It Takes a Village

There's a point in every service where the rabbi invites each person to take a moment for their private meditation and prayer. I've been struggling with a staffing issue at work that I can't go into detail about since I made the decision to keep this blog open and public. Suffice it to say, I have been very angry, irritated, and stressed for many months now. The issue is finally being resolved, but came to a head this week and led me to feeling very upset and breaking down in tears several times. During this moment of private prayer last night, it somehow came over me to pray for this person. I don't mean in a condescending "help them be a better person" way. It was a prayer for this person's happiness, asking that they can find peace and fulfillment, and that they have supports in their lives that they can lean on and be strengthened by. I was able to let go of my anger and frustration and annoyance and genuinely hope for this person's overall emotional and psychological well-being, and a smooth road throughout life.

Afterward, I felt so calm. I felt tension drain out of me that has been there for months. And I developed a clearer perspective on the whole situation. It reminded me of something my sister quoted from her priest one time: "Prayer isn't for God; God already knows your wants and needs. Prayer is for you, and for strengthening your relationship with God." That made a big impact on me since I've always taken issue with the idea that praying for someone makes them better, which implies that someone NOT being prayed for would just be neglected by God. I could never embrace that, which made it difficult for me to pray because I wasn't sure of the point. This one shift in the idea of what prayer means helped me more than I can say. And yesterday I got to really feel its impact. Praying for this person isn't going to change their attitude or life course; that's up to the individual. But it changed ME, which will affect how I interact with this person which WILL make a difference both to me and that person.

The strangest part was that the sermon for last night was about all the laws set forth in the Torah, and Reform Jews' struggle with many of them. Rabbi said that Reforms have a lot of ambivalence so they don't necessarily keep kosher, etc. Rabbi said that this doesn't mean we should just pick and choose what we follow from the Torah because we DO believe that these laws came from God, but more that we should understand and take from them the overall implications for how we are supposed to live our lives, the biggest one being to be empathetic and compassionate. She quoted verses about how if you see that your neighbor's ass has fallen, you must still help him pick the ass up, or if his ass wanders to your yard, you need to return it. "Love your neighbor" was the overall message. So we may disregard laws about how to treat your slaves because it's not relevant within the context of our lives, but we can take and live by the inherent message in how we should treat other people. It was a very odd feeling because I felt like it spoke to what I had prayed about just moments before.

How does this relate to babymaking for the purposes of this blog? Nicole and I had a great conversation afterward about all this, and it made me excited to be able to have this type of discussion with my kids. I was reminded last night about how I can strive to be not only the kind of person I want to be, but the kind that I tend to think I am even as I act differently. It makes me more aware of myself.

Is religion required to be able to improve yourself and teach your children how to lead moral lives? I really don't believe so. But for me, I benefit from the guidance it offers, the regular teachings and conversation, the constant self-challenging and self-reflection. I think of myself as a compassionate and empathetic person; my entire career is based on this self-concept. And I am in many ways, I'm not discounting that. But here was a way in which I wasn't living that way and may not otherwise have realized it. Even if I was an atheist, I think I would want to belong to one of those secular humanist organizations that still arrange gatherings and activities around how to be a better person and live more like the person you want to be. And I certainly would want to raise my children in this kind of environment. I try to be a basically good person, and I would hope that modeling that for my children would help them be good people too. But I still fall short of where I want to be, and I need help raising them. I do. I'm not an expert, in anything, and I want the support of positive, like-minded people and an organization I believe in. I want their help to better myself and therefore be a better role model for my children, and I want their help explaining and teaching. I can humble myself to admit that we as parents are not going to be enough to raise our children the way we want to, to provide them with a well-rounded experience as people.

I'm so glad we've found our family's home.