Woke up super early because I fell asleep super early. Thinking about all the sadness surrounding death lately, it’s coming toward me in waves lapping and overlapping in concentric circles getting closer and closer with each new day. Yet here in the midst of the lonely places that terrify my soul and keep me from falling back asleep at three am, I notice no small miracle to muse, but a marvel.
I’m awake.
I’m alive, my essence is still breathing the life force. Bring it on, bring it all on. My petty little life still unravels for some unknown reason.
I have the clearest memory of my first seed of doubt, right in the synagogue, in front of the whole writhing, singing, davening pack. Looking around me in wonder at the rapt faces that were feeling some type of way about their experience, it was a moment stopped in time for me, saturated in color to the point of no color.
I looked at the praying mob and I looked up at the rabbi on the bimah and I looked up at the round walls of the temple’s sanctuary through the stained glass, up to the heavens and I felt it so clear–what if they are all praying to nothing?
I really couldn’t relate to the unity I was seeing with this singing and swaying bunch, the same people who would soon be greedily scarfing down the goodies at the Kaddish following the service, driving their luxury vehicles out of the lot and cursing one another in the parking lot, and more than likely off to the bar mitzvah party being held in an ostentatious and ungapatchka way, driving by dozens of million dollar homes along the lakefront in this affluent suburbia, afflicted would be a better word to describe it. So what kind of god creates these type of creatures? With the gamut of human depths and capabilities for good and its bipolar cousin evil, what would be the purpose?
The only one that ever made me hesitate was the one that says “god made man because he loves stories” by Elie Wiesel, it’s the only thing that can explain it. But come on, to think we are termite pets of a bored and lonely god who would allow his playthings to do atrocities, to suffer great sorrows, to puzzle and ponder over the endless questions of existence that so baffle the mind? I recorded my brilliant son Diego speaking about some of his questions he has about the beginning of life, such as who was the first person (had to be a woman, mom, because there wouldn’t be anyone else if the first person was a man) and he quite strongly has belief in god which I don’t know where it comes from.
Definitely not from me, I am spiritual but not a believer. I listened to Maurice Sendak describe his relationship with Judaism and it fit mine to a t! It was funny how many things he said that sounded as if I had thought them. http://www.npr.org/2012/05/08/152248901/fresh-air-remembers-author-maurice-sendak
And losing him this week was something tragic to me; on the heels of MCA and then the sudden tragic death of a neighborhood institution over on my old block, a dude who just had a way about him I’ll never forget, it’s all been sad but now hearing this crazy bullshit about my uncle is just so terrible, it’s personal this time, deaths coming knocking. They gave him a week. A week to live and he’s stuck in the hospital and so sick and weak he’s not himself. Poor MCA was like that with the cancer too…what kind of god comes up with shit like cancer for fucks sake anyway?
So no, I’m not about to believe in a better plan or an afterlife for these fine people the world is losing, and my heart goes out to survivors everywhere who weather the storms of life’s deaths. I watched my grandfather spend his whole life feeling guilty for having one when his family all perished; he didn’t see how amazing it is just to see the beauty in the madness of it all. I’ve seen these magnified pictures of grains of sand and they are mind blowing.
http://discovermagazine.com/photos/01-each-grain-of-sand-a-tiny-work-of-art
and if you want to see something that I think is hilarious, my son reading the beginning of Where the Wild Things Are can be found here:
Thx for this post and sharing your insight! This is a true story about some of the saddest moments in each one’s life. My girlfriend just lost two of her closest relatives within an elapsed time of 3 months and I share your view as I try to help her getting through the loss. Because part of our life is to learn going further with and through the loss. There’s no logic behind. And no matter of justice. It’s just life. We don’t know each other and there are those words won’t help but condolences for your loss.