Good afternoon, Chaverim/Chaverot,
This was NOT a good week and, I must admit, it has been very hard to find my way to gratitude. Instead, I have felt enraged, betrayed, bewildered, agitated, powerless, and depressed…anything but grateful. I REALLY needed help…and it arrived in the form of this important reminder from Mother Teresa…
Here is today’s Gratitude Thought in the Midst of a Pandemic:
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
Mother Theresa
And, we have no peace, not here, not across the oceans, not today and, sadly, maybe not for a long time to come… For we have indeed “forgotten that we belong to each other”; that what happens to you impacts me and vice versa; that, when my freedom is stripped away, yours will inevitably be next; that your pain is mine too.
As it happens, the commandment to “love thy neighbor as thyself” is at the center of this weeks’s Torah portion and it teaches us the very same lesson as we can learn from Mother Teresa. Our tradition teaches that we are obligated to care for one another. We are responsible for one another. We are connected, and “belong”, to each other.
Let us be grateful for our tradition and cling closely to the fundamental truth of our “belonging” as we fumble our way through the darkness together.
Love and Shabbat Shalom to all,
Marci
