On sharing light
Hello friends. Since I last wrote my we were devastated by the sudden loss of my father-in-law. The last nine months have been really rough for myself and my family as we’ve suffered deaths, illnesses, injuries, and sudden calamities. And there’s no way around grief and sadness, of course. The only way is straight through.
If you’ve never read Harold Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People, I highly recommend it. It was written following the premature death of Rabbi Kushner’s son, and it’s given millions of people solace during difficult times.
(Being a rabbi, Kushner writes about grief from a theistic perspective, so for the sake of this newsletter I’m going to speak from the position that God exists. The insights, however, apply regardless of faith or lack thereof.)
When someone loses a loved one, it’s customary, for some reason, for people to try to comfort the bereaved by saying that their loved one is in a better place, or that their death was part of God’s plan, or that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle. Kushner rejects all of these claims with a proposition that makes a lot of sense to me.
God is typically assumed to be all-knowing (omniscience), all-loving (omnibenevolence), and all-powerful (omnipotence). However if God is all-loving, how can we explain the millions of horrible things that befall people everyday? And who could worship a God who they believe causes children to suffer and die of cancer? I read a memoir once by a woman who took care of her mother as she was slowly succumbing to dementia, and I remember that at one point someone tried to make her feel better by saying that God had given her mother dementia for reasons that were yet to be revealed. I’ll never forget what she said in response: “Then God is a monster.”
But, Kushner says, if we reject the notion that God is all-powerful, then we remove the possibility that God causes some to suffer unduly. If you’ve ever seen Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, they pose the question, “Could God microwave a burrito so hot that even God couldn’t eat it?” It’s a silly question, but it gets to the heart of something important: There are limits to God’s power.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former Head Rabbi of the UK, was asked, Where was God during the Holocaust? And he responded by essentially asking, Where was man?
“When God speaks and human beings refuse to listen, even God is helpless in that situation.”
I actually find this comforting. I was never persuaded by the notion of Jesus taking the wheel. It makes more sense to me that it’s up to us to do the right thing, to take care of one another, to make good choices, to step up, to share and comfort and love and nurture without waiting for some celestial superman to drop in and save the day. Rejecting God’s omnipotence not only obviates the notion that God chooses some to suffer, but it also makes our actions that much more important and sacred. It means that sometimes bad things happen and it’s terrible. Why do they happen? Who knows? Would knowing the answer make them any less terrible? Not likely. When terrible things happen to us we must lean on our loved ones for support, and when they happen to someone else we must be their support. But everything we do matters.
I recently had the pleasure of contributing to Texas Highways Magazine, a fabulous monthly that highlights the best of my home state and encourages readers to find adventure and surprise in their own backyards.
My essay, “On Little Islands” is about celebrating Hanukkah in my hometown of Corpus Christi, and speaks about the symbolism of the candles driving out the darkness.
“We’re all connected. And our purpose on Earth is to illuminate the world with goodness and kindness.” He lights the shamash, or worker candle, which he uses to light the other candles in the menorah. As the flame catches and one fire becomes two, three, four, five, I think about how kindness can spread in the same way. One good deed inspires another and another, rekindling faith and love among friends, neighbors, family members, and strangers in a lonely and fractured world where it’s easy to ignore one another and sink into the isolation of a screen.
A few announcements:
The Bullet Swallower was selected by the Texas Institute of Letters as an honor-winner in the Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Book of Fiction. It was selected by a panel of Texan writers and all people I very much admire, so I’m especially proud of this honor.
My book is available in Italian! And Spanish!
And finally, starting Thursday, I’m teaching an 8-week writing workshop that focuses on revisions. We only have a couple of spots left so sign up soon.
Be well out there!
xoxo,
Elizabeth