Tag Archives: prayer

Letters to God – Part 19: Fasting

God, I HATE fasting.

There, I said it. The whole idea of not eating and drinking (specially drinking) for a day to elevate my body and become closer to an angel. Sorry, but my stomach does not seem to understand that he is now part of an angel that doesn’t eat. And my head feels likewise. And why in the middle of the summer? Why not put the day of fasting in the middle of winter? We would all really appreciate it.

So a couple of days before the fast I start getting very itchy. Just the thought of the fast… but let’s change the subject, OK? Let’s talk about Yom Kippur – the day of atonement.

Leaving outside the fasting (did I say I hate fasting?), it is overall a very interesting day. A day that concludes a ten-day period (for some 40+) where we ask for forgiveness for all of the things that we did wrong last year (since everything we do is good by definition, we surely did nothing bad last year. But we still can do thing that are wrong). And we ask you for forgiveness. And to please write us and sign us in the books of life, good deeds, livelihood, and many other books. You must have a very big library :-).

This year Yom Kippur was very difficult for me. I have been thinking about my life for the past half a year and more. And I still can’t make any sense of how things work. And I see that small children, that never did anything wrong, are not written in the book of health and life, but in the book of suffering and death. You tell us that this day “you shall afflict your souls”. My soul is already miserable God. I think that my actions have so much influence on my son’s pain. That if only I was a “better” person, then he would get well… But these are just dumb thoughts (and also somewhat megalomaniac). You are more complicated than that. It’s not as simple as cause and effect. Good people sometimes suffer a lot. Bad people sometimes live very good lives. Mysterious are your ways.

When I was at school, our Rabbi would tell us that if we pray, very strongly, with all of our hear, You will answer our prayers. But he never told us we would probably not understand the answer.

I still don’t.

Letters to God – Part 16: Routine

source: http://sonriseinsights.blogspot.co.il/2013/12/its-routine.html

Hi God. It’s been a while… the daily routing catches up, I get sucked into it, and forget the important things (like writing to you 🙂 ).

Every morning I wake up (and thank you!). After the usual morning chores (“why aren’t you dressed already??? It’s almost 7:30!!!”), I take my son and wife to the train so they can go to rehabilitation. Then I put each kid in their school/day-camp, and take the train to work. While my wife accompanies my son to all of his treatments, I sit in front of a computer and do all kinds of things that are very important for my company, but probably won’t change the world a lot. I have lunch with my co-workers, drink coffee, chat, and basically enjoy life. At the end of the day we all meet back at home, have a nice dinner together, shower the kids and put them to bed, talk a bit about the day, and Wham! It’s 11pm already and we must go to sleep because tomorrow is going to be another long day of routine.

Sounds boring but it is fabulous. Routine, routine, routine.

What an interesting topic. I love routine. It makes my life easier. Not having to think what I am going to do today, how I will cope with the unknowns that will come by surprise. Yes, there are surprises and I do have to think a lot. But nothing like what was going in my head a couple of months ago – asking myself what is the meaning of life? This is a hard question! But I don’t have time for it now. I have a Routine ™, so please don’t bother me with those abstract and complex things.

The problem is that I start to hide in the routine. There are still many things that must be done, doctors that must be visited, appointments that must be set. But I go to work, sit down in front of the computer, and forget everything. And suddenly at 3pm I remember that I had to do very important things, but it’s too late because all of the secretaries/assistants are already gone. So another day goes by.

And another important thing has changed with routine: prayer. It is so much easier to pray when you need it! It comes naturally, with no effort. Just open my mouth and prayer comes out. Now prayer becomes part of the routine, something that I do with everything else. And it loses its meaning, its depth. It feels like a lie. It is very, VERY hard to pray each day with the same energy as I did when in need. I simply can’t.

Funny, even when things are good we find that we can complaint about almost everything in life.

G-d, routine is good. I love it. And I love praying to you each day, even if it’s not as strong as in times of need. Please accept these prayers and don’t ask us for more.

We’ve had enough.