Dear LO,
A while back I wrote of Vincent van Gogh, a friend and an Emperor with an
eye to the 'pastpresentfuture', now;-) the 'futurepresentedpast' this --
"I love you a thousand times over and over. I love and need whatever
decisions you make in your lives. I need you to be happy, and I will
respect any decisions you make."
"When I chant these, there's this mix of real sadness, because I think how
many of these people probably, like me, didn't say some of these things
prior to that moment. Then the second thing I think is how -- I get 'goose
bumps', actually -- when you chant a text from the Torah, you have to get
it just right, because it's holy."
Speaking of reflections on 9/11 Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of the
National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York City,
lectures and teaches throughout the United States on Judaism and Jewish
life in America. I was lucky enough to have as my guardian angels a team
of detectives who were the arson explosion squad. These guys were my
protectors. They kept me in the site when everybody else was trying to
throw me out. They understood the project. I would catch up with them
almost every day that I was there, but sometimes I missed. One day I came
down there, it was actually evening time, and one of the first things they
said to me was, "Oh, Joel, you should have been here this afternoon, you
missed something."
They told me that they were in the pile, in the smoke, raking away, on
their hands and knees ... as they were every day. Suddenly in this cloud
of smoke, they were surrounded by a flight of monarch butterflies, maybe
50-100 of them, flitting around their heads. They said it was astonishing
to be in the smoke and to have these insects doing this dance. One of them
stood up and said, "Souls." They were wishing that I had been there to
capture that moment. But maybe it could never be captured as well as the
story.
Our deepest human experiences tell us more about reality than all the
books that have ever been written.
No wonder then dear Rick that you could not find that Emperor;-)
Love,
Andrew
Angel Meadow
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