Concealment
Because God is concealed from us, we forget that He is the Source of everything and that He is involved in every aspect of our lives and in every aspect in creation, ongoing.
The Seven Pillars of Faith, Part 3
In the Seven Pillars of Faith, the Third Pillar of Faith: Concealment
The more we invest in the things that can be taken from us, the more miserable we can become. That is my favorite piece of advice Rabbi Brody has ever given. This advice has a great deal to do with the third pillar of faith: The Concealment. How so? Because God is concealed from us, we forget that He is the Source of everything and that He is involved in every aspect of our lives and in every aspect in creation, ongoing. A result of our confusion is that we start to think that we create things, that we earn things. We lose the real Source and claim that nature did something, or that the Palestinians did something, or that our neighbor did something. We forget that behind it all is the great Conductor and instead we focus on the material world that is all around us. It is something that all people struggle with, the obsession with the material.
When I first started exploring Judaism is a serious way on a personal spiritual level, we were, like many young couples, struggling financially. My husband was freelance writing and we never knew when the checks would come. We were trying hard to pay for IVF to have our son, something not covered by insurance where we lived. I knew very little about Torah, but this concept Rabbi Brody shared with me stuck in my head and I came back to it over and over. Invest primarily in what no one can take from you and you will be fine, we would repeat. My husband and I both started to realize that this gave us tremendous relief, even in the face of IVF. Even in the face of my sister battling cancer. Even in the face of frightening health problems with which my elderly father was coping. All of this compounded could be relieved by going back to the simple concept that we need to think about how we are spending our precious time and energy. When we start to feel down, we need to examine how we are investing, and then of course, we need to make adjustments. The power of this advice was such that we did not need to know much at all about Torah, about Judaism, for it to have an amazing effect.
I don’t proselytize. I don’t try to convince my friends to do anything when it comes to religion. But there have been times when in the course of conversation about someone’s struggle, or a sad situation, I’ll express aloud “invest in things no one can take from you”. I’m not dispensing advice. It’s my stand by. I say it aloud to remind myself that the person struggling could be me one day, God forbid, and I need to remember this spiritual law. And inevitably the person with whom I am talking repeats what I said and thinks about it. He or she can be a totally secular person, but that will always get them going. That’s what I love about the concept. It is a gateway into a way of looking at the world that gets us focused on the right things. It’s a riddle in a sense. What are the things that can never be taken from us? That’s the list that the person begins to make in their head.
Obviously any of our material possessions, God forbid, can be taken in a flash. Example: in 1973 a tornado ripped through our neighborhood in Northern VA. It hopped over streets in our subdivision, darkening the sky, making a terrible ruckus. The sky looked green through the basement windows as my mother and sister and I stood clutching our cat Pepper, waiting for it to stop. It was over very quickly. We went outside and got in the giant green station wagon and drove around the neighborhood to assess the damage to our subdivision. The tornado had hopped from street to street zipping through and ravaging one and leaving another a few yards away relatively unscathed. I recall one house on Sideburn Road had the front ripped right off. I found it fascinating because I loved doll houses and there was a giant, real-life one just two streets away. In the span of a few minutes someone’s home was obliterated, not something they were worrying about when they were drinking their coffee that morning most certainly. It’s easy for any adult who has the responsibility of paying the bills – mortgage, tuition, credit cards, grocery bills, utilities, insurance of all sorts – we know how quickly it can, God forbid again- be gone, despite how hard we toil for it and work to protect it. So what is the next category of ‘things’ that can be taken from us? What about people? People aren’t objects of course, I’m not saying that. But we all know, for example, that friendships come and go. This has become especially real to us as adults with a growing family. Sometimes we become friends with another family only to realize that we are much more different than we thought, different enough to make close friendship not really possible. In the same vein, most parents realize pretty quickly that the friendships their children establish can be quite fleeting too. It hurt me the first couple of times this happened with our son. But again, if we come back to the mantra, we should invest primarily in what can not be taken away from us, it hurts a lot less, and it reminds us that we need to teach our son what this means. It opens up a huge door. We need for our son to know that things come and go, that friends come and go, but that his relationship with his Father in Heaven is untouchable. It can only be interfered with if he gives someone permission to mess with it. Once again, we become reoriented towards the Source of everything. This also helps to get over any hurt feelings. The failure of a friendship hurts a lot less when you don’t feel so alone because you are focused on your relationship with the Creator, the most gratifying friendship of all. It also makes you so happy, you are actually more appealing as a person, thus attracting more friends. It’s awesome!
If friendships come and go, and we can face this, the next step is perhaps to think about how people even closer to us can go too, God forbid. Not that I want to sit around dwelling on such thoughts, or that I want you to either, but when these thoughts are at the forefront of my mind due to illness or a loss a friend suffers, or a death in the family, it reminds me that the way through the awful fear and pain of such tragedy is once again to connect with the Source of all life. I say to myself, “You can get through this. Turn to God and you will get through this. Keep him with you and you won’t be so afraid, you won’t be alone.” It ameliorates the negative emotions and I have found frees me up to be more of a support to other people who are feeling the pain. There have been some really serious losses in our midst and like never before, we have been able to not become crushed. And most importantly, we have been able to actually support people who honestly I think I would have avoided in the past because the pain of even looking at the situation would have ripped me up too much.
What is behind the material with which we are surrounded is so great that the world begins to lose its power over us when we focus on the Source. It is such a strong and comforting feeling to know that when we look behind the surface, and focus on What created the surface and What sustains the surface, the surface melts away. What we are left with is more gratifying than any object, and even more than any relationship we can have on earth. It gives us courage, opens the door to compassion, and heals wounds.
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