Years ago, I led a Judaic discussion group in someone’s home. As the
evening progressed, someone began to advocate ‘living in the moment’, appreciating the here and now.
At that point, I noticed my friend 'Lisa' (not her real name) becoming
agitated. Her anxiety seemed to keep rising; so, since our allotted
class time had pretty much elapsed, I called the group to an end.
As the group broke for refreshments I walked straight over to 'Lisa'.
“What's going on?” I asked.
“That guy made my blood boil….” she responded.
“What did he say?” I probed.
“Live in the moment, live in the moment… I felt like I was going to explode!”
“What’s wrong with ‘living in the moment?” I asked, somewhat puzzled.
With an incredulous and deeply pained look, she exclaimed “Live in the moment??? Live in the moment??? The moment sucks!! I don’t WANT to live in this moment!” I knew that 'Lisa' had many obvious blessings; I also knew
that she bore deep personal pain.
So I sat down with her and listened to her woes.
The next morning, as I prepared myself for my daily prayers, I began
to focus on the first word of our liturgy ‘Hodu” - a Hebrew word which means “offer thanks/praise”.
Suddenly I stopped short. What if 'Lisa' were standing here? What if she were praying? Would she be offended at the prayer’s assumption that she could feel thankful for something? If life was so bad, how could we assume a sense of gratitude on her part? Could it be that this liturgy wasn't suitable for someone like her?
I couldn’t go further with my prayers, because I needed to come to terms with our liturgy and its applicability to my friend.
Then it dawned on me: In their wisdom, our Rabbis structured the
liturgy so that a person needed to be in a grateful place before she
could begin her prayers.
Even if someone had many stresses (which we all do), the Rabbis were
telegraphing that EVERYONE has blessings for which to be thankful. The liturgy’s design was to tell us that unless a person recognized some blessing in his life, until she was able to muster a feeling of
gratitude to the Divine, the person couldn’t even begin the first word of
prayer.
With that inspiring eye-opener, I began my prayers, and I began to think a little differently.
Thank you Rabbis.
And thank you 'Lisa'
ב"ה