Day 7: Leading with Love

Today is Day 7, which is week 1 of the Omer. . . Ha-yom shivah yamim, she-hem sh'vua echad la-omer.

So, one week into the omer experiment, and we're still going strong!  Today is the last day of our week of chesed, loving-kindness.  Before moving onto discipline, gevurah, we have one last chance to focus on bettering our relationships and the giving part of ourselves.  So, let's make it count!

THE OMER INTERSECTION: Chesed + Malchut;  The Leadership of Love.

Malchut is the virtue that deals with leadership and sovereignty.  We do not often think of our loving relationships in terms of leadership.  There will be a chance to see what it means to be a leader who incorporates chesed, loving-kindness, which is an important quality of a good leader.  But today, we look at this intersection from the opposite emphasis: What does it mean to be a leader in a loving-relationship?  Part of this intersection has to do with recognizing how being loved can make us feel.  Our Jewish tradition teaches us to love God, Who is to be loved as a Leader/Sovereign.  In our relationships, when we feel loved, our spirits are lifted up and we are made to feel important and worthy.  And the hope is that such feelings help us to become more compassionate, more caring, more giving.  

At the same time, we should question what it means to be a leader in a loving relationship.  We should be reminded that sometimes, an effective leader needs to step back and not control every aspect of our world - especially when it comes to dealing with other people.  Each one of us has our own personal needs, stories, and expectations; and when we suppress others for our own gain, we are not being leaders in our loving relationships, we are instead using.  Today, we put together the lessons of the week to take a leadership role in loving others. 

THE OMER CHALLENGE: 

So, how do we apply this idea?  Leadership is much easier to talk about in theory than to implement in practice.  It's a tough one, but based on my reflections above, I've come up with a couple of concrete steps to take.  It is easy to take our relationships for granted, to be a passive participant by letting others relate to us.  So, for today, be an active chesed-giver - reach out to three people with whom we have not recently taken an active role in relating.  Set some concrete plans to catch-up with them and re-kindle the relationships.  

And in terms of feeling love, I know this sounds ridiculous.  But let us take out a piece of paper (or a word file on our computers), think of a few of our most dearly-held relationships, and write down a few thoughts on how we feel when we think of the love we receive.  How does it hold us up, and how does it give us strength?  Now, for the next 24 hours, let us try helping others we encounter experience the same emotional bolstering - whether with a spouse, a sibling, or with the check-out person at the grocery store.  Then, take this piece of paper (or file), and save it for day 43, where we might have a little exercise.   

 

THE OMER UPDATE:

Today was our last full day down in Florida with my parents and my sister, brother-in-law, and their 7-month-old.  It is so very easy to let these brief visits fly by and start preparing for "re-entry" into the normal, everyday realities too early.  Having yesterday's challenge of creating a memory made this day extra special for me, because I was attuned to trying to be present in moments and to capture them in my memory. 
Today, we got to spend time at a playground, watching my 17-month-old daughter interact with her 7 month-old cousin and her Bubby.  I took mental images of Bubby pushing each of these little ones in swings or walking with them, and their huge toothless or barely-toothy smiles as they watched her play with them.  I'll remember taking a walk around the block with this motley crew, doing our first "mom-and-dad swing" with our daughter, and the way that she would "run" with her feet in mid-air as we lifted her up.  And I took a mental picture of my parents putting their granddaughter to bed, as I peeked my head in the room when they were reading her a bedtime story.  The three of them cuddling on a bed, and as Bubby whispered one of the lines of the book instead of reading it, my daughter completed the last word on the page with a whisper, matching the tone and mood set forth by her matriarch.  Today was a good reminder to be fully present in the present with whomever we are spending time.