consider what part means:
"part of a team"
"part of a whole"
"part of myself"
finished kaddish. man. it's been a long time since i've cried three times while reading any book. wow-oh-wow. and there'd be all these places where i'd just catch my breath.
things i'm thinking about:
"The rabbis famously say those who cannot pray for the sake of praying should pray anyway, because it will bring them to praying for praying's sake. I never liked this statement. It is behaviorism or it is opportunism, since it finds a religious utility for faithlessness, and thereby steals the thunder from belief and unbelief. Anyway, it is obvious that many people who pray do not pray for prayer's sake, and do not bring to prayer the philosophical propositions on which it must be premised. Are there times, then, when philosophy does not matter? Of course. The world would not work if it waited on philosophical understanding. Tt is a good thing that people act in the absence of reasons, or of clear reasons. Thoughtlessness is a lubricant of life. And yet it will not do to say that we are muddling through and that is the end of it. It is always possible to muddle through less complacently. Even though one may act without reasons, one should search for reasons. Even though one may pray without meaning it, one should mean it."
I have lots of thoughts about this, but there is dried fruit to pack.
Another couple of paragraphs, that relates in some way to what I was thinking about this morning:
"It is not precisely the case, as the religious existentialists and the philosophers of a tragic life and the theologians in the age of totalitarianism have all asserted, I mean the Jewish ones, that the Jewish tradition is "immanent," and enamored of finitude, and unburdened by the belief in the perfectibility of man. No religious system or moral system can do without the belief in the perfectibility of man. The moralists in the Jewish tradition, too, insist on compliance with the highest standards of conduct, and they base those standards on metaphysical absolutes, and they scold harshly. What else are they to do? Values do not wink. Finitude is not an exemption. Quite the contrary: only finite beings may be ethical beings.
Forgiveness, not forgiveness.
The task is to distinguish between human perfectibility and human perfection, and to recognize that perfectibility is a greater condition than perfection. The animals are perfect, insofar as they are always what they must be; but we are never what we must be. We are the ones from whom moer may always be demanded."
--
Today in the Austin airport, I had just finished Kaddish and was a little sad, in the way that airports often bring me near tears, and once again Christian music popped into my head, to enable me to be sad but to be sad towards something but this time it was not the old songs, but the Catholic liturgy that I am just begining to know. I was both pleased and sad. Some things end, others begin.
Maybe I'm trying to answer Mag's question. Why am I going to church if not for her?
