Particularly poignant was the image of God staying up all night, crying out three times a night about how miserable it was that he destroyed his own palace. Reading this on the day we hear נחמו נחמו עמי in the haftarah, a week after Tisha B'Av offered me a powerful way to think about remorse. I find it easy to be angry at God - and to encourage others to do the same - when catastrophes plague our lives. Yet perhaps God reacts to God's own actions with the same amount of reflection as we do to our mistakes: facing many sleepless nights in "timeout," thinking about what we've done.
This was never the God I envisioned...
Rami, this is really beautiful. If we are comfortable being angry at God and encouraging others to do so- then why shouldn't that emotion (righteous anger) also come from the Divine? If we ascribe love, peace, patience, grace etc. to God's emanation, then we must also be willing to see our hatred, struggle, impatience, and disregard as Divine in origin as well.
ReplyDelete