|:the space where our temple used to be
In my observance of Tisha B’Av this year, I thought I’d actually just jot down random thoughts resulting from my experience this year. I feel like I can honestly say that I’ve felt and experienced – not a despair – but a deep regret over so many things that have served to make humanity what it is today. I believe that tonight I have shared the memory of tragedies both spiritual and historical (the world over) with countless others – observant, and non-observant, secular and orthodox on a profound level. Tisha B’Av is a very solemn occasion, and also very essential. It’s essential to consider the “tragedies” of our own existence – the lack of world peace, the waste and even the gradual destruction of our (earth and) natural resources, the genocidal hatred that burns on both sides of the equator (for no practical reason), as well as the lack of understanding we're all guilty of - it’s astoundingly ridiculous and disheartening. Throw into the mix the temperment of our natural world of late: tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes, and you may even vaguely remember hearing a long, long time ago, how everything is interrelated. Funny thing is that this is absolutely true – there’s just no sound scientific consensus.
I'm finding it equally funny to realize that I have a hole inside of me. As a woman of African descent whose forebears were bought and sold, it’s an old tale amongst both the descendants, as well as our continental African cousins that Black Americans have a hole inside of them: having fought and struggled to achieve equality and justice on American shores, many know well the contradicting feelings of love and hurt at the knowledge that Africa herself was a contributor to the slave trade by selling her own children. Africa in some ways seems foreign to African Americans – full of her own unresolved (and often violent) efforts to take her place on the world map, her struggles seem desolate and endless. Over time Africa has become that place - like a childhood home – that is very difficult to return to easily, once grown.
Please don't get me wrong: I love Africa – and I also love being a member of one of the oldest racial groups on this planet. Despite what the dominant culture of my national origin tells me I should be (whether overtly or covertly) – my perspective is different. My heart still longs for Africa just as surely as I know that deep within me is the knowledge of this ancient land that holds hands with my soul like a twin, or another persona. And, as if she were a mother who somehow wandered away from her child – Africa still sends me messages in that secret code that only she and I share, letting me know: I am still here. I am always with You. You are still a part of me.
I understand very well the love of Motherland. And I know that I share this with so many other nationalities on this earth who have been forced somehow to leave their homes, their true mothers. I also understand loss and am slowly coming around to the idea of my own responsibility in my own Exile, as well as its inclusion and contribution to Exile that's on a much grander scale: a universal one.
Do any of us black or white, male or female, religious, spiritual, secular, or pagan truly understand what being in Exile means? I have an idea: It means that our Center is gone. To be blunt, we have a hole inside of us. Whether this hole was created by the defacement and vicious destruction of something very holy, or by slavery or by the horrors of the Holocaust, the Center has been removed from us. What we have to remember, despite the nightmares and psychoses that these things have (inevitably) created in us, is that the Center is gone for a reason. Deep down we know what we have to do, but we’ve heard it so many times now that we’ve stopped listening. It’s just too elementary an answer that the way we treat each other and the fact that we react negatively towards each other (compulsively) is the major cause of the ills of our world and our existence.
This concept tends to come full circle: the Center is gone for a reason, and we are that reason. Our purpose here is to find the Center again and to fill the hole inside all of us once and for all.
[Note to Reader]: Please substitute the word "Center" for Shekinah (the Feminine Presence of the Creator, and the Soul of the Earth), then substitute the word Shekinah for Mother, and then substitute the word Mother, for Temple (Mishkan).
Chag Sameach.
To learn more about Tisha B’Av, the 9th of Av, please follow these links:
