As we gt ready to see 5767 off and welcome year 5768...

In the last few days of 5767, the external is about finished. The next few weeks are all about lookin inward and taking stock and checking in with ourselves to see how we are doing, how we've done this year, and how we can do better in the coming year.

Tonight, my awesome rabbi made some good points I want to jot down here to remember.

1. He likened a shofar blast to a factory whistle. Discuss.
2. He discussed "bitchy" Hunter S. Thompson, comparing his muttering in the weeks before his death about being too old and "living seventeen years longer" then he wanted or needed to, in his estimation, to a little girl in the congregation asking a 97-year-old woman if she was old-- the woman told the little girl, "No, I've just been young for a very long time." Life being what you make of it, perspective, making choices, deciding to live or exist.
   
3. There is some discussion lately about Mother Theresa and some letters she wrote that she wanted to be destroyed. The letters, it seems, were written by her over the years expressing doubts in herself, her beliefs, her views on the world, the ether, what she thought about g-d.
1. The letters show her to be pretty human, really.
   
2. Doubt is ideal, wrestling constantly with ideas means you are considering the meaning of life and the world and how you exist in each, instead of living mindlessly, and believing in what you "should". So why is it that so many religions don't allow room for doubt and discussion, but instead hold in rather high regard persons who have unshakable, unquestioning belief in something laid out for them? (Admittedly, that is a hard concept for us to "get" as Jews. Judaism is nothing if not about thinking and wrestling and deciding and doubting. In fact, I don't think we, as Jews, expect something to make sense to us at fifty-five that made sense to us at thirty. How un-Jewy, right? Life changes, people change, we dig on that a lot. This is probably why the word "faith" isn't a terribly popular one with us; It's not really a concept we identify with so much.)
   
3. How can a religion, a belief, a human being, thrive without doubting, wresting and questioning continuously?
4. While she did do good work, is it fair to say that perhaps it might have been better to help the poor out of poverty rather than minister to them? And was she wrong asking them to put stock, absolute unwavering stock, in something she herself wrestled with, especially when she was highly resistant to admitting her doubt, seeing it as weakness?