What is the price of the future?

[sovay]

My niece stared intently at the flames of the yahrzeit candles and said, "The memory might stay in the candle. No matter how it melts, there comes water."

My mother said, after my niece offered me a piece of her chocolate chip cookie that it was too late for me to eat, "When in doubt, teach kindness."

I don't know how to feel about Yom Kippur in a year when the levers of the world seem all in the hands of people who will not submit to judgment, who will never acknowledge the harm they do, much less consent to the much harder work of halting it, healing instead of merely apologizing, repairing the world they broke. It does not absolve me of the need to shore my own fragments and try not to cut anyone else further on them. It does not remove my responsibility for as much of the wounded world as I can reach. It feels right now like very little. It doesn't matter. If all you can do is tell the story, you tell the story, the forest and the fire and the prayer. The memory in the candle. Teach kindness.

Comments

[asakiyume]

Your niece's words are lovely.

It feels right now like very little. It doesn't matter. --This is true. It really doesn't matter: your kindness and your strength--weak as you may feel you are--are goods-in-themselves in a way that explodes scales.

We tell the story, the forest and the fire and the prayer. The memory in the candle. Teach kindness.

Thank you.

[umadoshi]

I am so glad to know you.

[wpadmirer]

Teaching kindness is incredibly important. I wish more people did it.

[vass]

Thank you for sharing this. I will keep thinking about it.

[kore]

Beautifully said.

[rosefox]

I wish you could have been at my rabbi's fiery sermon tonight about how we will not stop shouting OPEN THE GATES until every incarcerated person is free and every refugee and asylum-seeker and immigrant has a new home. It was balm for the lefty soul.

[niqaeli]

It feels right now like very little. It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter, maybe. But the wounded you reach, now, will know something better, now. Tell the story and teach kindness; the water will come, either way. <3

I am grateful to know you.

[sovay]

Your niece's words are lovely.

I told her the memory does stay.

--This is true. It really doesn't matter: your kindness and your strength--weak as you may feel you are--are goods-in-themselves in a way that explodes scales.

I don't think that anything I can do is equivalent to the institutional power of a country. (It would be handy. Also frightening.) But I understand that is not the only measure. And it is not myself alone in the balance.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

[sovay]

I am so glad to know you.

Thank you. I am glad that's true.

[sovay]

Teaching kindness is incredibly important. I wish more people did it.

I don't know any other way people are supposed to learn it.

[sovay]

Beautifully said.

Thank you.

[sovay]

Thank you for sharing this. I will keep thinking about it.

Thank you.

[sovay]

I wish you could have been at my rabbi's fiery sermon tonight about how we will not stop shouting OPEN THE GATES until every incarcerated person is free and every refugee and asylum-seeker and immigrant has a new home.

I like that interpretation. You have a good rabbi.

[sovay]

Tell the story and teach kindness; the water will come, either way.

I may have been unclear: I meant that it does not matter how little it feels like to me, it is still worth doing what I can. But I like what you say here.

I am grateful to know you.

That's an honor. Thank you.

[wpadmirer]

Exactly.

[cmcmck]

As a fellow lefty, I like this balm! :o)

[cynthia1960]

Thank you for this.

[sovay]

Thank you for this.

You're welcome. I am glad it's useful.