https://hesedyahu.wordpress.com/2019/10/02/nowhere-seen/My daughter runs through the corridor in her own world, getting whatever she does from her repetitive play. My other children are in their own rooms, and my wife is deep in her studies. I sit in the bathroom, towel draped over my thigh after having prepared one of them for their bedtime.
I think back on my day, going to and fro, getting this or that done, preparing for job interviews, getting rid of trash, preparing the family meals and driving my kids wherever they need to be. This hasn’t been the easiest set of weeks but, with God’s help and thanks to his mercies, I’m making it through.
On the interweb, I hear the odd mutter about it being some Jewish month. I still get automatic emails from chabad.org about stuff happening with them. I’m gonna have to unsubscribe one of these days, but I don’t care enough to do that, so I just see the titles of emails on my smartphone and instinctually press “delete” without even bothering to read them.
For me, it’s just another day. For me to call it “the second of October” is almost as meaningless as attributing some other name to the month or another number to the day. It just marks another step, except “2nd October” has some relevance to my fellow Gentiles around me. “my fellow Gentiles” … ha! I embrace the obvious truth whilst using the word “fellow” lightly.
My friend’s “noachide” reddit group sends me some alert and I take a peak and I get a buzz having the chance to give headspace to my divine obligations and using it as a lens to judge the content of his group posts. It (I mean using the seven laws as a lens to judge things) reminds me of the films I watch every now and again, how immoral acts are glorified and seen as right because the motive of “revenge” seems justified. It reminds me of the difference between hard law, the capital offences that alone make up the seven laws for humanity, and the powerful wider teachings that can be gleaned from them. I embrace “the law of God” for me and those who habitually live outside the Jewish covenant and I see the world crumble … no, that’s too big for me. No, “my world” makes more sense, the little corner I can perceive; I see it crumble, continue to, without the stability of God’s truth and morality. It’s all so crazy.
Yet, on my little “island” of family, I try to hold together the pieces of myself to, in turn, be some sort of stability for my little tribe.
I don’t need to make any big statement about what I am and what I’m not, or what I do or don’t keep, or this or that. My responsibility is to myself and my little tribe.
Topic: Nowhere seen (Read 1541 times)