For the Ride

Last night I watched the sun finally set over Devereux beach. It felt as if it set over summer as well. The waves pulled in the grayness of twilight like fishermen hauling in the final catch of the day, dutifully, but with a palpable heaviness, shrugging apologetically, like the notary public who embarrassedly delivers his eviction notice, averting eye contact as he chokes out a halfhearted “sign here please.”

The seasonal limbo, the Torah portion last week and this week, and the Jewish calendar have coordinated well. They too are mired in a scriptural twilight, gridlocked between a portion called “when you depart” and one called “when you arrive.”

Another summer ends but fall is nowhere in sight. Another Jewish new year is almost a wrap, its replacement not yet arrived.

And yet the ambivalence seems to be overlaid with a haunting calm. We are in no place, but its surprisingly a really good place to begin practicing being present and open to what is, wherever we are, to understand that even nowhere is somewhere too.

Can it be the spirit of the Maharal of Prague whose anniversary of passing is today, on this Hebrew date of eighteenth of Elul? A man who felt the force of life so vividly, that he heard the powerful whispering of possible life, of man rising, from where he lay buried, formless, lifeless under the darkness of the pungent earth lining the banks of the Vistula river? Can this energy of nowhere, flowing freely everywhere, be the stirring of the spirit of the Golem, from his alleged tomb in the attic of the Altenshul in Prague? Can this unlikely liveliness, this no place, that is more of a place than any other, this spirit rising out of our own earthiness, be our Golem?

Perhaps it is the energy of the universe itself, offering a cosmic nod to the descent, over 200 years ago on this day as well, of the joyful soul of the Baal Shem Tov, a galactic moment frozen eternally into the planetary memory. Perhaps we are picking up the vibes of that consciousness, as it descends as a salute, an ode to him, a parade through all worlds, held in his honor. His was A faithful joy that fits perfectly into the strange and surprising snugness of a void. A joy that feels equally comfortable celebrating the “what is” of our life right alongside the acceptance of the “what isn’t.”

Or is it our saintly Alter Rebbe whose birthday, like his spiritual Zayde the Baal Shem is on this day as well. A Rebbe who preached a doctrine of unconditional love. His famous teaching in chapter thirty two of Tanya, where he reminds us that our eligibility to be loved can never be provisional on how great or small we are, resonates on this day. His portrait of the imperfect man, his Beinoni, hangs on the wall today. We are all in that picture. The Beinoni knows how to feel alive even in lifelessness, how to lean into a life lodged permanently in the space between the question and the answer. One who knows that the mastery of the gift of curiosity, for the discovery of whichever truth graces this very moment, is the greatest mastery of all. The one who lives “for the ride.” The Beinoni knows intuitively how leaning into the curve, the wind of a wide open road in his face, closer to the bottom than the top, can be closer to heaven than even heaven itself. He has found his soul in the realization that his journey is more of a real place than any destination can ever be.

This day pulsates with the paradox of the “bright lights” the “Meorot Hagdolim”- switched on in a empty stadium, for a crowd that has yet to arrive, for the game of life that has not even begun, and yet is fully in progress. Today is a perfect day to celebrate whatever “big lights” shine down on us all as well.

Much Love Rabbi Yossi