starlight,
I have thought about your post quite a bit the past two days.
I came across these two passages in my readings, about how close dark is to light, how the Baal Shem Tov taught that within the all evil, there lives a shard of light, waiting cultivation, redemption and restoration:
"[Darkness] should not be denied nor forgotten, neither should [it] be worshipped. The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men's eyes."
"The Tombs of Atuan" Ursula LeGuin
~
On moral evaluation ...
"We go down into ourselves with a flashlight ... - not to excise it [evil]as some alien growth, but rather to discover the holy spark within it...
"We lose our temper because we want things to be better right away. We gaze with lustful eyes because we have forgotten how to love the ones we want to love. We hoard material possessions because we imagine they will help us live more fully. We turn a deaf ear, for we fear the pain of listening would kill us. We waste time, because we are not sure how to enter a living relationship. We even tolerate a society that murders, because we are convinced it is the best way to save life.
"At the bottom of such behavior is something that once was holy. And during times of communion and light our personal and collective perversions creep out of the cellar, begging to be healed, freed, and redeemed...
"We receive whatever evils we have intended and done back into ourselves as our own deliberate creations. We *cherish* them as long-banished children finally taken home again. And thereby transform them and ourselves. When we say the vidui, the confession, we don't hit ourselves; he hold ourselves."
"God Was in this Place and I, i Did Not Know"
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner
Blessings and light for your wonderful share, for the gentleness in me it released and a special thanks to your husband
peace, light, love
Beau
