I don't really know where to begin.
At this point, it is very difficult to actually express how I'm feeling and what is rolling round in my mind. And rolling around is a good way to put it. Our situation right now feels like being on a gigantic ship... let's say the Titanic. Something horrible has happened below decks. But we don't really know what it is .... yet. The stewards are missing. Things are rolling round, banging into other things in the hallway. There are disturbing noises and voices coming from all different areas of the ship, but are muffled because we are in our cabins, having been told earlier on in the situation, not to leave them.
At what point do you decide to take responsibility for your own wellbeing and brave the hallway, then the stairs and then the main deck? Do you believe your own senses? Use your own powers of observation and employ your own deductive reasoning? Or do you do what you have been told? Or worse... believe what you have been told.
The clock is ticking.
The water rising.
The ship is listing.
Now the hallway is an uphill climb.
What I am describing is perhaps only one tenth of what we are dealing with right now. Just one of the levels of weird. There are at LEAST nine other things we are trying to make sense of at the same time. Which one is the first priority? Which one should we focus on? Which one is the most alarming? The muffled voices you hear... which one will you believe? Which one of them is telling a truth? We won't even be able to say THE truth, but at least which is the MOST truthful voice? A half truth is sometimes worse than an outright lie in my experience.
There is a part of me that has gone beyond exhaustion. I have not yet reached apathy however, and that is why I am here today. Typing away, taking a stab at describing my mental and emotional state for future reference.
I have no foreknowledge to guide me, as we would if we really found ourselves on the Titanic during the early stages of it's demise. We would be up on the deck with our valuables in a bag, wearing our lifejacket next to a lifeboat trying to look calm.
But here's where my historical analogies break down. I am also a spiritual being. I have spiritual senses too. I have deductive reasoning based on Torah principles. Well practiced and deeply learned. They tell me how the story ends. And even some of what I might see before that 'end'.
But there are some very uncertain gaps and timeline issues in the program. I cannot predict the sequence of events with any certainty.
I recently watched the movie 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel'.
In it, the hotel owner, apologizing for the shoddy condition of parts of his hotel says:
Everything will be all right in the end. If it's not all right, it is not yet the end.
A lovely quote. One which I am comforting myself with right now.
What's not comforting to me is that I know that some of you who are reading this [oh faithful friends and family] will disagree wildly on what 'all right in the end' should look like.
I usually avoid hard lines in life. I have always joked to people that my favorite football play is something called the 'end around'
I looked up the definition of that play and it included this sentence:
"Used in an extended sense, it refers to an alternate, usually indirect path to reach an objective that avoids the crux of a problem."
Yeah. That's me all over.
However, our complex situation right now is putting some serious harsh on my go to strategies. I'm being forced to one side by forces that I cannot resist on my own. One's sensibilities are so assaulted from every front, that it is a monumental victory just to remain standing.
So.... here's my question to us.
What if the Holy One blessed be He is a fan of the end around play?
What's THAT going to look like?
