Day 16: Finding Focus

Today is Day 16, which is 2 weeks and two days of the Omer . . . . . . Ha-yom shishah asar yom, she-hem shnei sh'vuot u'shnei yamim la-omer.

OY!  So, for the first time I did NOT post in the evening.  And wouldn't you know it, it's on a day of discipline!  However, don't fret, I counted the omer last night and thought about what to write, which you'll see below.

THE OMER INTERSECTION: Tiferet + Gevruah;  Compassion with Discpline - Focusing our Compassion

Compassion can be one of those emotions that floods our senses, overwhelming our heartstrings, and causes us to feel moved.  It's why some of us cry at movies or why mob bosses in movies cry at commercials (I'm looking at you, Robert DeNiro).  In recent weeks, we have had much to overwhelm our senses of compassion, between tornadoes, and earthquakes/tsunamis, a plane that crashed, and all sorts of compelling stoires we see on our 11 o'clock news every night, we can sit by our television sets/internet news sites/newspapers? and be overwhelmed by the amount of compassion we have to have.  At some point, it can make us numb to all the sadness around us, and such dulling of our senses takes us away from all the gifts that our compassion can bring to us and, more importantly, to the world.
This is where our discipline, gevurah, comes in.  If we are to avoid compassion fatigue, becoming numb to the world around us and not responding to the ills of our world, we must focus our compassion.  Rather than allowing ourselves to buy into the mentality that it is all too much for me to even begin to know what to do, just respond - take action.  We are called upon to discipline ourselves to respond to our compassion and focus that energy that moves us into some kind of action.

THE OMER CHALLENGE: 

So, how do we apply this idea?  Whether the action is picking up the phone to call a loved one who is ill and could use a bit of support or the action is donating money to a fund that is helping victims of a natural disaster or even going out into the community and volunteering with our own hands and feet, let us focus our compassion and make a difference. 

OMER REFLECTION:

Yesterday's challenge was to take time to express compassion.  And though I was in meetings for the majority of the day, I found time to do a lot of listening.  Listening is probably the first ingredient to compassion - because if we are not taking anything new into our hearts, we cannot allow the world to move us and bring out our compassion.  I guess as a rabbi, there are lots of opportunities to find sources for compassion.  Today was a good reminder that it is my responsibility, as a rabbi but more importantly as a human being, to listen to others.  In doing so, not only do we offer support and strength to other people, but we too accesss parts of ourselves we otherwise might not have known.  So, thank you to anyone who shared parts of your days with me yesterday and gave me the gift of being able to find and express my compassion.  I hope I helped in any way you needed, and know that y'all (hey, I am in the South, now), helped me to remember some of the more important aspects of my life, as well.