Friday, August 31, 2007

A Holiday Conundrum

WE are fast approaching the Jewish High Holy Days, but I have often wondered what do you do when you go to the synagogue to pray and you can't pray? You mouth the words, you go through the motions, but there is no feeling behind what you do. Does it count? Do you contintinue? Should you? Maybe it is more ethical to sit down and think. There was a period in my life when I could not walk inside a synagogue, so I didn't. We teach words in all Sunday schools of all faiths, but do we teach people to pray? Can we teach this is really the question or is praying so close to faith that it is something one cannot teach? I don't have answers today- probably never, just questions, that's why I am dwelling in the desert. I am not ready to dwell among my people yet. I don't have enough answers. Can you help?
And when so much is going wron in the world, doesn't it make it even more difficult to have faith? Yesterday there was a story on the news about a family in Clovis, CA. who had lost two sons to this war. With all the thousands in the war, why take two from the same family? Isn't that more grief than they should have to bear? No one ever promised us that life would be fair or that justice would prevail on earth, but sometimes I find these occurrences to be such a stretch of faith or a kind of test tima and again. When will it end? I know it won't as long as I am walking around, and that's what bothers me. Commemts invited.

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