Two Profound Challenges – One Needs Medicine, Science and Reason; the Other Needs Compassionate Rebooting

Okay, forgive the pithy statement, but consider that… as we begin this new year, we continue to be confronted by two overwhelming challenges – one is COVID, the other is hatred. What I find so interesting is how they actually are intertwined. With the extreme political fracturing we are all experiencing at this time, whether or not one is vaccinated and masked have become political calling cards for too many. This simply makes no sense. With political loyalties dictating how one attends to one’s health or does not do so, we are endangering too many people in ways that are really quite reprehensible.

To be clear, I am NOT talking about those who have legitimate, well-researched concerns or health situations that would mitigate against their being able to safely be vaccinated. I myself had a one-hour appointment with a wonderful immunologist discussing my own health situation and only after that long evaluation and conversation and research, did I feel that it was safe for me to be vaccinated. I WOULD recommend that others do the same – and that our decisions are made for our own personal safety and health and those around us. It is difficult, there is not one simple answer and we are all in this together. Let us use our heads and avail ourselves of the medical and scientific resources that are meant to be used for our well-being.

Here is what I AM talking about. The fracturing of our world, our country, our communities is the result of too many years of seething hatred for each other building up just below the public surface (or not even), with a certain combination of factors allowing it to explode into our lives – through all types of media, choices made in elected officials, positions taken on issues that could potentially hurt the freedoms of so many of our citizens and send our country way too far back in time, and in the increasing drumbeat of anti-any group I do not like incidents in our world – fires, taking hostages, killings, distrust in our officials who are to protect us and so on.

I am presently reading Fareed Zakaria’s important book, Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, in which he sets out the historical precedents that led to our present situation. Politics, governments, people who do not understand the intense responsibility they have as officials, everyone making decisions for themselves, etc… so much has worked against us. There are no surprises here – he and many others just remind us about the truly toxic germ of HATE and the MISTRUST that evolves from its presence. So many have written in this tone, showing how the fracture we see did not begin in 2015 – but rather has its seeds firmly planted many years earlier. Further, the hatred we are all subject to, has always been there and now permission has clearly been granted to shout it from the rooftops.

As more than one person I know in my own religiously observant world has declared, NOW, I will tell you what I really think – about all the groups that are bums, that I hate, that are lazy, etc. etc. Really? Yes, we ALL have bad actors in our respective racial, ethnic, religious, national, and cultural groupings – we all have those who identify as we do to whom we would NEVER want to be compared. But why are we defaulting to those examples of the abuse of our human capacities? Let us instead focus on the great examples of humanity and caring and compassion with whom we have contact. In so doing, we continue to work to build bridges that connect, not walls that divide.

In response to the deep sadness and angst I feel about our world at this present time, I try to work in groups and with colleagues with whom we build those bridges, insuring acceptance for LGBTQ Jews in a world and country in which new threats to their integrity and well-being abound. I find solace in sharing texts I learn with people who look for the healing messages that encourage us to stand by our convictions and not succumb to the negativity all around us. And then … there are my beloved colleagues and brothers and sisters in faith that I am so honored, privileged and humbled to work with to help our hurting world, showing how faith – ALL of our faith traditions – do indeed share messages of love, acceptance and compassion. I invite you to watch the following program which I was honored to be part of on Martin Luther King Day, with my colleagues from my Multi-Faith work. We believe that by addressing the Myth-conceptions we may all have about each other and sharing what we love about our faith traditions and what we find challenging with each other, we can work together to help spread something other than hate – overcoming it with love and compassions.

https://youtu.be/Qkoqb5FZ3Gk

If you want more of this type of conversation, please go to www.interfaithlibrary.com for an ongoing learning experience and feel free to share, comment and ask questions in the many places in which conversation is invited. Let us DIALOGUE that is dia-logos, or work together through words of understanding and care to address the far more compelling disease that pervades our world today. With prayers and hopes for our brothers and sisters in our human community in Ukraine and throughout the world in which too much hate and selfish quest for power does not allow too many to see the other. Let us see each other, embrace and have empathy for each other – this is what I believe G-d has put us here to do.