The Plague of Darkness

An excerpt from my comments on one of the commentary compilations from this morning:

Listening to a conversation with Mary Doria Russell, sci-fi author and convert to Judaism in the process of a popular series starting with "The Sparrow" this morning on a "Faith Matters" podcast, she brought up the commandment to always study Torah with someone else, so there is always another view, another way of looking at a parasha besides your own. URJ (Union for Reform Judaism) online is the only source I have seen that consistently gives a "Divrei Torah", and I appreciated it more in the context of that mention.

Each of us enters this sanctuary with a different need.

Some hearts are full of gratitude and joy:
They are overflowing with the happiness of love and the joy of life; they are eager to confront the day, to make the world more fair; they are recovering from illness or have escaped misfortune.
And we rejoice with them.

Some hearts ache with sorrow:
Disappointments weigh heavily upon them, and they have tasted despair; families have been broken; loved ones lie on a bed of pain; death has taken those whom they cherished.
May our presence and sympathy bring them comfort. . . .
( Gates of Prayer for Shabbat and Weekdays , ed. Chaim Stern [New York: CCAR, 1994], p. 103)

This meditation by Rabbi Stern resonated with me because I so often feel not just elements of both those states of heart, but so often it feels like there is an imbalance and one of them defines me as a person and will never change, despite what experience and belief tell me. There have been times in my life when I walked or sat with a heart "overflowing with the happiness of love and the joy of life" and was certain and satisfied that I had encountered a state where I could contentedly live the rest of my life. Other times, more often, or maybe it just seems like that, I haven't kept track (except for a brief experiment involving a chart on my dorm wall senior year), my heart feels that "Disappointments weigh heavily upon (it)" and this despair also seems permanent and how my life will always be lived. I am blessed with people to share both these states with, and feel buoyed by gratitude for that whichever direction my balance drifts.