A few things I’ve learned recently and I want to share them with you :

-That there are doors in forms of people, words, stories, eyes, those perfect chords within that perfect piece of music that strike in a prompt second of “yes.” Doors everywhere opening into other sides that cannot be reached, unless you step up, and open them. Doors as openings into new worlds within this lifetime.

-Nothing lasts. But it doesn’t really end either.

-You need to write while the fire burns hot. Not after.

-If you have to convince yourself of something, the (right) answer is likely the opposite, and yes, this of course means the best direction will not usually be easy or logical or part of the original plan. Do the more difficult, more primal, more beautifully terrifying thing.

-Meaning and purpose don’t come in the forms of great accomplishments or undertakings. Rather, they reveal themselves on some randomly idle weekday morning when you realize how much you love someone or that you’re doing all you can with what you can carry in the place you are with the time you have with what you care about.

-Laughter and hope are often the same.

-Aloneness won’t necessarily equate to freedom.

-You need to lose yourself sometimes or often. Losing yourself provides mirrors where you can see it all clear afterward, true as it’s ever been and etched in fine detail across fog-free glass.

-How do you begin anything? From exactly where you are. With simply this breath.

-That you should (always) gaze up at the seas of stars opening our nights and remember again and again that you’re in an awesomely vast and wild universe where nearly anything can happen, and at any given time.

« Ne laisse pas le passé blesser de son poids mort les ailes de l’instant, ne déchire pas le pacte de sa page blanche,ne renie pas son envol même si un ange devait forcer ton passage vers le rêve aboli, ne laisse pas le passé briser de son poids neutre les chances de l’instant, ne déchire pas le pacte de son élan vivant ne détourne pas son envol même si un ange devait empêcher son passage vers le pays oublié ». Alain Suied

“ …Some people are like leaves on a tree. The wind blows, they’re over here. It blows the other way, they’re over there. They’re unstable. Seasons change. They wither and die. They’re gone. That’s alright. Most people in the world are like that. They’re just there to take from the tree. They aren’t going to do anything but take and give shade every now and then. That’s all they can do. Don’t get mad at people like that. That’s who they are. They were put on the earth to be a leaf.

Some people are like a branch on the tree. You gotta be careful of those branches too. They’ll fool you. They make you think they’re a good friend and they’re real strong, but you step out there on them, and they break and they leave you high and dry.

But if you find you two or three people in your life just like the roots at the bottom of that tree, you are blessed ‘cause them the kind of people that ain’t going nowhere. They ain’t worried about being seen. Don’t nobody have to know they know you. Don’t have to know what they’re doing for you. But if those roots weren’t there, that tree couldn’t live.

A tree can have a hundred million branches, but there’s only few roots down at the bottom. I’m telling you son, when you get some roots, hang onto them. But the rest of them, let it go.”

If we are to live and have something to live for, let us remember, all of us, that we are the servants as well as the masters of our fields.

Our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning.

On Pesach, I found strange the invitation to others to join us in eating the bread of affliction. What kind of hospitality is that, I thought, to ask others to share our suffering?

Unexpectedly, I discovered the answer in Primo Levi’s great book, If This is a Man, the harrowing account of his experiences in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. According to Levi, the worst of all his terrible experiences happened when the Nazis abandoned the camps in January 1945, fearing the Russian advance. All prisoners who could walk were taken on brutal ‘death marches.’ The only people left in the camp were those too ill to move.

For ten days they were left alone with only scraps of food and fuel. Levi describes how he worked to light a fire and bring some warmth to his fellow prisoners, many of them dying. He then writes:

‘When the broken window was repaired and the stove began to spread its heat, something seemed to relax in everyone, and at that moment Towarowski (a Franco-Pole of twenty-three, with typhus) proposed to the others that each of them offer a slice of bread to us three who had been working. And so it was agreed. ’Only a day before’, says Levi, ‘this would have been inconceivable. The law of the camp said: “Eat your own bread, and if you can, that of your neighbour.” To do otherwise would have been suicidal. The offer of sharing bread “was the first human gesture that occurred among us. I believe that that moment can be dated as the beginning of the change by which we who had not died slowly changed from Haftlinge[prisoners] to men again.’

Sharing food is the first act through which slaves become free human beings. One who fears tomorrow does not offer their bread to others. But those who are willing to divide their food with a stranger have already shown themselves capable of fellowship and faith, the two things from which hope is born. That is why we begin the Seder by inviting others to join us. That is how we turn affliction into freedom.

“Deserving is he who enters and exists [and enters]” etc. This is the passage quoted in the Zohar III 292a.

The idea here is that there are two levels: going up and going down. We all experience these ups and downs during the times of our lives. However, the concept is known as yerida letzorech aliya,we descend in order to ascend. When we hit rock bottom, when we feel like we are at the bottom of the pit when we can’t get any lower, that’s when we have to remember that the Zohar is saying he enters leaves and enters again.

This is Pesach where Hashem skipped over all the doorways, Chazal teaches that Hashem says open me a small opening like the eye of a needle and I will open it for you like a vast hall”

And, for me the most important thing to recognize is that when the winter ends, and spring comes, what comes out in spring attests to what was working on deeper levels back when everything seemed lifeless and hopeless in the heart of winter.

Je suis née un matin sur le bord d’une mer trop salée. S’y baigner, c’était s’y brûler. Mais elle était belle, cette mer, elle obscurcissait le jour et son souffle de feu racontait aux enfants la vie des profondeurs. Et puis j’ai dû quitter la mer. Je suis devenue sourde à la tristesse du monde. J’ai cru à la douceur du ciel, aux nuages légers, à la rosée des aubes. Jusqu’au jour où j’ai vu de grands oiseaux déchiqueter des corps. La mer alors en moi a commencé à sourdre. Et bientôt, je le sais, elle me submergera.

Enfant, j’étais bonne élève. Excellente même. Et cela n’avait rien d’extraordinaire. J’étais fille de médecin. J’avais même vaguement conscience de mon privilège, et ce privilège me gênait un peu. Je refusais souvent que mes parents m’aident à faire mes devoirs. Je me souviens même d’avoir parfois, non sans quelque véhémence, voire avec brutalité, rabroué mon père , lorsqu’il me proposait de jeter un coup d’œil sur mes brouillons. Je me faisais plaisir, bien sûr, je me donnais bonne conscience sans trop le savoir. J’ignorais que cela ne changeait rien à l’injustice, à l’inégalité de fond: c’était le contexte, l’atmosphère, toutes les suggestions indirectes, l’accès facile à la culture, aux livres, à l’art, la valorisation tacite de l’immatériel, qui constituaient mon véritable privilège, et je n’y pouvais rien. Au moins n’ai-je jamais fréquenté, ce n’était pas notre monde, la bourgeoisie d’argent, ni les milieux polis et péteux de nos belles élites culturelles. En plus j’étais – et je suis demeurée- une provinciale.

Mais ce n’est pas de cela que je voulais vous parler.

J’étais une bonne élève, excellente même, et ça ne changeait rien. D’ailleurs, je n’étais pas si bonne que ça. Mauvaise en travail manuel. J’ai appris à me servir un peu de mes mains. Et j’ai fini, au prix de gros efforts, étalés sur de longues années, à maîtriser (à peu près) mes mains, elles me servent à compter le vide. Comme disait Thomas Bernhard:

Les êtres qui ont vraiment été importants dans notre vie peuvent se compter sur les doigts d’une seule main, et, bien souvent, cette main se révolte contre la perversité que nous mettons à vouloir consacrer toute une main à compter ces êtres, là où, si nous sommes sincères, nous nous en tirerions probablement sans un seul doigt. “