{"id":58098,"date":"2019-06-23T13:48:11","date_gmt":"2019-06-23T10:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=58098"},"modified":"2023-01-16T23:09:47","modified_gmt":"2023-01-16T21:09:47","slug":"we-walk-together-in-light-and-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/we-walk-together-in-light-and-darkness\/","title":{"rendered":"We Walk Together In Light And Darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cNow the spirit of the LORD had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD began to terrify him\u201d (16:14).<\/span><\/p>\n

What to do, indeed, when God\u2019s light, God\u2019s very Presence departs from you? It is an invisible phenomenon, but a discrete and frightening occurrence that I know. Not that God has ever chosen me the way God chose King Saul, of course, but, in my own, small way, I feel God in \u00a0my life \u2014 and then, suddenly, not. <\/span><\/p>\n

It is reflected in the puzzlement in the doctor\u2019s gentle questioning: did something precipitate this drop in mood? \u201cNo,\u201d I say, anticipating his disbelief. \u201cI was fine, I was a bit manic for a few days, and then. . . well, then I dropped off the edge of the cliff and I am still falling.\u201d He may not understand, but he tries to help.<\/span><\/p>\n

I walk into shul on Shabbat, and I have no skin between me and my fellow congregants. \u00a0They are kind, they are loving, they see too much, and I cower in the bathroom before reading the Torah, and leave early to avoid the conversations at Kiddush.<\/span><\/p>\n

Saul had David and his music. I have a therapist whose kind words and open heart surround me, like a hammock beneath me while the evil spirit, the bad energy, if you will, breathes through me. Sometimes words can help; sometimes words fail. <\/span><\/p>\n

What do you do, what <\/span>should<\/span><\/i> you do, when God seems to desert you? Did the Holy One of Blessing completely leave King Saul, or simply try to show him to a new role in the world? \u00a0Sometimes we mistake an ending for <\/span>the<\/span><\/i> ending. But, then, for Saul, it was the beginning of the end. He couldn\u2019t find a way to be, without being king. He mistook his pain in the moment for unending pain. And no one, it seemed, could tell him differently.<\/span><\/p>\n

This, too, I understand. The depression comes and goes. I know this intellectually. But when I am in the middle of the fall, when I reach out for God and find only emptiness, a vast void where once was Presence, intellectual knowledge means little. It come and goes? It leaves only to return again. Where to put my faith: in the recurrence or the remission? In God\u2019s presence, or absence? <\/span><\/p>\n

The music worked for Saul while it worked. And then, his pain would return. But so would David and his lyre.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, too, do I, do all of us, put our faith in one another. We walk together in light and darkness, our voices and music creating a path in the night, reminding us of God\u2019s grace, of God\u2019s return. \u00a0Sometimes we are Saul, with an evil spirit squeezing our hearts so hard we can barely breath. Sometimes we are David, providing a message of hope, that a spirit from God, might yet return. <\/span><\/p>\n

And sometimes, we are blessed to be the lyre itself, string of connection between the worlds, between our souls and the Soul of the World.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":58099,"id":58099,"title":"isam16-clouds","filename":"isam16-clouds.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/isam16-clouds.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/we-walk-together-in-light-and-darkness\/isam16-clouds\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"isam16-clouds","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":58098,"date":"2019-06-23 10:47:51","modified":"2019-06-23 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