Editor’s Note: In a search for meaning, Inside Chappaqua also came across this noteworthy post on Facebook from Rabbi Aaron Brusso, Spiritual Leader of Bet Torah Synagogue in Mount Kisco.
By Rabbi Aaron Brusso
Sometimes the dividing line between safety and danger is a surgical margin of glass and metal. The thickness of that margin in our minds is not measured in inches but in familiarity.
What we do every day feels like sitting on a cushioned bench reading emails or doing the crossword puzzle. What we do every day doesn’t feel even remotely connected to a collision in which the margin bends, twists and melts by fire. Life can feel like a dream lived in our minds until we are reminded how very real it is. Something happens and we wake to realize that we are here.
When our kids were little Hana and I would wake them up by singing:
Modeh ani lefanecha melech chai v’kayam she’hechazarta bi nishmati b’chemla. Rabbah emunatecha.
“I am grateful to You, living and enduring God, for restoring my soul to me in compassion. You are faithful beyond measure”.
We would sing a song to wake them up to the fact that they woke up. As they have gotten older, mornings have grown more hectic…and way too familiar. There seems to be less time for these sentiments. There seems to be less “usefulness” for them too.
But then there’s the day when mom takes the train and makes it home.
We spend so much time wondering if she will “make it on time” or “make it in time”. And then we remember what “making it” actually means.
There is a surgical margin of familiarity between one moment and the next in our lives. Moments that feel similar can go by without the awareness that we have arrived at a moment in time in which we have never before lived…and we are alive to see it. We are all hurtling forward surrounded by glass, metal and familiarity…things that protect us from danger… things that insulate us from appreciation.
May the memories of those who lost their lives be forever a blessing.
