Now my last post seems prophetic in a way, or at least invasive. I love the Hasidic community surrounding my little area in Brooklyn, where I sometimes just wander with my granddaughter, or by myself, purchasing bagels, buying some fabric, peeking out of the corner of my eye at the beautiful Hasidic men and their wives in disguise. I have written so much about them, and read so much about them...though I know I would not be accepted among them, I still like to be there where it feels like the victorian era, or the old world. But this week there was a terrible tragedy, a tragedy so peculiar that surely God had a hand in it. A little lamb of a boy was walking home from summer study school. It was his first time walking home alone and his parents had shown him the route and were waiting at the end of it. Yet he got lost. He turned when he shouldn't have turned, and who did he ask for help? He asked a murderer for directions. A murderer with the same first name as the little boy. How could that be? How could that possibly happen? Is every man a murderer? Are there so many on the street that this one little angelic boy would happen upon one on his first day alone, in the first moment alone? Or did some terrible force that is beyond our ken reach down and make that happen? I cannot bear the thought of a brutal God. I cannot stand the thought of human beings so brutalized themselves that they are able to destroy such goodness.
Just yesterday morning I had thought it was a good week. You know, I never saw a poster or realized what was going on. I came home tuesday evening from the park and there was a Chabad bus parked outside my building. I thought that was a good sign. I sang a little song about Elijah being around, and something in the air, and then I heard what was really going on, and it turned out to be a terrible sign. I want to believe in good. I want to believe in love, and life, and joy, and dance, and adoring God. Last night I broke my promise never to cry again, and I cried for the agony of the little boys parents and for the poor little boy.
It feels as though the end of the world has come and gone, and we are all lost, all.
Abigail, I read the book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People". It is by a rabbi (in my senior moment his name is escaping me). God does not do bad things--people do. The man who killed the little boy sounds mentally unstable. What bad happened to him? We will not see that side. It was a sad story--I read it in our paper. Children should not be murdered. God, I think--teaches us love, and forgiveness. I heard a wonderful story on Story Corp (?) or is it Core--on NPR. A woman had a son and one night when he was a teenager he was at a party. Another boy killed him at the party. The boy was underage--and did not get life in prison, but was in prison a number of years. When he was sentenced--the woman who lost her son began to cry--he reached out to her and asked forgiveness. He hugged her. She then befriended this young man. She has helped him to continue his education, he eventually went to college. She now lives next door to the man--he sees her as a mother. They share the joys of mother and son. It is a true lesson in forgiveness. That was the most beautiful message and it spoke of love--that I think is God.
ReplyDeleteI will be looking at your blog from time to time. Cousin Carrie in VA