1. The Gentlest Man on Earth
When I was very young I knew a man in Israel named Adam ben-Hanokh. When I knew him, he was already middle- aged, or so I thought. (I was perhaps 16 at the time.) If I heard the story right, he had been born in Austria before the Nazis took over, and after the start of the Murders his parents had saved his life by lodging him in a monastery. Those good and holy men preserved his life, and more: he survived the war, intact in spirit, and with their kind help, intact in his Judaism. After the war he came to Israel.
Adam was the gentlest person I have ever met. I have to think that even if those monks were careful in not trying to convert him to Christianity, they had imparted to him some of their generosity of spirit and much of their contemplative calm. In war and peace, terror and ease, in hunger and comfort, he was always the same quiet, sweet teacher to all of us who were young.
After I left that place, I heard that he had--just once in his life--raised his voice impatiently at a student, and the student had cried inconsolably for hours.
2. Suffering
The American economy these days is said to be failing. I think the economic situation is worse than the authorities admit. I see every day people who have worked all their lives, confident in the American promise, suddenly find they cannot pay their bills or support their families in anything like even the modest comfort to which they grew accustomed.
Among the bills they don't pay are those presented by their lawyers--and who can blame them? It makes no economic sense when times are hard to pay your lawyer: most likely he or she has already delivered the services you need; you have reaped the benefit, and now the children need shoes and you cannot fill your fuel tank. Should a decent person pay his lawyer and leave his children in want?
Having so many clients unable to pay is new for me too: it has not been this bad in more than twenty years. I found myself frustrated and angry at the many clients for whom I had stayed up late and awakened early, and who had benefitted, sometimes mightily, from my work, my research, my intellect, my resourcefulness--my putting their needs ahead of my own and my family's. And they were not paying.
My firm's payables must be paid, and the lawyers and staff must pay their own mortgages and rent, and feed and clothe our children and ourselves. So we went to the telephones. I found myself coming close to losing it and shouting at one client. who owed us thousands of dollars and had not paid anything in two years. I was harsh, much harsher than usual, and when she started crying I could not help myself and I said 'if you had sent me even five dollars we would not be having this conversation.' And I hung up.
I never expected to see her again. Two days ago she came into my office with a check for the total balance, and explained that she had received a small inheritance, and she apologised to me.
3. Gratitude
Last week, while the Dalai Lama visited, a cousin of mine by marriage who manages to be a Buddhist clergyman while not forgetting that he is Jewish, came along to hear the Dalai Lama, and to teach. We had dinner a week ago and we chatted about gratitude--and that much of life's suffering can be...not overcome, but in some way, absorbed by a person's reminding himself of all that is good in his life. The exercise consists of always saying, and thinking, 'I am blessed,' and thinking of the ways in which one is blessed. It is said that this exercise leads one more readily to compassion for others as well.
Our small county in the Heartland maintains a park where dogs can run free. It is hundreds of acres in size, and has the remnants of an old orchard, and meadows and hills and tall trees. And it is marked by six or eight stumps of trees on which poetry and selections of good prose are posted and replaced. We call it 'poetry on a stick.'
The dog and I walked the paths and found an apple tree we had not seen in dozens of walks, just outside the abandoned orchard. And strikingly, even though we are at least six weeks from apple harvest in this chill corner of Exile, the apple I picked was without a blemish, and ripe and sweet in my mouth. In my tradition there is a prayer of thanksgiving said when good things happen: a holiday arrives, for one, and when you eat the first ripe fruit of its kind. You thank the Creator for 'giving us life, and sustaining us, and bringing us to this season.'
I have never said it with such delight and so many tears as today.
