Tag: story

Writing in the Sand, Stepping Toward Forgiveness

The Hebrew month of Elul begins, and with it comes a month of daily opportunities to right the wrongs we have done. Our main tasks of this month are two-fold: to ask forgiveness for those we have harmed, and to offer forgiveness to those who have harmed us. Clearly the winds of forgiveness should blow sufficiently to help us erase the errors of our ways.

The arrival of Elul reminds me of a story:

Two friends were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey, they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face.

The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, he wrote in the sand: Today my best friend slapped me in the face. 

They kept on walking, until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but his friend saved him. After he recovered from the near drowning, he wrote on a stone: Today my best friend saved my life. The friend, who had slapped and saved his best friend, asked him, “After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand, and now, you write on a stone, why?”

The other friend replied: “When someone hurts us, we should write it down in sand, where the winds of forgiveness can erase it away, but when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it.” 

Elul is here. It brings with it a focus on transformation. Our lives change when we break through that which has held us back from forgiving and asking forgiveness. As the story teaches, learn to write your hurts in the sand and to carve your blessings in stone.

Barking Dogs and Reflective Rabbis

A story…

Nachman of Bratzlav, the great Rebbe was walking with Rabbi Nathan, his greatest disciple, through town and they passed a fenced yard that was guarded by dogs. These were vicious, half-starved, half-mad beasts that rushed up to the edge of the property to lunge, bark and howl at the two men walking by.  

Rabbi Nathan, the student, did what any of us would have done; he jumped at their barking, picked up his pace and cast those dogs a glance, hoping the fence was well secured.  

But Nachman didn’t jump, he didn’t react like we would. Instead he stayed at the fence, and just said in a patient, calm and sympathetic voice “I know, I know”.  

Later, Nachman explained that those dogs weren’t just dogs. They were souls trapped in the bodies of dogs, souls caught in the gilgul, the cycle of ascent and descent, and as they were not human, never mind Jewish, they could not perform the necessary teshuvah (repentence) to ascend again. Whereas Reb Nathan heard only angry, ferocious beasts ready to devour him, Reb Nachman heard instead the cries of pain of those who could not recover their own spiritual selves. And it would be Reb Nachman’s job to help release them of their pain, to find a way to descend toward them in order to help those dog-trapped souls ascend.  

What are we to make of this story? Most of us don’t know how to talk to dogs, or at least identify when dogs have an existential crisis. (I don’t even have a dog.)  

But more to the point, most of us – like Reb Nathan, the disciple – miss the spiritual element of the moments of our lives, of each individual encounter, as easily as Reb Nathan missed the souls trapped in those vicious dogs. 

Rabbi Yair Robinson, a Delaware Rabbi, makes meaning of this story:

To be sure, we hear cries of pain; in those suffering from AIDS, from poverty, from humiliation and hunger and abuse. God-willing, we may even heed those cries and try to bring some kind of relief. But whether it’s in our own lives or in the lives of others, we often miss the element of holiness, the spirit, the Godliness, of other moments.  Read on.

Again, I just ask:

How do we slow down enough to recognize the reality of each moment of our lives?   

I’m sitting here with my daughter on our daddy-daughter day (she’s studying right now before dinner).  Enough pondering.  Time to focus on my kid.