Flashes of Insight

(excerpt)

What follows is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, No Name For Clouds: Love, Loss, Memory, Belonging — Or, Ways I Freed Myself From the Constraints of a Cold and Rigid World.

In this particular passage, I try to grasp the threads between thought and language, the nearness of the miraculous, and the bitter absence of those I’ve loved and lost. It’s not theology, not exactly. And it’s not philosophy in the academic sense. I think of this piece as a kind of emotional wrestling—one that, for me at least, touches on spirit, memory, and meaning.

How is it that my fingers know exactly what my thoughts want to become—symbols (letters) that form words which convey not precisely what I’m thinking, but a close enough approximation? And how is it that I’m even aware of my thoughts, or that I have them at all?

The thoughts come in layers, not in one solid chunk. Not apple, but onion. And although this isn’t unusual —I assume this multi-dimensional thought process is the same for everyone—what is perhaps particular to me is that I wonder a lot about what sort of “thought-process,” if any, I will undertake after my body and spirit are no longer connected.

What does my dad think at this moment, or my sister, Susie? I believe they are watching me, guiding me, knowing me and my intentions in a way they never could as a spirit/body unit.

My actions are sometimes tempered or inspired by this notion.

What would my dad say about me being “impatient” with my friend on the phone this morning? What would Susie think about the depth of my love for my grandchildren—and her? And how my Memories of Susie are an everyday occurrence, like brushing my teeth or lifting up the toilet seat.

I’m bothered.

Not the way I’m bothered by a mosquito whining near my head. Bothered in a more subtle way.

Why is something so obvious, so close—and yet so troublingly unobtainable—as the ability to see everything around me, and within me, as miraculous? Why can’t I feel this? It’s not a game to me. It means the difference between my being free and being enslaved.

Imagine: you are starving, parched. And within arm’s reach are a pitcher of ice water, a bowl of minestrone soup, a loaf of freshly baked French bread. And yet, when you reach for them, they disappear. The aroma still lingers, but what you crave is inaccessible.

Of course, I don’t need to sense the miraculous in the same way I would need the food. Or… maybe, I’m wrong. Is it possible that the need is the same for both? But that I have come, through my upbringing and obeisance to popular culture, to believe that one is a real need, and the other a waste of time?

I have placed a question mark at the end of that last sentence, not to imply that what I’d written was rhetorical. But to say that I really don’t know. It’s something I wrestle with. “Wrestle” being the key word.

Here’s a little inside baseball about Jewish faith and tradition. You don’t have to be Jewish. You only have to be human.

The central prayer of Judaism is the Shema: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

It’s misunderstood by almost everyone. The common interpretation is that there is only one God—as opposed to 30, or 50, or a trillion gods. But at its core, it’s not a numerical idea. It’s something deeper. Something more relevant. To understand this, you first need to know the etymology of the name Israel.

It means “one who wrestles with God.” The name was given to Jacob after he spent that fateful night wrestling with an angel.

Here’s my loose translation of the Shema prayer:
Listen up, anyone-who-wrestles… with the lofty question of whether or not God exists and recreates the world at every moment—at every possible and impossibly minute division of time—know this:
Everything in the universe: time, space, light, shadow, life, death, a fallen log, a sprouting seed, the small cry of a newborn camel, the backfire of a taxicab, a puff of smoke, the blood vessels of a minnow… and beyond all of that, past even time and space, past and present, and literal timelessness—are manifestations of God, the ultimate and only Creator.

Everything else is an amalgamation of pre-existing entities.

The Shema affirms the absolute uniqueness and all-encompassing nature of God. It speaks to both the intellectual quest and the deep, intuitive understanding that God's presence permeates every aspect of existence, leaving no room for any separate force or power.

The question that remains for me is this: how engaged am I in the wrestling this idea requires?