Human beings are more apt toward focusing on the negative rather than the positive. You can hear ten comments on your work, nine favorable and one unfavorable, and you’ll likely focus on the single unfavorable comment. From noticing the negative to falling into despair and depression, the downward slide is often the path of lesser resistance. During challenging times, how can we set aside the inimical focus? We can spend more time celebrating life’s victories.

There are not many examples of celebration in the Torah.  Here’s one from this week’s reading at Chapter 15:18 – 19:

וַתַּ֥עַן לָהֶ֖ם מִרְיָ֑ם שִׁ֤ירוּ לַֽיהוָה֙ כִּֽי־גָאֹ֣ה גָּאָ֔ה ס֥וּס וְרֹכְב֖וֹ רָמָ֥ה בַיָּֽם׃

“And Miriam chanted for them: Sing to the LORD, for He has triumphed gloriously; Horse and driver He has hurled into the sea.”

After centuries of slavery, witnessing plagues, and a hurried escape from Egypt, the Red Sea is crossed and the people stop to notice.  In that moment of noticing there is singing and dancing:

וַתִּקַּח֩ מִרְיָ֨ם הַנְּבִיאָ֜ה אֲח֧וֹת אַהֲרֹ֛ן אֶת־הַתֹּ֖ף בְּיָדָ֑הּ וַתֵּצֶ֤אןָ כָֽל־הַנָּשִׁים֙ אַחֲרֶ֔יהָ בְּתֻפִּ֖ים וּבִמְחֹלֹֽת׃

“Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her in dance with timbrels.”

With celebration, the people will not merely survive; they have the potential to flourish. Flourishing begins with positive emotions. The text tells us how to shift our focus. The steps are easy.  The first is to stop and notice. Bother to look!  Second, take time to allow for transitions in your day. Perhaps it means just taking some deep breaths and noticing how they feel. Or try inviting a memory of something positive that has happened and basking in the afterglow of that moment. Third, give yourself permission to be filled with happiness or joy.  It might not happen that you feel happy in the midst of a stressful day, but allow for the potential of pleasure. Fourth, give expression to your pleasure. Even if it feels inauthentic, try a smile, or even better, sing, skip, jump or dance. It is good to practice the expressions of happy. Fifth, when you can, celebrate with others. Community enhances joy.

Positive psychology tells us that sometimes it is better to lead with our strengths even as we recognize both the challenges that confront us as well as our personal difficulties in coping and overcoming. This is not a Pollyanna approach but rather an attempt to exercise the pleasure muscles of our personality to give us the strength to persevere.

There is nothing trivial about these suggestions. If we are to have strength to flourish, and not merely endure, we have to develop our internal tools to express positive emotions and harness the energy of appreciation. With the barrage of negative news and the challenges of living life in a complex society, a bit of self-care will be critical to your health and well being.

R’ Evan J. Krame

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and this week’s Torah portion (Bo, or “Come!”) – named for a word seemingly gone wrong – have something in common. First the Torah, then the Theory:

“God said to Moses: Come to Pharaoh, for I freighted his heart and the heart of his court, so I can display My signs among them, and so you can recount to your children and your children’s children how I mocked Egypt and displayed My signs among them – so that you will know that I am God” (Ex. 10:1-2).

If God were sending Moses to Pharaoh, shouldn’t God have said, “Go to Pharaoh,” not “Come to Pharaoh”? Go sends; come summons. If God said “Come,” then God had to be with Pharaoh. How can a liberating God be with the slaver?

This call challenges the duality of coming and going, just like Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Coming and going are relative: only God is absolute. It follows that God, as the only absolute, must also be with Pharaoh: God must be with Pharaoh’s heart no less than with Moses’ own.

Take this in: holiness doesn’t divide, and even the slave master, somehow, has holiness within. This is God’s creation and creation’s God – and anything we perceive to the contrary isn’t fully real.

This truth can’t help but challenge us. Slavery is profoundly wrong and suffering hurts: what reasons could nature or nature’s God have for them? What kind of God worthy of love and respect could have any reasons for them at human expense? The God we most often crave is a God of goodness; what God would call us to “come” to slavery or suffering?

That timeless question is the point. We must seek holy potential in everyone (even a slave master) and everything (however much it hurts) – even as we try with all our might to right all that’s wrong in the world. This challenge calls us to come to it in all we are and all we do.

Only when Moses heeded this call could liberation truly begin. And as for Moses, so for us all. If there’s reason to anything in this topsy-turvy world so prone to suffering, it must be this call to come to the holy potential that summons us in all our comings and goings.

R’ David Evan Markus

 

I’m wondering if I need a new name for God. I’ve changed my relationship with God as my spiritual understanding matured. Torah teaches that the name by which we call God is indicative of our relationship with God.

A change of name occurs in the Torah on the eve of the plagues.  God “updates” God’s name in a revelation to Moses (at Exodus 6:4).

וָאֵרָ֗א אֶל־אַבְרָהָ֛ם אֶל־יִצְחָ֥ק וְאֶֽל

־יַעֲקֹ֖ב בְּאֵ֣ל שַׁדָּ֑י וּשְׁמִ֣י יְהוָ֔ה לֹ֥א נוֹדַ֖עְתִּי לָהֶֽם׃

“I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name יהוה.  (We use the word “adonai” to represent the Hebrew letters of God’s name.)”

From an etymological point of view, the old name, El Shaddai, may be translated as the almighty God. An almighty God is sufficient in every way. It is a noun. The new name, Adonai is a variation of the verb “to be” in the third person.  We can understand this updated version of God’s name as “he will be” or even “is was will be.”  Just as Moses at the burning bush asking God’s name and God replies, “I will be what I will be,” Adonai connotes a God of willfulness and potentiality.

God’s change of name in Torah reflects a change of relationship. The name Adonai is a God of great potential whose engagement is unpredictable. After a long silence, God reasserts God’s self when the enslaved Israelites are nearly lost souls in their miserable condition. God was not known and God reemerges. A new name is offered reflecting a new relationship.

As a child I believed in an El Shaddai God; all-powerful wizard of Oz, behind a curtain, man on a throne. Now I understand God as creator and source, energy and light. Why the shift? My relationship with El Shaddai was screwing up my theology with doubt and fear. I had a difficult time relating to the Almighty. I read the newspapers and asked how could an almighty God fail to rescue, protect, and bring to safety all of humankind, just as God did for the Israelites in Egypt? As an adult with knowledge of real world disasters, I was left wondering why an almighty God did not show up to prevent modern catastrophes, earthquakes and the Holocaust. My relationship with the almighty El Shaddai crumbled.

I am now in relationship with Adonai, and my Adonai is a work in progress. I can’t conjure a definitive understanding of God just as there is not just one name for God. God is present but God’s presence is not entirely known to me. God is source but not sufficient; perhaps God as architect but not construction crew captain. Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson describes God as process. For now, God is my hope.

Perhaps in future generations God will be known by yet another name representing a new relationship and a better understanding. Maybe that is “the messianic age,” which Maimonides said would be a time much like our own yet a time of peace, harmony and freedom. Until then, we take it upon our selves to be God’s agents in this world to rescue the enslaved, offer safety to the refugee, and feed the hungry. I pray for a better world and do the work of perfecting the world we have. And I look forward to a new name that reflects an evolved relationship with God as the source of peace in the world for everyone.

R’ Evan J. Krame

Jews have a long and challenging history of relating to new leadership. The first such story begins early in the book of Exodus (Shemot).

וַיָּ֥קָם מֶֽלֶךְ־חָדָ֖שׁ עַל־מִצְרָ֑יִם אֲשֶׁ֥ר לֹֽא־יָדַ֖ע אֶת־יוֹסֵֽף׃

A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.

The phrasing “did not know Joseph” was biblical foreshadowing, portending the slavery to come. We recall each year at Passover how badly that story turned out – with enslavement of hundreds of years.

With the inauguration of a new President, the well-practiced Jewish reaction is to ask, does he know us?

To our consolation, some say, yes, Donald Trump knows us! His daughter is Jewish and his son in law is Jewish. Trump has many Jewish business contacts and friends. Therefore, some will surmise, our safety is secured.

Others focus on another understanding.  Does the new President know of the sensitivities and insecurities of the Jewish community?  Many correlate alt-right anti-Semitism and the rising number of hate crimes to Donald Trump’s candidacy. They fear for the safety of the Jewish community.

Others joke about the need for a safe haven. I’ve heard lengthy conversations comparing the benefits of moving to countries like Canada, Australia and Costa Rica. These conversations reflect that Jews have a never-ending sense of insecurity. Our bags are ready to be packed and our passports have been renewed. We hold onto that fear even as the United States has proved to be our homeland and much more than a mere safe haven.

Before you begin packing up, consider other ways the President can know us. Can we be known to the new President as the people who advocate for the safety and security of all humanity? It is precisely because Jews were once slaves, and later exiles, and an oppressed people and sometimes refugees, that we must raise voices for justice and compassion for all people in peril.

We are the people who value moving from the narrowness of prejudice, oppression and violence to the expanse of affirming life, freedom and fairness for everyone. Make sure that the new President knows that about us. If the new leadership knows us at all, let the heirs of Joseph be known for our devotion to life. L’Chayim.

R’ Evan J. Krame

David Bowie’s 1972 classic touched a national nerve. Change is inevitable: we can only “turn and face the strain.” (Others quote Bowie’s refrain as “turn and face the strange,” to similar effect.)

Soon the 45th President of the United States will take office amidst social and political upheaval. Many either acclaim or fear this changing of the guard. Most see this moment as an inflection point: with an unknown future, the American nation turns to face the strain.

This week, our Torah portion (Vayechi) concludes the Book of Genesis: Jacob and Joseph die in Egypt, setting the stage for the Children of Israel to become slaves to a new Pharaoh “who knew not Joseph.” Spiritual historians see this moment as an inflection point: with an unknown future, the Israelite nation turns to face the strain.

For the Israelite journey, this moment recalls the divine promise that Abraham (then Abram) heard long before: his descendants would be enslaved for 400 years, then liberated to establish a new covenant with a people redeemed from bondage (Gen. 15:13). Abraham’s early descendants couldn’t imagine slavery, and their progeny couldn’t imagine an end to it even as their liberation began.

For the American journey, we have no prognosticating Bible on which all agree: ours is a nation of laws, rights, freedoms and aspirations. What we have is a Constitution, a social fabric and a people capable of strength, ingenuity and renewal. Like the Israelite journey, perhaps Americans can’t imagine what their future might be, what opportunities and suffering it may entail, and what ultimate good may emerge.

We can’t fully know the future, so we must “turn to face the strain” all the more. Ch- ch- ch- changes are inevitable: we can’t avoid them or pretend them away, so we must face them head-on, with all our fullness whether hope or despair, joy or anxiety. The page will turn and only hindsight will depict the journey; in hindsight, perhaps we’ll see this moment to recall promises long ago renewed in our own day.

Rabbi David Evan Markus

I’m annoyed on a daily basis.  Sometimes my annoyance is from petty concerns and sometimes it arises from righteousness and morality. We must distinguish annoyance that internally harms from annoyance that externally inspires. The challenge is to quell the first and harness the second.

I learned from Rabbi Irwin Kula that the Jewish urge to complain, our persistent dissatisfaction, can be “holy annoyance.” After all, we’re the people who champion tikkun olam (repairing the world) – preternaturally not fully satisfied with the status quo, always striving to improve and fix and heal. Maybe it’s holy annoyance that presses Jews to be scientists who cure disease, lawyers who advocate justice, builders and dreamers of all sorts who vision a more caring world in countless ways.

My friend, Laura Katz Cutler, continues to demonstrate on behalf of Darfur long after the world forgot that war-torn region and its suffering. Her annoyance is righteous and indefatigable, and utterly part of her Jewish identity. Her annoyance is for the sake of heaven.

Other annoyance plainly isn’t for heaven’s sake. It’s our impatient lane-changing while driving, our snippiness with bureaucracy, our short fuses when the financial demands of material affluence tire us. This kind of annoyance can make us surly or worse: we become unpleasant, grouchy and confrontational. We withhold kindness in favor of kvetching. Our gears grind toward less productivity, charity and joy. That kind of annoyance sometimes morphs into destructive anger.

But precisely because these two kinds of annoyance are related, we have the power to channel one into the other. We can redirect what’s unproductive and unhealthy into positive behaviors for the sake of heaven. My own tools include writing, praying, yoga and sleep. I’m not always successful: sometimes I need coaching from friends and colleagues – and a bit of relevant Torah often helps, too.

In this week’s Torah reading, Vayigash, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and sends them home to fetch their father, Jacob, with parting words:

וַיְשַׁלַּ֥ח אֶת־אֶחָ֖יו וַיֵּלֵ֑כוּ וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֲלֵהֶ֔ם אַֽל־תִּרְגְּז֖וּ בַּדָּֽרֶךְ׃

As he sent his brothers off on their way, he told them, “Do not be quarrelsome on the way.”

The juxtaposition of annoyance for the sake of heaven and the quarrelsome brothers brings this thought to mind. Annoyance can lead to advocacy and cause for improvement. Annoyance can also be a destructive force that, when it festers, rips at families, impedes progress, and even causes ill health.

As the secular New Year begins, let these words send you on the journey of 2017 with a nuanced understanding of Joseph’s salutation. While on your way, use annoyance for holy endeavors. When frustration, embarrassment or impatience arise within you, recognize them as an opportunity to cultivate spiritual growth to become more caring and understanding. A better you would be a New Year’s gift to the world.

R’ Evan Krame

Good people sometimes do not-so-good things, especially in family contexts. As an attorney practicing in the area of estates and trusts, frequently I hear family tales of deception, misappropriation and undue influence. Family dysfunction seems to be human nature, and Jewish tradition is no exception. The question is what we make of this very human reality.

Joseph, eleventh son of Jacob, is known in the Talmud as HaTzaddik (“the righteous one”) (Yoma 35b). That’s a terrific appellation for any character… but Joseph also causes extreme emotional harm to his family. Can Joseph be both righteous and such a source of pain?

In Parshat Miketz, Joseph is about 38 years old. Some 12 years earlier, his brothers threw him into a pit and sold him into slavery. Now Joseph rules Egypt as grand vizier, wearing Pharaoh’s secret decoder ring and royal robes. Joseph is married with two sons. After a rocky start in life, Joseph is on top of the pyramids. During a predicted famine, 10 of Joseph’s brothers travel from Canaan to buy food. They don’t recognize Joseph in Egyptian drag, but Joseph espies his brothers. He offers no warm welcome, instead remaining hidden, and falsely accuses them of being spies.  Joseph holds brother Simeon hostage and sends the rest home to retrieve youngest brother Benjamin, who is Joseph’s full sibling through Rebecca.

Joseph’s actions are callous and crude. Simeon is incarcerated for a crime he did not commit.  Their father Jacob is apoplectic at the thought of sending Benjamin to Egypt at the behest of an unknown tyrannical vizier. The brothers feel punished and panicked.

What is righteous about Joseph’s actions? Is this sad tale so different from the family dysfunction I too often see in my law office?

Maybe Torah’s point is that even the righteous act like jerks sometimes where family is concerned. Sometimes we let our righteous selves be overtaken by a need for power or revenge, because family is so core and primal. Maybe I’m wrong to read into the Joseph story some expected magnanimity when his brothers arrive or justification for Joseph’s behavior once Joseph foils my expectations. After all, I imagine that, had Joseph reconciled quickly with his brothers, Joseph would have sooner reunited with his father and set his world right again. Instead Joseph tortured his family. Maybe we shouldn’t expect better?

It’s a hard read, of course, but a realistic one: desire, ill feelings and determination can compel anyone to set righteousness aside. People have the capacity to be scurrilous, and sometimes family life brings out the worst in us rather than the best. Torah is at least honest.

My interest isn’t so much, in this moment, about why even the righteous can act badly. Rather, I’m curious why our standards of behavior seem lower when it comes to family – a question that requires us to get real. Joseph’s treated his family disgracefully. Acknowledging that he nearly lost his life because of his brothers, he still has an elderly father and younger brother pained by Joseph’s actions. Yet Joseph is still regarded as righteous by rabbis of later generations.

Families continue to mistreat each other, vying for love or wealth or power.  Such machinations will forever exist. The Joseph story permits us to understand that when it comes to families, even the most righteous person may stumble. We should aspire to offer loving kindness toward family, even those who have harmed us. But we should not expect that all people will transcend family dynamics that gave rise to ill feelings and negative reactions. Joseph acted poorly to his brothers; his brothers acted poorly toward him. Their father Jacob was odious to his family. The chain of generations stretches far back. Cain and Abel, anyone?

We cannot do better until we first see our propensity for what it is.  Humans seemed wired to treat family with less than angelic perfection. We can look for and sometimes find opportunities to heal wounds and reconcile hearts, and we need to recognize that even the righteous Joseph failed at this task.  If we call behaviors what they are – starting with our own – perhaps all of us then can strive, in the light of that truth, to treat our families better.

R’ Evan J. Krame.

If you’re a dreamer (we all are), read on: this post is about you.

“I have a dream.” With these words, dreamer Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. propelled the American nation along the arc that bends toward justice. With these same words, in this week’s Torah portion (Vayeishev), dreamer Joseph propelled Jewish history along the arc that would bend toward Egyptian exile, bondage, redemption, covenant and renewal.

Torah’s first recorded dream evoked neither justice nor journey. Joseph’s father, Jacob, dreamed a skyward ladder laden with angels (Gen. 28:12). Dreamer Jacob didn’t interpret his dream for meaning, justice or journey. Instead, he felt pure awe transcending himself. Only after waking a second time did Jacob use his rational mind to interpret his dream – at the price of his wondrous awe.

This move, from Jacob feeling a dream to Joseph thinking a dream, is what Rodger Kamenetz calls killing a dream. Kamenetz’s The History of Last Night’s Dream tracks this shift in parallel with the history of psychology – and along the way stifling spiritual experiences of heart and soul that dreams can open. Many wisdom traditions teach that thinking and rational mind are important, but that excess thinking can crowd out feeling and being – and thereby kill the dream.

So what’s a thinking dreamer to do?

First, we can become more aware when we interpret (explain) rather than experience or feel. The mind is a meaning-making machine: its narrative impulse is natural and is ignored or suppressed only at a cost. We can learn much about ourselves by looking at the stories our minds tell us about our dreams. We will learn most with awareness that our interpretive stories are just that – stories about experience, not experience itself. It’s the difference between what Jewish spirituality calls the Large Mind of awe transcending self (mochin d’gadlut) and the Small Mind of routine reason (mochin d’katnut).

Second, we can more fully feel our emotions around (and even in) our dreams. Meditators, artists and therapists know that the emotional world (olam ha-yetzirah) has a rich landscape that reason can’t fully know or control. Inhabiting this world in dream life takes practice, courage and sometimes expert guidance, but the payoff is what Kamenetz calls a “hidden path to the soul.”

The hidden path to your soul is as close as your next dream. Its arc might bend you toward justice, or awe and wonder, or an adventurous journey beyond your wildest imagination.

Rabbi David Evan Markus – This post is dedicated to my teacher, Rodger Kamenetz.

The human mind is a marvelous machine – always scanning and planning. Among the mind’s “programs” is worst-case thinking, wrestling to assert control over potential threats. Maybe you do this: I know I do. A delayed diagnosis could be an incurable disease! A work mistake could cost my job! An encounter could ruin a relationship! If we’re honest, we might sense that we live life on the run from feared consequences of worst-case thinking. We might know this consciously, or we might sense it deep within – just beyond routine awareness – in feeling unsettled, vulnerable, stressed or afraid.

Those feelings are byproducts of holy wrestle. Humans are wrestlers, and our wrestles are gateways to the soul. Jews are named for this. Before we were “Jews” – Yehudim, descendants of Judah, son of Jacob – we were “Israel,” descendants of Jacob renamed “Israel” because he “wrestled God” (Yisra-El). The story of Jacob’s wrestle is the story of our own.

Jacob came to his fateful night unsettled, vulnerable, stressed and afraid. On returning to Canaan from Haran, he feared that his brother Esau would be violent. Jacob tricked his father (Isaac) into giving him the birthright that was Esau’s; to escape Esau’s wrath, Jacob fled to relatives in Haran.  There Jacob earned further intrigue, manipulating relatives to acquire flocks and then sneaking away.  Now with two cousins for wives and twelve children, Jacob returned to Canaan wealthy but unsettled, vulnerable to others’ anger, stressed at the risk to himself and his family, and afraid for the future. He sent his family ahead, then spent the night alone.

Jacob’s night alone was his “dark night of the soul,” as theologian Eckerdt Tolle described it.  Perhaps you’ve known this anxiety that keeps you awake wrestling mind and heart. You consider your life – not in comfort, but in feeling vulnerable, stressed or afraid. The mind’s “marvelous machine” kicks in.  Worst-case thinking focuses on looming loss, real or imagined. Maybe you don’t sleep, or maybe you do sleep but restless from wrestling.

What is that wrestle?  Jacob sensed his wrestle as an angel. Jacob’s wrestle left him renamed (“Israel”) and limping – and also more whole. The risky encounter Jacob feared with Esau portended not war but peace: the estranged brothers fell on each other in tearful reunion.  Jacob’s worst-case thinking had been incorrect factually – but it opened his heart and brought the dark night that renewed his soul.

What is our wrestle? Is it mind and heart battling? Is it soul struggling to set psyche straight?  Is it deep-seated psychology and inner gears turning, or is it a message – Hebrew’s first definition of an “angel” (messenger) – trying to get our attention?

After the dark night, life can have new purpose or different meaning. Perspective can shift: what seemed important can become trivial, what seemed peripheral can become core, and fear can give way to gratitude.

The dark night of the soul “works” its magic because, in the wrestling hours, a kind of death occurs. Part of the self-protective ego dies, and with it protection from perspectives and priorities that had battled for attention. The wrestle sloughs off a layer of skin that, in tradition’s words, was a “foreskin over the heart.” Inner vision grows clearer; perspective on life becomes more honest.

That’s our wrestle, our namesake as “Israel,” and our human purpose: to slough off whatever keeps us from our best and most honest selves. Life’s challenges – and feelings of guilt, anger, remorse and shame – conceal the holiness of a struggle for our souls. We might run afraid from the dark night, and the wrestle can leave us limping. But Jacob shows that we can emerge stronger and more whole – with renewed purpose and a fuller sense of what it means to be alive.

R’ Evan J. Krame & R’ David Evan Markus

Consider this: the most ordinary stone can be rolled into a state of holiness. The most ordinary thing can become holy – but it can require our active effort.

In this week’s Torah reading (Vayetzei), Jacob journeyed from his home in Beer-Sheva and, on his first night, prepared to sleep by placing a stone beneath his head. Jacob dreamed of angels on a ladder and hears several promises from God including that he’d have innumerable descendants who be blessings for others. On waking, Jacob said that “God was in this place and I, I did not know.” Jacob took the stone under his head and set it upright to mark “God’s abode.” The ordinary pillow became a holy pillar.

Why did Jacob sleep on a stone? A rough rock as a pillow couldn’t have been too comfortable; even a marble sculpture as beautiful as Michelangelo’s David is cold and lifeless. Given his family background in shepherding, Jacob might have taken a more comfortable wool blanket or sheepskin. So why a stone?

Another stone mentioned later in the text that offers insight. When Jacob resumed his journey, he came onto a well covered by a large stone. His future wife Rachel appeared and Jacob rolled the stone off the well so her father’s flock could drink.

In mystical tradition, these two stones are examples of kelipot, coverings that can act as impediments to experiencing divinity. Kelipot are compared to shells that encase and inhibit the flow of holiness. There are many forms of kelipot, but all convey hidden potential to power spirituality when we use them appropriately.

The potential energy of stones depends on how we use them. Rocks can become a wall, an arch, a roadway, a hammer, a knife sharpener or a weapon (as in young David’s slingshot). God is called “Rock of Israel,” – an allusion to Jacob’s pillow-stone and the protection-promise of Jacob’s  dream.  In Vayetzei, stones represent the dichotomy of the physical and spiritual, and their potential to roll into unity.

Jacob’s pillow-stone was small enough to rest his head and yet its placement opened heaven’s gates. The larger stone that covered the well needed more exertion to roll away and access life-sustaining water.  Both served a purpose, but the first stone required little effort: Jacob was basically passive and just had to fall asleep. But for the story to continue, for Jacob to meet Rachel and launch the next generation of God’s relationship with the Jewish people, the move required more effort.

Jacob’s journey began with a dream on a pillow stone, but he didn’t begin to achieve his life’s purpose until he moved a heavy boulder. Dreams can inspire us, and then it takes our own active effort to roll away the blocks and reveal holiness in the world.

Louis Marmon