The Culture of Life; A Garden Entrusted to You
Darkness and death have put on a ghastly show in every theatre and on every stage around the world this year. And though many of us have joined together as beacons of peace, charity, and love, others have sulked onto the streets to argue, spread ill will, and divide. We neither have to endure nor play into the hands of haters. We can overcome evil by not tolerating it in any of its forms. It is up to us to stand as a Culture of Life which will not be crushed by politics, prejudice, and fear.
Gloom is always overpowered by light.
Years ago, my family would gather at Allerton Park near Monticello, Illinois for our annual April Birthday celebration for Grandpa Jones. The elegant mansion and manicured gardens were once the property of railroad magnate and philanthropist, Robert Allerton.
Allerton Park’s The Sun Singer
All of us children were allowed to explore and run around willy-nilly, discovering sculptures, artwork and colorful flowers. But one of the most stunning displays at Allerton was never in bloom until the middle of May.
So, sometime later in Spring my dear Aunt Beulah would take us to the park so we could walk on top of a wall overlooking thousands of perennial peonies. The gardens were just beyond the Three Graces, a Greek statue of goddesses signifying beauty. cheerfulness, and elegance bringing joy to the world.
I never left without being in awe. When we returned to Beulah's one time, I went back to Grandpa's room to ask him about the peonies and statue. He said that the Peony Garden was his favorite, as it had been for Mr. Allerton. And then he went on to say; "I think that life is wonderful and full of wonder. Spring starts with bluebells and ends with peonies. Winter never wins." Grandpa planted seeds for my faith in a Culture of Life.
The concept of a Culture of Life confirms to me that everything eventually gives way to Wonderful. I frequently write about it. My lectures and therapy sessions with clients were filled with it. This is a touchstone of my faith. I can embrace that life is wonderful in part because I have experienced struggle and trouble.
Two members of my family have lost their lives to violence. I have learned that life is difficult even when we are not faced with a pandemic! There is no use in denying the fact. We win and lose, slip, fall, and triumph. People get sick and die. Money comes and goes. This is the way it is. My personal struggles and troubles could make me bitter or imprison me in resentment. But I’ve been down that path and refuse to travel it again. So, with all of the tragedy, how can I continue to affirm that life is wonderful?
“The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine.
”In return for the odor of my jasmine,
I’d like all the odor of your roses.”
”I have no roses; all the flowers
in my garden are dead.”
”Well then, I’ll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.”
the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:
”What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?””
Scott Peck wrote about these difficulty of life postulating that they can become our transcendent truth when we truly see it as so. Our difficulties can destroy us or bring forth a stunning garden of compassionate delight.
I believe that we can become A Culture of Life blessed by the attributes of Three Graces only when we accept everything and everybody as being one in God’s eternal loving embrace.
Then, this Culture of Life will overcome tragedy, trials, and difficulties. The fight to comprehend why bad things happen…and the unfairness of it all…will disappear. There will no longer be a need to blame other people, places, or situations for our problems. We will take personal and communal responsibility. Indeed, we will embrace the now-familiar phrase, "We are in this together."
A Journey at Night; The Road That Takes Us Home
They roused him up in the dark of night. It was time to go. They even watched him get dressed. Humiliated, he pulled on his jeans and yanked a tee shirt over his head. A shiver went up his spine. Or maybe it was a shudder. All he knew for sure was this is what had filled him with dread for so many days since the hearing. Fighting back tears, he looked up at the woman and the police officer. There was no way he was going to cry in front of them. And no getting out of this situation. He would be leaving home for good and going somewhere to be with people he didn't know. Through the darkness and rain they went down unfamiliar streets until the Plymouth pulled up in front of a big house. There were people under a dim light standing on the porch.
Stories like this one have been shared with me over the years by dozens of boys and girls who 'fell into the system' for one reason or another.
Foster placements, detention centers, or other institutions become makeshift homes where wounded and broken kids are hidden away and sometimes forgotten. But I tell this compilation tale, not to shed light on our often woefully deficient children's services programs. I'll save that for another day. I tell it to you because this is your story. It's the story of each of us. It pauses at some point with a dim light and door opening. There is no clue to process or outcome because that’s how life's spiritual journey goes. It is always searching for home.
I've written extensively about the spiritual journey, faith, love, and transformation. These seem to be the things most important to explore. And during these seasons of light, we are reminded that in order to really appreciate the light we must have known darkness. We are taken far away on bumpy roads and put into boats. Our wanderings take us to troubled waters with no land in sight. Hard times and good times alike make us begin to ache for home.
With no compass and only the North Star to guide us we begin to stumble back in the general direction as best we can. Our hunger to be welcomed is only equaled by the fear that we will be rejected. For the kept secrets have been revealed and we will be fully known. Then we reach the hilltop overlooking those familiar fields.
The sun is just rising and you have been discovered. Both father and mother run out to greet you. The fatted calf is being prepared in your honor. The one who was lost has been found. They whisper in your ear the words you have so desperately needed to hear. You are my beloved child. Welcome home. Welcome home. Welcome home.
America the Angry: A Way Forward with Rabbi Moshe Scheiner
In this first part of our talk with Rabbi Scheiner he explores fear and the spiritual reality of God-With-Us, our human oneness, and the danger of anger.
Part One of Contributing Editor Bob Jones’ conversation with Rabbi Moshe Scheiner of the Palm Beach Synagogue in Florida.
It's everywhere you look; rampant school shootings, a massacre at a synagogue, leaders spouting angry rhetoric and our own heated exchanges on social media.
America, land of the free and home of the brave, appears to be in the grip of fear and anger. The question is why and what can we do about it.
As I searched the internet for some perspective on this epidemic of fear, I happened upon a video of Rabbi Moshe Scheiner entitled Anger: Fear Announced.
Rabbi Moshe Scheiner Story
Twenty five years ago, Rabbi Scheiner and his wife Rebbetzin Dinie Scheiner founded Palm Beach Synagogue (PBS) where their mission has been one of outreach and inclusiveness. The Palm Beach Daily News recently quoted him as he affirmed that PBS is a place where “Everyone feels welcome. No one is judged for lack of knowledge or observance.”
Rabbi Moshe E. Scheiner was born and raised in Brooklyn. He holds a Masters degree of Talmudic studies and Jewish philosophy from the Rabbinical College of America. He completed a two-year internship at the Rabbinical College of Australia and New Zealand and returned to New York to receive his rabbinic ordination at the United Lubavitcher Yeshiva.
He has lectured to communities in Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Singapore, Colombia and, other communities throughout South America and the United States. In 1994 he became the founding Rabbi of the Palm Beach Synagogue. He also founded the Ethel & Eugene Joffe Maimonides Leadership Institute for post Bar and Bat Mitzvah students. Rabbi Scheiner resides in Palm Beach with his Rebbetzin, Dinie, and their six children.
After a brief introductory conversation with Rabbi Scheiner, I was convinced his was the voice of reason for which I was searching.
Offered here in four parts are segments from our conversation on fear and anger.
Rabbi Scheiner's words and stories frame our nation's bitter and sometimes violent crisis, while offering a spiritual tonic for our troubled times.
Part 1: In this first part of our conversation, Rabbi Scheiner explores fear and the spiritual reality of God-With-Us.
Bob Jones: Do you feel like anger and fear seem to be on the rise in your community and in the world?
Rabbi Scheiner: I do. I feel that as society drifts further away from spirituality and further towards materialism, we lose our spiritual equilibrium. And fear, as someone once told me, is F-E-A-R, which stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. The world sometimes seems like a frightening place and when we stand as individual souls, disconnected from one another and we don't have our spiritual connection to each other, then our egos begin clashing with other people's egos and immediately we lose.
If one has faith and true spiritual connection with others then there's nothing to fear. As King David said in Psalm 23, "I fear no evil for you are with me." So, I think we need to grow closer together to each other and closer together to God and that replaces fear with faith and disconnection and (God forbid) hatred or anger towards others with love and connection to one another.
Rabbi Moshe Scheiner
Bob Jones: As you were speaking I was thinking of the AA people (Alcoholics Anonymous) people who would say, "Ego is Edging God Out."
Rabbi Scheiner: Absolutely. And one of the key teachings of Judaism is that our body is maybe different and separates from one another, but our souls are really all one because they come from one divine God. And in order for God to be our father in heaven we have to be his family here on earth. When we focus on our souls more than our physical beings and then realize that that’s the essence or our identity, we realize there's nothing to separates us or distinguishes us from our fellow man.
We all have the same – we all know we have the same - color of blood. We all have the same feelings and joys and sorrows and pains. And when we realize our spirits are really made up of the same fabric cut from the same cloth, then we focus on our oneness rather than our separateness. And I think that our society sometimes pulls us away from that message. But the more we connect to that message and that idea, the more we are going to love and embrace others rather than fear them and reject them.
Bob Jones: Yeah, that reminds of your response to the horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, when you said “The response to evil is increased goodness, the response to hatred is increased love, and the response to death is to help save the lives of others.
Rabbi Scheiner: Absolutely.
Bob Jones: When we respond to fear with anger what happens to us and to the other?
Rabbi Scheiner: So we become much smaller.
King Solomon said it best when he said in the book of Proverbs ‘a little bit of light expels a great deal of darkness’. The answer to darkness in the world is to just create light and then the darkness is driven out by itself.
When we respond with malice and with anger we become a captive prisoner of our own anger, and it enslaves us to become subservient to a power which is very destructive, and harmful to our own physical, emotional and psychological and spiritual well-being.
As I pointed out on the video the word "DANGER" is one letter, just add a letter D to anger and you have DANGER. Because in our tradition it is said that the one trait that you shouldn't take is the middle path, but you should go to an extreme which is anger. A person should never get angry. The only time it says you can get angry is when you need to discipline a child and you need to act like you're angry. But a person should never get angry because anger is just desperate and multiplies the problem, increases the problem, and doesn't solve anything.
Someone gave me the analogy that it's like your car in Park and you floor the gas pedal it makes a lot of noise, but it doesn't move anywhere. A person who's angry is like a brain that is in park. He can't move and he's just making a lot of noise, but it's not going to get him anywhere because he's locked – in a lock position. Emotionally he’s locked. He can't hear. He can't receive. He can't grow. You can't evolve in that state.
Rabbis take it so far in the Talmud that they say that anger is equivalent to idolatry. And you may say how could you equate anger with idolatry? I mean, idolatry is denying God's existence. And the answer is because if you truly believe everything in this world comes from God and everything that happens…every circumstance…is ordained from above, then you have no one to fear and no circumstance with fear because whatever circumstance you're in, God put you in that circumstance.
And so it's like, I use the analogy of a mother going on a journey and that she's going from one country to the next and getting in and out of taxis, and going in to airports, and boarding planes and de-boarding. And in every leg of the journey if you ask the mother where are you? She’ll say, "Well, I'm in this country, I'm traveling to this city, I’m going to this town, I'm going on to this country." But if the mother is carrying an infant baby and you ask the baby throughout the journey where are you? The baby says, "I'm in the same place I always was they always was…in my mother's loving arms."
If you go the journey of life feeling like you're controlling your destiny (and yes of course God gives us free will) but ultimately there's a Higher Power that decides the direction of our lives. And when you know it's coming from a loving father in heaven then you could accept it and say, ‘Well, this is a test. God's putting me through a challenge because it's for my benefit’. You know sometimes a parent gives a child a sweet medicine, sometimes it's a bitter medicine. But the parent gives the medicine for the benefit of the child.
For every circumstance in life is there is a reason…and God put it there…and we have to find the reason God gave us that challenge and turn the darkness into light, or the stumbling stone into a stepping stone.
Bob Jones: It reminds me to the when you talked about the golden path, that middle way. That's so accurate and so true.
Rabbi Scheiner: Thank you.