I am sitting here shuddering at the Monday before me. I'm much luckier than most, I don't have to face Mondays until lunchtime. But still. It always seems like you are going to go into work and find that the world has fallen down over the weekend. Eek!
Enough whining. I did have a very good weekend. Friday night I went to my friend Holly's house and we cooked a pseudo-thanksgiving dinner, and it was delicious. So was the company and conversation. On Saturday I went out and had lunch and a movie with another friend, and then window-shopped and toddled around the Square not doing much of anything until it was time for my hair-cut. It was kind of an expensive hair-cut, but it should last a while, and I like it. Then Jeff came home and there was much rejoicing. His mom is doing much better but still has a long road of recovery and enforced rest ahead. On Sunday we went to Fresh Pond meeting and were pleasantly suprised to see some of our friends were visiting there, too. It was a strange meeting for me, with a lot of fearful thoughts about death and decay that I was unable to banish, but I came out of it with a job: to read the whole bible to myself, out loud. This should be interesting. Perhaps I will be released from it before I get to Leviticus. Eek again. Then we biked back to Cambridge in the freezing rain, which was equal parts exhilarating and unpleasant, and Jeff went to business meeting while I went to bed. Bad Quaker!
Oh, Monday. Why must you have so much week ahead of you?
2 comments:
Hey! Good Quaker, thee...
Business meeting! Ah yes, I was one of, oh, nine? who stayed till the end, 6 pm, surviving a note placed before the meeting, calling my research into our meeting's history a "misrepresentation", from a friend who never confronted me on my research, several days at Swarthmore, and days more hunting down bits and pieces, and interviewing older Friends, but ... oh dear why can't we place love at the center of our meeting work? I really was very hurt, deeply hurt. But, we keep on that road.
To read the whole bible. This also came up. Speaking of the difficulties of sharing a meeting with a meeting that shares our building, whose Pastor contends that the Hebrew patriarchs "did not get it right, so God had to come to earth Himself as Jesus." How can I begin to explain to this dear Friend, that to say the Hebrew Patriarchs "did not get it right," is to continue a tradition among non-Jews of, on one hand idolizing us, on the other demonizing us, as David Grossman has put it. (No I am not a Jewish Quaker, I am a Quaker Quaker, but of a tribe on my mothers side, which makes some things a matter of ... oh I don't know)
Perhaps thee might read Harold Bloom on his theory that the Pentateuch was written by a woman in Solomon's court, as an ironic commentary ... and how the writers of Christianity reordered and rewrote the Pentateuch to place Judaism in Christian terms ... why? Maybe, because the light in the book is in the labor to find light in these stories, not that, as some Chirstians find, light is the stories ... because, in deep sense of Quakerism for me (not presupposing for thee or others...) is to understand this is only a book, simply a book. A book, like the Koran, which people have given enough weight to, that they damn and kill each other, rather than try to understand, to understand in all its ambiguity and human laboring. How can I put it... Perhaps, "J" the woman who might have given us the Torah, is calling out to us, that on one hand we did not get the joke. On the other, that there is no joke. That, we all are born to sin, not to evil, not to bad intentions, but to separation in each act of consumption. In this, sin is the evil, the separation, and that is not IN us, but is in the lack of responce to separation, an external thing... and that, if we cannot laugh at the hypocrisy of power, we must acknowledge the righteousness of forgiveness and atonement ... and the tenderness of forgiveness ... that we should dwell in the power of love as the nexus of forgiveness and atonement.
What I am trying to say is just beyond my fingertips... an experience of life, from our business meetings to my time trying to find some hint of unity in a Wahabi mosque, where I am the damned, to the excitement of discussing Torah with others who get the joke, and who understand the fleeting image of God therein.
Jews found the Torah without commentary was hollow, and therefore the Talmud came about as the oral tradition of commentary was in danger of being lost by the destruction of the Diaspora. But, the Talmud is not Torah or the end of commentary. The Bible for a Jew, I think, only exists as the introduction to the conversation, and it is a conversation of a community, not the dwelling on the words of individual seeking common in Christianity.
Oh my, I am not saying it. The important part of life is the rejoicing in Jeff's return, all of our prayers for his mother, ( deeply felt and do pass them on to Jeff and his mom ) the seeking in picking up the book or even A book, the worry about death and decay (take it from me dear friend ... thee has a few years before that should weigh deeply on thy soul, and by the time it does, there is a certain promise of peace and release in that concern!)
Joy, forget all I have tried to say above, if thee can live in the joy Pugsley shows at Jeff's return, in each small gift in life. I wish I could, but I know that is all there is, just to give over to the joy of living and thanks for the simple things. It seems much easier than any of us make it, unless, we are as blessed as Pugsley. I think we try and touch God, when we try to put our human mind behind and discover the truths that are instinctual to wonderful wee things like Pugsley.
it was good running into you at my favorite family friendly meeting. i wish I could have stayed for the potluck, but the ocean was calling my name, despite, or perhaps because of, the pelting sideways rain. Holly seemed amused (i hope).
i hit a snag on my knitting and may track you down in the next day or so. love, Rob
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