Being the Love You Seek by Kenneth L. Meyer

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A Poem by Spiritual Progressive Kenneth L. Meyer

www.drkenmeyer.com

A personal reflection on life’s purpose:
 

To cultivate the courage and willingness

necessary to live fully,

embodied in our fragile human form,

to be fully forgiven and forgiving,

non-defensive and open hearted,

and reciprocally empathic in relation to all that is. This is the ordinariness of a divine dimension

from which we all emerge. The very love we were born to express as humans,

from within and without,

from bones to heart to spirit,

and as soul to soul,

journeying and returning to and fro,

from earth dust to stardust

— all seeming to occur in a lived space-time

of a perceived universe. There is no real time or absolute space. There is only Love.

Film Review: Hannah Arendt and the “Banality of Evil”

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Van Trotta’s film on Arendt and “the banality of evil” not only restores memory but also might remind us of contemporary violent conflicts, including the Israeli-Palestinian one. The narratives told on both sides promote an unremitting hostility that over the past century has stymied efforts to make peace. These narratives, combining personal memory with cultural tradition, have fostered distrust and demonization of the Other. As Rabbi Michael Lerner points out, both sides “embraced nationalist rhetoric …. Both sides were traumatized by their own history, and by outrageous acts of violence perpetrated by the other.”

Occupation? What Occupation? Uri Avnery on Denial as Central to Israel’s 46th Year of Occupation of Palestine

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It is deeply troubling and sad to watch not only Israelis, but also the major institutions of American Jewish life remain in complete denial of the pain caused to the Palestinian people by the continuation of Israel’s occupation and its still effective blockade of Gaza. Yet I witness a new generation of Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox rabbis who seem completely blind to the contradictions they embody when they pray for the welfare of the State of Israel and for the IDF (a separate prayer) but never the welfare of the Palestinian people over whom Israel rules. They ignore the contradictory position of Israel: occupying another people and refusing to give them citizenship or the vote inside Israel. Thus Israel and its supporters openly accept the systematic call of Torah, not only to “love the stranger as yourself” but also, as in last week’s Torah portion (shelach lecha) Numbers (Bamidbar) chapter XVI, sentences 15 and 16: “One law shall there be for you and the stranger (Other) who dwells with you—it shall be a law for all time throughout the ages. You and the stranger shall be alike before the Lord, the same ritual and the same rule shall apply to you and to the stranger who resides among you.” And in dozens of other places the Torah reminds us variants of the following command: “When you came into your land, DO NOT OPPRESS THE STRANGER (THE OTHER).

The Last Word

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So she bites it, her hand, bites it because she’s read somewhere about the transporting power of pain.