Love the Mess
Surrendering to the reality of a situation does not mean that you are giving up. It just means you are accepting a challenge and our now willing to deal with it.
This winter we were blessed to have a class with Rabbi Gedaliah Fleer on the subject of healing from a Torah perspective. One idea he talked about was surrendering. I am sure I can not do justice to his explanation but one part of it has really stuck in my brain and keeps coming up over and over again: when you surrender to the reality of a challenging situation and face your fears about it, your creative mind is freed from negative emotions. That is when healing can happen. Sometimes the illness itself goes away, other times not. But even if the illness does not go away, life can be extended, and quality of life can reach new highs, maybe highs the person never thought possible.
In this instance, surrendering to the reality of a situation does not mean that you are giving up, God forbid. It just means you are acknowledging that you are indeed confronted with an obstacle that feels very real to you or is undeniably very real to you. It could be serious sickness. Or it could be any number of things: an antagonistic coworker, an addiction, financial problems, a difficult pregnancy, legal troubles, marriage troubles- you name it. If you can stare the worst case scenario in the face, your creative mind can be freed, which in turn can liberate you.
As a Bat Noach I see how surrendering to the realities of a situation, or what I think the realities are, becomes liberating. I have had numerous moments over the years where I felt despondent and lonely for community, frustrated by what I saw as the inflexibility of some religious establishment, and misunderstood by just about everyone. Inevitably there has been a breaking point where I say aloud to my husband or to a friend what is really going on- a brutally honest recitation of my feelings and observations about a situation – and then things get better. It isn’t that I go and confront someone who has wronged me or write a strongly worded letter. Somehow just articulating the cold hard facts to my friend or to the universe makes it better. One day maybe I will be able to do this in prayer that same way I can to another person. Now I kind of need the person.
I have heard that in the military, there is an expression I can not put on a religious website. The clean version of it could be “embrace the mess”. Own the mess, love the mess, live the mess. It is the mess in the middle of which Hashem has placed you. The mess is your home. If you decry the mess, resent the mess, rail against the mess, then nothing will happen. When you surrender to the mess, the problems can begin to be solved.
Inevitably, after I have gone through one of the mental purges where the honest truth as I see it is laid bare, I realize that somewhere – and it is hard to explain this- I have given God away. I have decided that God is over there in that situation and I need to be there to have access to Him. Or maybe I need to be pleasing in the eyes of that other person in order to be pleasing in the eyes of God. Or somehow I need someone else’s permission to have access to God. Of course that is hooey. He is here for you and me, right in our situations just as He is over there. When I remember that and enjoy His company, I either no longer care about those other situations, or I continue to care but accept that the solution to the problem simply is not clear to me right then and there. Or maybe I am not meant to solve that specific dilemma, not my project. But I feel OK, like I can at the very least hang in there and wait for another day.
It is no doubt a spiritual test to declare the truth as you see it about something that feels wrong and to declare that in the midst of that mess there is Hashem. But when you feel His company you can see what is good in you, what is good about the situations in which you are immersed, and the opportunities that abound.
I guess that is why I have a hard time encouraging people to convert to Judaism, to address a comment a nice person left after my article Conversion Implosions. I cannot encourage it even though I have met so many Bnei Noach who it would seem would make great Jewish people. Again, not that anyone needs my permission. I know that people will do what they think is best, and some will convert and it will be a grand experience. Why do I need to encourage it? If someone who is working with an Orthodox rabbi comes to their own conclusions, who am I to encourage? I can not possibly know whether or not it is smart for that person and I can clearly see how it could be trading in one mess for a bigger mess. It is between that potential convert, his or her rabbi, and the Creator. Even if I can totally relate to the person who wants to convert, who fantasizes that things will be so much better somehow, I can not in all fairness encourage.
But I can encourage people to love the mess they are in. I can ask that they encourage me right back too; that is community.
2/16/2009
chessed of repression this happens to me with housework all the time. whenever i become conscious that i am avoiding some task, i bring it up to the surface, and usually feel a surge of energy to tackle it. in life, however, there are some situations much too painful and complicated, Hashem gives us the great chessed of the ability to repress and function anyways.
2/16/2009
this happens to me with housework all the time. whenever i become conscious that i am avoiding some task, i bring it up to the surface, and usually feel a surge of energy to tackle it. in life, however, there are some situations much too painful and complicated, Hashem gives us the great chessed of the ability to repress and function anyways.