The writing happens first in my inward ear, which hears the words spoken, intoned, canted, preached, recited, depending on what’s being said. Then the task is to remember that inward voice, and make sense of it on the written page. Sometimes the inward ear starts hearing things at odd moments, like this morning when I was crunching on a piece of toast until Carol said, interrupting, “You know you said you could, well could you do it something like this,” and she showed me what she meant, and we talked about it, and I said, Yes, I would do it. By then, whatever that inward voice had been saying was lost, but who cares? What Carol says, no matter how mundane or matter-of-fact, is always worth more than something that is meant to be written down. The problem lies in the voice which speaks in the inward ear; I can ignore it for a time, but the best way to keep it under control is to keep writing. Now you know why I write too much for this blog.
Monthly Archives: January 2007
Tales of the Rabbis
I’ve been working on a series of stories for liberal religious kids, and here’s another story from this work-in-progress. This is part of a series of “Tales of the Rabbis,” taken from the Talmud and from medieval sources. The stories of rabbis are reminiscent first of stories of Zen masters, and second (obviously) they are reminiscent of stories of Jesus. The story below should be familiar to anyone who has taught Sunday school for a few years; but my version tries to remain closer to the original version in the Talmud (without the common Christian interpretations that creep in, like changing or criticizing Rabbi Hillel’s one-sentence version of the Torah/Law), and my version also gives the original source. Note that the version below is still a rough draft.
You can find more of my Tales of the Rabbis here.
Standing on One Foot
A man came to talk with Rabbi Shamai, one of the most famous of all the rabbis, nearly as famous as Rabbi Hillel himself.
“I would like to convert to Judaism and become a Jew,” said the man. “But I don’t have much time. I know I have to learn the entire book you call the Torah, but you must teach it to me while I stand on one foot.”
The Torah is the most important Jewish book there is, and this crazy man wanted to learn it while standing on one foot? Why, people spent years learning the Torah; it was not something you can learn in five minutes! Rabbi Shamai grew angry with this man, and he pushed the man away using a builder’s yardstick he happened to be holding in his hand.
The man hurried away, and found Rabbi Hillel. “I would like to convert to Judaism and become a Jew,” said the man. “But I don’t have much time. I know I have to learn the entire book you call the Torah, but you must teach it to me while I stand on one foot.”
“Certainly,” said Rabbi Hillel. “Stand on one foot.”
The man balanced on one foot.
“Repeat after me,” said Rabbi Hillel. “What is hateful to you, don’t do that to someone else.”
The man repeated after Rabbi Hillel, “What is hateful to me, I won’t do that to someone else.”
“That is the whole law,” said Rabbi Hillel. “All the rest of the Torah, all the rest of the oral teaching, is there to help explain this simple law. Now, go and learn it so it is a part of you.”
Source: Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sabbath 31a.
Talmud online:
The Babylonian Talmud, edited by Rabbi Dr. Isidore Epstein of Jews’ College, London.
The Babylonian Talmud, translated by Michael L. Rodkinson (1918).
Dreams
March
New Bedford’s “Martin Luther King, Jr., Day of Remembrance Celebration” began at 2:30 p.m. with a march. We were to march from Bethel AME church down County Street to Centre United Methodist Church, a total of about three short blocks. The program at United Methodist wasn’t going to begin until 4:00, so we stood in front of Bethel church for half an hour (in occasional light drizzle), while people waved at friends, schmoozed with each other (New Bedford is a great town for schmoozing), and children asked when we were going to start walking. Andy and some other people passed out blue buttons saying “Marriage Equality Coalition of the SouthCoast,” and more than half the people there had one pinned on their rain coats.
The ministers were all supposed to stand together near the front of the march, but I stayed in the middle of the crowd so I could schmooze and say hi to people: Everett, Louie, Kathy, Andy, John, half a dozen other people. At last we began to walk. I walked with Peter and his mom and dad. Peter was happy because the road went slightly downhill, so he could just coast along on his wheelie shoes, with an occasional light push from his dad. It was a mixed crowd, from the palest white skin (like mine) through every shade of white and brown to the darkest brown.
Preachers and politicians
Once inside, I lost Peter and his mom and dad. By a quarter past three, I was sitting in the very back of the huge church, near some other people from First Unitarian. The program was printed in tiny type, and went on for two pages. Seven clergypeople were scheduled to speak; seven politicians were scheduled to speak; the consensus of the people around me was that it was going to be a very long program indeed. “We’ll be here till seven,” I predicted. “Not me,” said the distinguished-looking African American man at the end of the pew, “why do you think I’m sitting in the back row?”
In spite of gentle admonitions from Rev. David Lima, the master of ceremonies, the preachers and politicians all exceeded their alloted time of one minute each (except for Rev. Bradbury, the rector of Grace Episcopal, who kept his bit to one minute). I didn’t mind that they all went over their allotted time, not much anyway. Rev. Mark Green invoked the presence of God to bless this assembly, and to help us remember the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King. City Councillor Brian Gomes told about how he managed to get a job as a soda jerk at an all-white soda fountain in New Bedford because of the intervention of an older white woman — and because of the dream set forth by Dr. King. Congressman Barney Frank spun out his vision of a truly fair and just society that does not discriminate on the basis of race, sexual orientation, or anything else — a vision like that of Dr. King. State Representative Tony Cabral told how his family had escaped the old Portuguese dictatorship, come to America when he was fourteen, following a dream — a dream like that of Dr. King.
What he said…
At some point, I noticed a small knot of people walking up the aisle just past us: Deval Patrick, the new governor of Massachusetts, had arrived. People started applauding; people were on their feet applauding. Next to me, Katey said, “He’s shorter than I thought he was.” Patrick got an extended standing ovation, just for walking in the door. We all sat down, and the program continued as before — but now there was a lot more excitement in the room.
At last Deval Patrick got up to speak. He started slowly: said he was glad to be there, made a joke about how preachers and politicians could never limit themselves to just one minute of speaking time, apologized that he would have to leave right after he finished speaking. And then he really began to speak, and held us all captivated with his vision, his dream of what Massachusetts could be, if we would all work together. I made some inadequate notes of what he said:
On why he wished he could be present for the whole program: “I didn’t just come to speak to you; I came to listen, to hear what you have to say….”
Speaking of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and equal access to voting in America: “We have done a great deal to make voting easier, but we haven’t done enough to make voting meaningful.”
On the anti-gay marriage amendment ballot initiative: “Letting a majority tell a minority just how much freedom they can have” is not the right thing to do.
“I think we’re all getting tired of debates about the differences between the right and the left, and what we want is debates about the difference between right and wrong.”
Those four short quotes don’t communicate the feeling we got sitting there, listening to the new governor speak. He presents a powerful vision, his words have the power to motivate people out of passivity and into action. And hearing someone like Patrick in person makes a difference — if you’re a Massachusetts resident, make a point of going to hear him speak in person some time and you’ll see what I mean. He has a dream, and it comes across best in person. I’ve been feeling pretty cynical about Massachusetts for some years now, but hearing Patrick speak today gave me hope, and made me want to get active again.
The power of dreams — the power of speech to communicate dreams.
Doomsday clock
You know, what with global climate change and the war in Iraq, plain old nuclear armageddon seems somehow comforting. At least it’s an old familiar problem.
On January 17, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists will be advancing their famous symbolic clock a little closer to midnight; a little closer to the ultimate act of environmental destruction.
Link.
Instrument set
Carol needed an Xacto knife with a sharp blade, so I pulled out the drawer that holds the wooden box with Xacto knives, along with the log-log slide rule, the regular slide rule, and the drafting tools: French curves, triangles (including two that belonged to my grandfather, the naval architect), erasing shields, architect’s and engineer’s scales, a lead holder or two, and the instrument set. Somehow I managed to upset the instrument set, and had to spend five minutes putting all the tools back in the case.
I bought the instrument set maybe twenty-five years ago at Charette, which sold architect’s supplies, at their store in Woburn. I was working in a lumberyard by day and taking art classes night, and every once in a while I’d pick up a little extra money doing some drawing or simple drafting on the side. For some reason, now long forgotten, I needed a compass. The salesman at Charette tried to sell me the instrument set: a slim black plastic case with compasses and dividers.
“You can buy this for only a little more than that compass you asked about,” he said. He was only a few years older than me.
“Why, what’s wrong with it?” I said.
He showed me where one corner of the box was broken. I still couldn’t believe how low the price was, and said so.
“I can’t sell it with the box broken like that,” he said. The architects, the pros, they wouldn’t buy it that way.
But I would. It cost more than I felt comfortable spending, but I bought it. I still remember my excitement as I walked out of that store: I finally owned an instrument set.
I have a vague memory of using a compass for something or other half a dozen years ago, but I really don’t do drafting any more. Yet everything’s still in the case: the small compass, the large compass with the quick-release mechanism, the extension arm to fit on the large compass, the dividers, the little case with leads, the pen nibs for drawing circles in ink, the lead holder, the tiny screwdriver so you could repair things; each item nestled in its slot in the flocked interior of the plastic box. The large compass has one or two tiny spots of rust now.
Surprisingly, you can still buy the Charette #471 instrument set. Who buys them in this era of computer assisted drafting? I suspect a few architects buy them out of nostalgia, and play with them in their spare time.
An hour-long telephone talk with an old friend tonight: one of the best things about being middle-aged is having a friend you’ve known for twenty-eight years and you’ve watched each other grow up and grow older. After a couple of decades you realize that like it or not you’re stuck with each other, because by that point you’re like family; which means you better make the best of that friendship; which is what we did. Usually after I have an exhausting twelve hour day at work I just want to go to bed, but today it was much better talking to this old friend.
Passivity and leadership
In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, one of the readings for the sermon this week will be Exodus 16.1-3; the other reading will be from Leadership for the Twenty-First Century by Joseph Rost. You can look up the passage from Exodus on your own [link]; here’s the passage from Rost’s book:
Followers are part of the leadership relationship in a new paradigm of leadership. What is different about the emerging view of followers is the substantive meaning attached to the word and the clarity given to that understanding. The following five points give the concept of followers substance and clarity.
First, only people who are active in the leadership process are followers. Passive people are not in a relationship. They have chosen not to be involved. They cannot have influence. Passive people are not followers.
Second, active people can fall anywhere on a continuum of activity from highly active to minimally active, and their influence in the leadership process is, in large part, based on their activity, their willingness to get involved, their use of the power resources they have at their command to influence other people….
Third, followers can become leaders and leaders can become followers in any one leadership relationship. People are not stuck in one or the other for the whole time the relationship exists…. This ability to change places without changing organizational positions gives followers considerable influence and mobility.
Fourth, in one group or organization people can be leaders. In other groups and organizations they can be followers. Followers are not always followers in all leadership relationships.
Fifth, and most important, followers do no do followership, they do leadership. Both leaders and followers form one relationship that is leadership. There is no such thing as followership in the new school of leadership. Followership makes sense only in the industrial leadership paradigm, where leadership is good management. Since followers who are subordinates could not do management (since they were not managers), they had to do followership. No wonder followership connoted subordination, submissiveness, and passivity. In the new paradigm, followers and leaders do leadership. They are in the leadership relationship together. They are the ones who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes….. Followers and leaders develop a relationship wherein they influence one another as well as the organization and society, and that is leadership. [pp. 108-109; emphasis in original]
Rost’s analysis of leadership is one of the best I’ve seen. The book is pretty dry, but it’s worth wading through the academic prose to get to the ideas.
Ideas like: “Passive people are not followers.” I see this happening in liberal religion right now. There are the passive people who sit and complain about having to take on responsibility for their own well-being (as happens in Exodus 16.1-3). There are the passive people can also hide behind individualism as their excuse for not being active followers; “doing your own thing” all too often translates into doing things that don’t effect real change (as happens in Exodus 32.21-29, which I almost used as one of this week’s readings). Individualism is my preferred form of passivity.
I didn’t see it, but this is what happened
Carol was sitting in her home office, working on the book she’s writing and looking out the front window at the people coming and going at the Whaling Museum across the street. I was sitting in the kitchen-dining-living room, eating lunch and reading the Sunday New York Times.
“The tea’s ready,” I said. I had said this several times before, but when Carol is writing she sometimes doesn’t hear things.
“I wonder what’s going on at the Whaling Museum,” she said. “This guy with a white beard, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, walked into the museum a few minutes ago, and now he just ran out.”
“Hmm,” I said. When I’m reading, I sometimes don’t hear things.
“It just looked funny,” she said. “He was this little slight man, and he was running away from the museum.”
We heard a siren. A police car pulled up in front of the museum. The cop went inside. “Something’s happening,” said Carol.
Another police car pulled up, blue lights flashing. We could hear another siren getting closer.
“I wonder if I should go over and tell them what I saw,” said Carol. “He ran down towards the waterfront.”
Suddenly it sunk in to my thick head: Carol had just seen something that might be important. My head snapped up. “Yeah, you better go over there — and hurry, so you can tell them which way he ran off!”
While she ran across the street to the museum, I looked out the window: four police cars parked in front of the museum, and fifth car, one of their SUVs, drove off towards the waterfront while I watched.
Carol came back and said someone had just held up the front desk of the museum with a penknife. She had given her story to the police, but hadn’t stayed around long enough to be interviewed by the reporter. “I went up to the woman at the desk and said, ‘Did you just get held up?’ and she looked at me and snapped, ‘Who are you?’ At first I was going to be pissed because she was so short with me, but then I realized, she had just been held up.”
What a stupid place to rob: very public, guaranteed there will be lots of witnesses, guaranteed five police cars will show up within a minute. Probably someone stealing money for drugs, too strung out to care any more.
The New Bedford Standard-Times Web site already has used to have a short report on the incident, on their breaking news page [link], which reads in part:
The culprit was described as a white male wearing square sunglasses and a charcoal gray hooded sweatshirt and sporting a large bandage on his chin.
Employee Pamela Lowe said she was working the counter at the main entrance when the man entered the museum, jumped the counter and demanded money.
She said he was brandishing a small knife.He then jumped back over the counter, she handed him the money and he fled on foot.
Warm weather
On the front page of today’s newspaper: “Where’s winter?” 60 degrees Fahrenheit in New Bedford yesterday; 68 in Boston. This morning, it was warm enough that I didn’t need an overcoat walking to work. I stood out in front of the church before the worship service to say hello as people walked in. “A nice April morning,” said Paul as he walked in. “Feels more like May,” I said. After he walked in, one of those Asian beetles that looks like a ladybug landed on the stone threshold of the church. You’re not supposed to see insects outdoors in early January.
The lack of winter has me feeling disoriented. I like winter: clear cold air, ground frozen hard, snow. When we lived in California, I did not like the lack of winter. And now here we are back in New England, but there’s no winter. The lack of winter has been bothering me enough that I woke up in the middle of the night last night, and lay awake for a quarter of an hour, turning it over and over in my mind:– is this the beginning of serious global climate change? will the Arctic ice cap totally melt this summer? are all the worst-case scenarios true? — all those crazy thoughts that run through your head late at night.
I took a long walk this afternoon in the spring-like air, and it was just so pleasant.