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In June, I posted on using music to “Retell[] a Poem – the Sacred in the Secular“. Then, I took you behind the scenes, into what the process of setting a poem to music looks like, in the middle of things, while the draft is still incomplete. Now that the draft is completed, in honor […]
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The terrorist attack in Barcelona has once again caused many of us to reflect on the ominous effects of Muslim immigration in Europe. Although all citizens of every country in Europe are at risk, Jews in particular feel vulnerable to the intense hatred that is part of the radical Muslim ideology. The Jews in Spain are no exception.
Voltaire once said that if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him. Fast forward to today, and the left has invented everything required for social control that used to be provided by religion, except a replacement for God. Their most recent innovation in this field is “implicit bias,” which acts as a stand-in for original sin.
The word “virtue” has become besmirched by its inclusion in the term, “virtue signaling,” a term used to discredit one’s practice of virtue, when a critic doubts the virtuous person’s sincerity. In creating this term, however, I think it has made some of us skeptical (in these chaotic times) of any person’s sincerity and credibility as a notable and admirable human being.
I am keenly aware of the continual onslaught of medical studies that are written, supposedly to improve our health: studies that talk about eating disorders, obesity, helpful drugs, dangerous drugs, unhealthy foods, fiber-rich foods. And I stopped paying attention to them a while ago. No one is going to stop me from drinking my glass of zinfandel at dinner, my full-test coffee at breakfast, and my chocolate chip cookie after dinner. But I’m concerned about my fellow Americans, especially regarding their growing concerns about health. So I decided to do some research. I learned more than I wanted to know: we are obsessed with our health. I also came to the conclusion that these obsessions may say less about our health and more about our search for control, perfection and meaning.
The long shadow Easter casts on our culture is light in darkness rather than darkness in light. The poem off to the right here is lit by that shadow. So much of the poem’s language reduces humanity to mere biology – our ghosts are merely the bioluminescence of the worms feeding off our corpses, rebirth is perhaps nothing more than dirty fertilization, whether of plants or of people – but all is framed to subvert that reduction. The poem shows a light beyond nature and nature’s endless cycling, light from a dawn that remains fixed for all time: the Easter dawn. Really, it’s impossible to put what the poem is saying into words any better than the words of the poem itself. Not all restatement is verbal, though.
Life is about making choices. Lots of choices. Most of them are minor ones: what to cook for dinner, what book to read next, whether to take a walk. But some of our choices are significant, and they call to us to take notice of them. We can try to ignore them, but I think that G-d walks around with a two-by-four (or sends a guardian angel to do the work) and gives us a good solid whack to help us pay attention and step up. That usually gets my attention, and I try to discern what is calling to me.
