Gil Come at me bro
I’m armed with two mirrors
One is simply glass
Offering you but a reflection
Of the face you make for this world
Captured in this moment and frame
Then I’ll hold up the other
A shining mirror of dark light
Showing you the truth
Of who you could really be
The city-state of Zion, in the year of our world 6000.
A space and a time.
The transformation of our space and our time.
A rendezvous, if you will.
A meeting at the end of history and the beginning of something bigger.
We can choose it at any moment. But there’s a terrible, wonderful purpose to human history.
Some things are inevitable.
I am the most right-wing person I know. On some issues.
I’m also the most left-wing person I know. On some issues.
There are even some issues – a select few – on which I maintain a moderate or centrist position.
The key isn’t just balance or thinking independently.
It’s thinking past the divisions that are imposed by mass culture.
A prominent Palestinian activist referred to “nihilistic Jihadi ideology” and described it as “the worst motivational ethos in history.”
I find that to be a bold claim. I’d like to know more about what he had in mind with that statement, but in the absence of further elaboration I’m left with its face value.
What do we make of it?
Controversial opinion:
None of the “tests” the Creator gave Abraham abinu were pass/fail. Including the last “test.”
The directive given to him was phrased ambiguously, communicating only generally that he was to elevate his son as something wholly dedicated to the Creator. The purpose of the ambiguity was to allow an event to unfold that was to greatly impact both Abraham abinu and his son. An event, like the previous formative events in which the Creator placed him, in which he was called upon to develop deeper empathy and in which his sense of moral clarity had to correspondingly deepen, while also having to learn to let go of the ideas to which he’d become attached.
Note that Abraham abinu first acts based on what he believes to be the Creator’s direct instruction to him – but then desists from acting based only on what an angel says to him at a later moment. Note further the beautiful midrash in Pirqé deRibbi Eli’ezer, which says that the angel was truly the neshama of Yitshaq abinu.
In this way, we read of a God who does not make false demands of us, or try to trick us, or set us up for failure – but of a God who puts us in situations that even if we do not respond perfectly, still trigger something within us and bring us to greater perfection.
There are very few true liberals or conservatives. There are mostly just anxious people on a poor information diet, trying to hold on to what they can in a world that is increasingly both complex and threatening.
Just like most people before them.
Conserve. Remember the ancestors. Keep the customs. Follow the laws. Be grateful for what has worked so well for the past millenia.
But
Progress. Remember the dream of a better world. Keep the faith in unlimited human potential. Follow the pillar of fire through the barren wilderness. Evolve new ways of working for the millenia to come.
Reminder to myself: Am I bound by the choices of any previous moment? The outcomes of my choices catch up with me and take their toll – but if I chose it yesterday, must I choose it again today? So I thought, said, and did it yesterday – who is demanding that I think, say, and do it again today? Who is doing the choosing? There is real power in the freedom of that choosing. “Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”
Very few people know what evil looks like.
They think evil comes with horns, tail, and pitchfork.
Relatively few people choose evil because it is evil.
Most people who choose evil, do so because they think evil is good.
They also don’t know what good looks like.
Lord have mercy.
My one problem
Is that
I am really two
An enormously cunning animal bound tight by space and time
A tiny reflection of the infinite mind unbound by any thing
I’m sorry
Did I say
My problem
What I meant was
My gift