Seen and Unseen: The Rabbi

“The Big Homie,”

He scrawls in his blunt handwriting with a black expo marker. Then he looks at me, with that puckish glint in his eyes, and stabs a period next to it. “The Big Homie,” he says.  Simple as that. This is my Rabbi’s answer to this question: What do you call your higher power? 

It’s worth mentioning that I am not Jewish and I didn’t meet the Rabbi in a synagogue. By some wonder of wonders, I met the Rabbi in a mental health in-patient facility for those who used to be called mentally disturbed, hysterical, or clinically insane. I am none of those things, but I have been deeply depressed. So much so that I voluntarily locked myself up, day and night, for three months, placing myself  in the care of mental health professionals and a cohort of about 20 of the sick and suffering. On my sixth or seventh day, one of my compatriots asked me if I had met the Rabbi. I said, “No. Who’s the Rabbi?” After which they looked at me with a knowing smile and said, “ I think you’ll like him.” They were right; 

I like this guy, the son of a man whose name during WWII became simply “19941”. One day he wears a pink polo with matching converse and khakis. The next day it's a robin’s blue Hawaiian tee and navy blue converse covered in powder blue flowers with, you guessed it, khakis. By the third group session I still have no idea what is going to come out of his mouth, or mine for that matter. This is the Rabbi; I’d heard but I had not understood. I am so confused in the most pleasant way; a sixty-four year old man who, by his own account, has a hard part to look like, “a twenty-nine year old Florida fuck boy” leads our small group therapy sessions, and they are something to behold. We talk about Lox on bagels and Naboxolone’s origins, state trooper haircuts and the effects of yerba mate versus heroine. All our “chs” have a loogie in front of them and taste of babaganoush. He reminds us that our brains are broken and that trauma is perception, and that we, too, can reach a state of contentment and peace in recovery.

“So, how do we know God’s will for us?” This is one of many questions posed to us by our junkie convict turned ordained theologian. The questions he poses are the questions of lawyers, engineers, mothers, bike repair guys, writers on the run: These are my types of questions, the kind that I find funny and tinged with sadness and yearning, as existential as they are ridiculous. The conversations flow, from talk of Trappist monks to Silence of the Lambs, and it is a joy to tumble along, our guide and captain deftly steering us back and forth, forward and back. His answer to his own question: “Nor do I know myself.” It becomes a  prayer echoing in the room, not as in an insulated chamber but as in a stalactite filled cavern of the heart. Yes, I like this Rabbi and his gospel. These are my tribe and we are each other’s people. This rehab is a temple, and I am baptized in our stories. For the first time in a long time, it begins to feel as though it is well with my soul. 

I like the Rabbi, but I have a love for him, too, and not because he brought in cake from the best bakery on my last day in-patient, and then refused to let me live it down from that day till my last day in outpatient. Maybe love is a strong word. Then again, maybe not. Maybe we need to acknowledge love in its more common and temporal forms, the way it shows up in specific times and places that fade like the grass. I love the Rabbi, not because he once told me that I reminded him of Jack Karowack and Charles Bukowski’s imaginary bastard, but because he mirrors me back to myself, and I’m desperately seeking the contours of my own face. He is unflinching in his reflection of us and it, for better or worse, forces us to contend with who we are and who we believe ourselves to be. Through reflection I know he serves  a higher purpose in my life than to shock, confuse, or encourage me. His attitudes and affects slowly raised up Lazarus, a part of my heart that was buried beneath memory and experience, grieved, mourned, and longing for the light. What greater gift can one give, after all,  than the raising of the dead? 

Yes, indeed, I like the Rabbi, very very much.

Maybe it's our parents; if we are lucky, we trust their love, a boon in stormy weather. Some of us believe in systems and rhythms; we trust that if we work hard we can play hard, that the police or the government officials we elect will serve the communities they represent. Maybe we simply believe in what we see; that the seasons will change, that time will heal our wounds. Then there are the rare few who have true belief in themselves. I believe that every time the wind blows across my skin there is something greater present with me. I have evidence that a power greater than myself is present and active in my life, and maybe the wind is the simple reminder that I need. What evidence, say you? If you're asking you probably doubt like me, and my evidence probably won’t sway you. If you're asking, you probably believe like me, so you don’t need my evidence at all. The evidence isn’t the point though, now is it? No, the question is. 

The question is that of faith. 

As a noun, faith is defined as a duty to a person or a place and, secondarily, as belief or trust in god or the unseen. Almost from birth, we develop complex world views with foundations laid by those around us. We don’t try to believe as our parents do, we just receive our inheritance, sometimes grateful and sometimes not. Faith as a transitive verb, in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is defined  “to believe or trust”. We must relate this action to a noun; we have to have faith in something, faith that acts on something..  Many of us, when we are little more than sitting in our first chairs, inherit  our predecessor’s faith. We see them sit in a chair and it holds their weight, so we too trust the chair to hold our own. This faith in action evolves over years of making and unmaking, forming and reforming, ascending the mountain on the legs of our own experiences in, and observations of, the world. How few reflect on this process or its outcome and, when raised subconsciously believing time is best used producing rather than existing, feel the privilege or permission to do so? Few, indeed.

Still, for some, the rumbling and cacophony of a soul under construction is tangible and will not be ignored. For some, the inability to pause and assess their own beliefs, and the consequences thereof, simply becomes too much. The pressure of parallel internal needs and external demands creates a vice-like grip on the heart and mind. This squeezing suffocates, prevents the taking in of air, closes in with darkness all around. For some people, this suffocating darkness incites a terrified scrambling for an exit door. Any way out, since they cannot get through. This is depression, and I am “some people.” For us, those who live in these painfilled margins, it is a metaphysical malady. Such sickness requires an ontological remedy. 

Put simply, our pain and our cure are a matter of faith. 

To me, the  subject is taboo. It's sticky like melted gum on the sidewalk before it dries; if you step on it, it's bound to stick to your shoe. The harder you work to scrap it off, the dirtier the gum and the utensil become, and  gummed your shoe will still be. Even if you manage to get the bulk off, some will remain forever marking the striations and crevices of your sole. Like melted gum on a hot summer day, I try to avoid the subject of faith.. But life is far more often like walking at the corner of Olney and Broad St. then through a field of wildflowers. The minute you look up to avoid being hit by a car passing too quickly and too close, is the minute you run into the one thing that might annoy you more than being flattened by a Chevy Impala. Even the most academically enlightened or staunchly atheistic confess to moments of lapsed judgement in which they hurled a punitive word at the air, just in case. In moments of weakness, pain, sorrow, or even moments of deep gratitude, some prayers just can’t be helped. And if you do avoid them, it takes great intention, a force of will that won’t allow you to believe, which is belief itself. Sometimes,  I count them as the lucky ones,  who, so busy looking up and around them to take in the world and all its natural, pleasurable, and hideous wonders, don’t even notice they’ve stepped in it until they come home to themselves. That’s if they ever do.

Approximately 3/4ths of the world's population ascribes to a religion, and among them I’d guess only 3/4ths of them have any particularly religious thoughts on the day to day. Of those that do, I’d bet my big toe - which plays a huge role in my ability to balance - an  even smaller percentage make day-to-day decisions with any particular religious dogma weighing too heavily on their minds. Yet, no matter your religious affiliation or lack thereof,  faith is simultaneously embedded in us all. It is deeply ritualistic, plays a role in our sexual lives, familial lives, political lives, even economic and cultural lives. In fact, faith is at the heart of it all, with what we believe being central to who we are and how we operate. Faith is what one might call, in clinical terms, the ultimate dialectic, with sides appearing in opposition and yet each with total validity. This is not inherently good or bad, but it is unavoidable. We believe whether we know it or not, whether we strive to or we don’t. Belief is what makes us human. Our beliefs, at their core, are the stories we tell ourselves. Our stories are the difference between consciousness and the incomprehensible rest. To be human is to believe, to have faith, to  tell stories. To tell stories is to make things real, and making things real is an act of faith.

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These are the things I think  I know about the Rabbi: 

His real name is Mark, and I will never call him a doctor, though he holds two doctorate degrees. To me, he is and will always be the clergyman of my soul in the darkest time I’ve yet known. I would say he is meticulous about two things at minimum: his hygiene (see the ice white perfectly filed nails, clearly manicured and his beard trimmed and lined to perfection), and his use of his extensive vocabulary. He talks fast and smart. The Rabbi has two modes of communication: scientific with a side of philosophical waxing, and “in laymen’s terms”, acute to an almost painful degree. He reads the dictionary, or at least actually looks up words he doesn’t know. The first hint I had that I would like him is when he used the word adroit in a sentence correctly. It means, “clever or skillful in using the hands or mind.” The Rabbi is adroit with his words at the least.  Though known for using too many words for the average person to keep up with, he uses them artfully and intentionally. I think that he usually says exactly what he means to say. Whether you like it or not is an entirely different matter. 

The Rabbi  has suffered significant PTSD. He’s been waterboarded and in firefights with child soldiers. When put into federal prison for attempted murder, his parents told their entire synagogue that he had died (they even sat Shiva for him.) He’s done unspeakable things and has had unspeakable things done to him. You don’t come out of a life like he has had without a little slice of your own personal hell to swallow. Yet, he would move heaven and earth for the people he loves. No, I don’t just mean buy a cake. I mean, sell everything you own, go into lifetimes worth of debt, and relocate to a different state all so that your wife has a greater chance of receiving a desperately needed heart transplant. It also means, he is happy for the life she has regained in separating from him. Which brings me to this point: at sometime or another, and in almost every respect, he has been extremely fucked up in the head. The good news is, he is significantly less so than he once was. 

What is more interesting to me is what I don’t know about him: I don’t know his favorite color or why he likes Converses so much ( I did know but he said it in passing amidst a slew of other things, and I forget now), where he stands on the Israeli /Hamas war or the thousands of innocent refugees who will spend the rest of their lives trying to rebuild from the rubble without cameras to bear witness; I don’t know how he voted (if he is able to), or what foods make him do a happy dance (other than beef jerky, which he is noticeably fond of), or why he believes in me as a writer. I suppose it isn’t for the same reason that I’m starting to believe in myself as a writer. He believes in my writing the way I think he believes in the potential of all his patients; he sees, in the broken down and busted-up mess of all of us, the infinite potential for wholeness. Perhaps, he sees a reflection of himself, who he once was, has become, and is becoming. At least, that’s what I tell myself, but then again, he’d probably say that is my ego talking. I like to think I’m right about that one, but I really don’t know.

I see the Rabbi as profoundly himself, both tremendously complicated and childishly simple. He symbolizes a version of radical self acceptance and rigorous honesty that I want to attain. Everyone we draw into our spheres reflects back to us some part of our own face. For me, he is a mirror of all inside me that dares to speak, perhaps the part of me that has love for the sound of my own voice. This kind of love is what we were made for; A love that radiates as much inwardly as it does outwardly. A love rooted in humility - neither thinking too much or too little, but thinking just right - towards ourselves and our world. 

The Rabbi is as much Pinocchio as he is a real boy; he is, to me, much more myth and metaphor than man. Outside of the clinical setting, in which I was the observer and the observed, I wouldn’t know him from a can of M.A.B paint. I talk of knowing him, but I know him the way one knows a camel's size by looking through the eye of a needle. I simply don’t have enough real perspective to make the assertions I do. So, I can paint him both as he was to me, and as I imagine him. This is faith at its most rudimentary level. It is a belief in the seen and unseen, what we know and what we dream. We all have these little faiths, these little beliefs that make things real. My belief in the Rabbi makes him more real to me, and that makes all the difference.

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 As for the Big Homie: it is real too, evidence be damned. The Big Homie is what it is, and what I imagine it to be. Once, the Rabbi told me to write a Craigslist ad for what I wanted in God and not from God; I still haven’t been able to do it. I have a handful of mustard seeds, and tomorrow isn’t promised so I have no idea if I’ll live long enough to see them grow up into anything remotely impressive. I know for sure they won’t grow the way I expect them to; they certainly haven’t thus far. That’s okay though. I’ve got the rudiments, the raw material, as we all do. What I can hope for is that they will take on light and air and water, that they will take root somewhere and, maybe ages from now when I’m long forgotten for sowing them, give spice to someone’s life. I have this beautiful idea that maybe all our faith combined - mine, yours, the Rabbi’s, the worlds - could grow into something rich and nourishing. That we can believe-into-being a world where we are free to love the gum on the bottom of our shoes because it gives them character; that we can believe-into-being a light that shines even in the darkest places of the mind.

I want to seek the meaning of this thing called life, even if there’s very little chance I’ll find it. I want to believe in the value of the questions themselves, not in whether they are answerable. I want to dig for the thing that connects us all, even though I already know that it is love and its roots are deeper than I will ever be able to know. Maybe this is romanticism of the human experience, but is there no room for poetry in a world of terror and reason? I’d like to think there is still room for this thing that is mystery and substance, realism and dream. I’d like to think we all have a rabbi, be they real or fictitious or a little bit of both. Not all things which we see matter, and so much of what matters cannot be seen. The quest is not a walk along a line but a mad tumbling around a sphere, and what joy we find in our traversing is entirely up to us. Let us dance then, embracing all that was and is and will always be. Let us find a little hope in what is seen and unseen. 

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