedrin 92b.
- This amazing 271 word speech is so short I will include it here in my notes:“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm
