Open Letter

Well I finished reading Code Name Madeleine and it brought up a mixture of reactions: part admiration/inspiration and part envy, (not that I would ever necessarily make her choices in my own life), and part reservation. I discussed it with someone who was taking the position of explaining Noor's choice to sacrifice herself as being the most authentic expression of who she was and of everything she believed. Here is my response to that:  "In fact I do see what you say about Noor. My reservations doubtless have more to do with where I am on my path than with how far along she was on hers. In a sense she lived the perfect life, the life of a martyr who got to 'die young' and as a beautiful, pure human being, although she paid a terrible price in suffering to achieve that status. Since that boat has long since sailed for me, (😉), some part refuses to identify with her sacrifice; doubtless the same part which has given up on the idea of transcendence for my...

𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 '𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐲' 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐀𝐍𝐘 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐚𝐬𝐭, 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲?  𝐈𝐟 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐝, 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞:  𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐣𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐥𝐲 𝐞𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐝, 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐞𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐝?  𝐌𝐚𝐲𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 ℙ𝕀𝔼𝕋𝕐 𝕀𝕊 ℕ𝕆𝕋 𝕊𝔸ℕℂ𝕋𝕀𝕋𝕐.  𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐝𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐗𝐀𝐂𝐓 𝐎𝐏𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦 𝐭𝐨 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞?   𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐝𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐬, 𝐉𝐞𝐰𝐬, 𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐇𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐁𝐮𝐝𝐝𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 ℍ𝔸𝕋𝔼 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 ʟᴏᴠᴇ?!!? 𝐌𝐚𝐲?...

Last night I joined the official Facebook group for fans of Shtisel. To join you had to say who was your favorite character and why. I answered that my favorite character was Lippe Weiss, because he was always being told he wasn't good enough, or was being scolded for failure, yet in himself he embodies true spiritual values such as humility, generosity and patience. I  guess I identify with his struggles to find success as a family man and as a member of a devout community.  I love the series and I have always loved Yiddish literature and depictions of shtetl life. Yet I also realize that of the millions of non-religious people who love Shtisel, only a handful would actually be willing or able to trade places with any of the characters.  Pursuing this orthodoxy thought pattern last night, I watched two or three documentaries about haredi life, two were about the Satmar, one portrayed the Adass community of Australia and one told the story of power struggle in the city of...

Have you ever had this experience? I ran across an article featuring a man who is devoted to the memory of the Holocaust and travels all over the country in order to photograph survivors and bear witness to their experience. While I am struggling to transcend useless ways of thinking and knee-jerk assessments and reactions, my first assumption was still that this person must be humanistic. Upon viewing his website I was very disappointed to learn that he is a far right wing nationalist, at least to my way of thinking. What I do not understand is how extreme conservatives fail to see they are in direct contradiction to the teachings of the religions/spiritual paths they claim adherence to.  This individual refused, of course, to discuss the matter with me. Seeking dialogue is in fact the reason for this blog and why it is named Open Letter.  While a blog is a record of one person's thoughts, in reality I wish that I could dialogue with someone to work these ...

Like any other good, if late-born, Hippie, I was always drawn to Eastern spirituality...Hinduism mostly, though I looked at the Quran and familiarized myself with Buddhism. The problem was that emotional deprivation and psychological wounds almost always rendered my spiritual forays suspect:  was it God for God's own sake and spiritual liberation I was seeking, or just a way to lose myself; a way to hide in Something Greater Outside Of Me, or in other words, a Parent Substitute, that I really wanted?  Everything in the realm of truth and beauty is paradoxical. My understanding of paradox is:  two things appearing to be opposite, or contradictory, or in conflict, which are both true. These apparent contradictions are reconciled in a transcendant reality. (Thesis, antithesis, synthesis).  For example, the two, seemingly opposite, dominant aspects of God would be Mercy/Grace and Rigor/Judgement based on the moral law (Chesed and Gevurah).  To humans these appear to...

While catching up on news I spotted a story about the Baptist Bible teacher Beth Moore, who recently decided to end her lifelong affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention.  She had come under attack for speaking out against trump idolatry and Christian nationalism in her denomination.  I felt so grateful to her that I,  yes, well, I just had to write her a letter:  Dear Beth Moore,  ...I wanted to thank you for your courageous and Spirit-led stand against idolatry of a wicked man (you-know-who) running rampant in the Evangelical church.  It surely is an evil I never thought I would see in my lifetime [at least, not on this scale], perhaps it is a sign of the End [Times].  I'm not a conservative.  I first heard of you at a woman's Bible study while attending Hill Country Fellowship in Burnet, Texas (Pastor Rodney McGee).  Prior to that, my then-husband and I were commuting to Shoreline Christian Center in north Austin.  Pastor Rob ...

This morning I had an unusual dream. The Nazis were coming after us --myself and a group of people...We were hiding and engaged in survival practices...I miss the details of this one.  Unusual because, though I've dreamed very often of generic 'bad guys', even once or twice of terrorists, they have never been actual Nazis.  Of course I had a depressed childhood and a youth spent focused on atrocities and I went through several periods where I consumed Holocaust history and literature voraciously. I identified not so much with victims as with, as it turned out,  the children of Holocaust survivors, but that is another story.  Maybe it was also because I just discovered an author, Arthur Magida, who has written a book about a Sufi princess named Noor Inayat Kahn, daughter of a great Sufi teacher from India who introduced Sufism to the West.  Noor fought the Nazis as a British spy and paid with her life.  She made the ultimate sacrifice.  Rarely have I ex...