Shapiro is a fairly well-known novelist who, in her mid-forties, embarked on a spiritual search. Her father had been raised as an Orthodox Jew. Her mother had rejected religion. Dani had been caught in the middle, but her mother had mostly won. As she entered what Carl Jung called "the afternoon of life", Shapiro began asking if life consisted of more than appointments on a calendar and to-do lists. Something kept waking her up in the middle of the night.
Her search takes her into New Age disciplines like energy therapy and Eastern paths such as yoga, but she keeps returning to Judaism (which is probably why it is sitting on the Rabbi's desk). It's the kind of book that you can "read around" in, just picking it up anywhere and taking a couple of minutes to polish off a short chapter that can be almost like a poem in its beauty and succinctness.
In one, she visits the last member of her father's generation, his sister Shirley, who gave birth to four children whose many children are starting to have children of their own. The whole family is moving even farther into ultra-orthodoxy. Dani's mother could never stand Shirley so Dani didn't know her well, but she needed contact with someone who had known her late parents when they were young. During the visit Shirley invites Dani to look out one of her windows at her "lady". She is referring to a majestic weeping birch tree in the park across the street; 50 or 60 feet high.
"How big was it when you moved in here?" Dani asked.
"It wasn't even planted in those days", said Shirley.
Dani writes: "I tried to imagine what it would be like to spend an entire lifetime in one place. To put down roots - to live in one single spot long enough to see the world sprout up around you. To watch the empty space outside your window become a sapling - and that sapling become an old, stately specimen. To give birth to a village. To be surrounded by the world you've created. To be governed by a belief so strong that nothing - not sadness, nor anger, nor grief - can shake it. To believe in God."
She later her describes her aunt and her cousins as having something she doesn't have, certainty, while she will always have her doubts.
Perhaps.
It's been a long time since I've been absolutely certain of anything - ever since I encountered the Holy more than half a century ago, in fact. But, it has always seemed to me that I could be certain of my longing. Would I thirst in a world without water? Would I hunger if there were no such thing as food?
No comments:
Post a Comment