Highmoon's Ponderings

I get these little emails from Chabad.org every day called the Daily Dose, a short insightful/inspirational dose of Torah thinking. Today’s Daily Dose just hit me:

True Naivety

What is it that the child has to teach?

The child naively believes that everything should be fair
and everyone should be honest,
that only good should prevail,
that everybody should have what they want
and there should be no pain or sadness.

The child believes the world should be perfect and is outraged to discover it is not.

And the child is right.

That’s me right there. Yes, I have a cynical side that often gets the better of me, but deep down that’s me. That’s why I sometimes get taken advantage of, why I became cynical in the first place, because I believe those things and got burned more often than not when I discovered it was not like that. But I continue to believe it all.

I guess you could say deep down I am as Lawful Good as they come. And you’d be right.

You want to know me? Remember the above.

It is with a heavy heart that I let everyone know that my Mother, Wanda I. Robles Ortiz, passed away today Saturday, August 8th, 2009, her birthday, at 3:00 AM in the morning. She was 56 years old.

I cannot find enough words to celebrate my Mother. Suffice to say she was the noblest person I’ve ever known and I learned so much from her. Indeed, all I am is thanks to her. I will miss her, but I know she is in a far better place.

My thanks to everyone who throughout this year has sent good wishes and prayers our way. I know they had an effect, and I know they will continue to do so.

My brother Michael and his wife Diana (pictured above at the Arecibo Radio Observatory, Arecibo, PR) are getting married today in Ocala, Florida!

Yes, I wrote that right. Michael and Diana have actually been married for a few years now by civil law. Both were in the military at the time, and they decided to get married one day, during lunchtime, after which Diana returned to her job, and Michael reported to be shipped to Iraq the next day for the first of a couple of tours of duties. They have been through some tough times, especially for a young couple, and they have pulled through with flying colors. Today is their religious wedding, and while I cannot be there in body, I am there in soul, wishing them, with all my love, all the blessings in the world for a happy, strong and enduring marriage.

Michael and Diana, Yvette and I love you both and send you congratulations!

I’ve never asked anything like this, but there’s no reason not to right now.

I would like to ask any and everyone who reads this to say Psalm 20 for the healing of Wanda Iris Robles Ortiz, whether you are Jewish or Christian, or simply acknowledge the Psalms as holy writings. I even have a link to the psalm online for you to make it easy! For non-JudeoChristians, then I please ask you say a brief prayer for the healing of my mother, phrased however it is proper in your tradition. For my non-believer friends, a simple heartfelt wish for my mother’s healing will be as welcomed.

I don’t need to know you did it, so don’t tell me. But let me thank you beforehand.

That card makes me laugh. 

Almost done getting ready for Passover. Today is a very hectic day which began early as we did morning prayers then took a moment to recite Birkat Hachmah, the blessing of the sun, a blessing recited only once every 28 years, at the time when the sun is in the position in the sky as it was created on the fourth day of Creation. The rabbi said some words after the blessing that stuck with me (I paraphrase):

G-d gave us science to understand this world He gave us, but science is limited by our senses, by what we can perceive with them. We also have something that transcends the senses, we have emunah (faith). We see that nature works as it should, like clockwork, and this is because G-d makes it so every day; so it is with our lives, which we lead day by day, but which are also overseen by G-d to work as they should.

He said it far more eloquently, but that is the gist of it. Today we blessed G-d for continuing the work of Creation, and tonight we will bless Him for having liberated us from Egypt. Just as Creation is made every day at every moment, so will tonight we be liberated as well from our personal and collective Mitzrayim (the Hebrew word for Egypt, which also means limitation).

I must run now to burn the chametz and get ready.

To all the Jews out there, especially to all my Jewish friends, whatever your level of observance, I wish to you a happy and kosher Passover (Pesach Kosher v’Sameach). Remember to try to eat some matzah tonight or tomorrow, and if you can attend a seder as well (find one near you at any Chabad).

See you on the other side of the Sea of Reeds!

To be honest, I normally do not like cleaning for Passover. It’s not that I mind the cleaning, it’s that for Passover it becomes very fastidious, since you have to make sure there is no chametz in the house, to the best of your ability. It’s that last part that we sometimes took too far, and ended up over-cleaning; it’s very nice to have a very clean house at the end, but during the already stressful time before Pesach, it’s just killer.

This year I’ve consciously striven to do better, to do the cleaning in a good mood. It’s been a bit of a struggle at times, I admit, but that fact that I’ve had my mind occupied with other, much more worrisome thoughts (like Mom being in the hospital) has made the cleaning and preparation almost therapeutic.

Today I had to brave the supermarket and the kosher market to get the last of our provisions for the holiday. This is an excercise in patience, let me tell you, and I am blessed that G-d granted me a good amount of it, but there are times when… Still, I went to the market, and I endured the craziness, but by the time I returned to my car with the groceries I was already close to going full-on grumpy. That’s when it dawned on me, like the proverbial ton of bricks.

In Exodus 12:6 (scroll down), it says, “And you shall keep it for inspection until the fourteenth day of this month, and the entire congregation of the community of Israel shall slaughter it in the afternoon.” This is in relation to the paschal lamb G-d commanded the Israelites to prepare for a sacrifice. But the Israelites had been ordered to take the lamb for themselves on the 10th, so why keep it around for 4 days? Rashi explains that G-d gave them these four days so that the Israelites would occupy themselves with the mitzvah (commandment) of examining the lamb for ritual perfection. In the merit of them occupying themselves this way, G-d could bring the redemption.

We don’t have the paschal sacrifice today, but I suddenly realized that this process of cleaning and buying and preparing for Pesach, with all the headaches and frustrations and so on, these are our equivalent of those 4 days, these our mitzvot through which we merit our redemption. Even if we aren’t up to par on our good deeds (and we all lack one way or another), this process gives us what we need to enter Passover with our heads held high and ready to be redeemed from Egypt.

It doesn’t make the cleaning go any faster, but it does give it meaning beyond having a clean house.