I often struggle to fall asleep at night.  If peace and rest are even marginally connected, then I imagine the stress/anxiety of knowing I’m going to sleep with a docket far from finished has little diminishing value.  

Lying awake in bed a few nights ago, bittered that all other attempts had failed, I visited the bookshelf.  I found an old, white-elephant copy of My Name is Asher Lev that I bought for a $1.88 on a not-so-sunny Saturday in Santa Barbara.  The cover has a cheesy picture from, what I suspect was, a low budget film that probably went straight to VHS. 

I shuffled to a random page and began to read, a similar strategy I suspect many people use when reading the Bible.  As if some divine intervention has place in you opening up to a naked verse in, say, Deuteronomy 6 that will somehow, miraculously, as thought the meaning of the word, fill you with vital information that will bring a healthy sustenance to your day.  

Nothing came from the portion I read, as to be expected.  It did, however, remind me of something interesting I encountered when I read the book long ago.  Asher’s father, his name Aryeh, a holy and respected man, gives Asher a paralyzing instruction toward the beginning of the story.  It was during Shabbos, while he was singing zemiros.  I picture Aryeh in a shadowed kitchen, rocking his upper half back and forth as he sits in a hard, oak chair.  His eyes are tightly shut and he rocks and hums deeply.  The sort of cliche depiction of a praying religious man you find in any movie, the rocking back and forth providing the subtle impression of a man seesawing between the physical and spiritual world.

In referring to a picture Asher drew of his mom, and more generally to Asher’s talent as a young artist, Aryeh says, (and I spent an offensive amount of time searching for the page this quote is found) “Asher, you have a gift.  I do not know if it is a gift from the Ribbono Shel Olom or from the Other Side.  If it is from the Other Side, then it is foolishness, dangerous foolishness, it will take you away from Torah and from your people and lead you to think only of yourself.”

Now I’m not clear-creeked sure what the Other Side means.  Since Ribbono Shel Olom roughly translates to Master of the Universe, I’m going to propose it means Satan.

But, really, what the hell?  A gift given by the Other Side?  When I think of gifts — and I’ll expand this to talents and skills — I dare not cripple myself by determining whether their origin is good or evil.  As if I could place my gifts on a table (as if I had more than one) and, like jelly beans, separate the blue ones from the red ones.  Because, to extend this metaphor long past its purpose, eating the red ones will eventually lead to a splattered toilet.  That the fault is not wrongly using something like artistic ability but rather its pursuit altogether; that any passion leading to self-glorification and away from the implications of the Torah; that the failure to distinguish and quarantine such an item; this is but dangerous foolishness.   

I think the starkly different Protestant view is that any talent you have, any gift that you try to disguise in the “interests” section of facebook, is God given.  Hands off.  It is up to the person to use that God-given gift for good or evil.  I think the great Reformers would give themselves a hemorrhoid if someone suggested otherwise.  I pray my reader will forgive my adding, as much of a theological hero, genius, incomparable powerhouse Calvin was (and I do believe that…and if you don’t then I dare you to read a chapter, a few pages, even one line, from the Institutes and see if you can maintain any other disposition…truly, just a sentence from Calvin’s theology is enough to make Piper, Wright, and Keller’s entire combined collections read like chicken scratch), he was also a pompous prick.  He skipped around Geneva, not an inch taller than Napolean, I should add, verbally humiliating any and everyone else — granted, the sort of life I dream of.  The fact is, the reformers, so in need of an enlightenment and humanism, would have a belly-aching time hearing that the human person has anything within him that isn’t straight from the Heavens.  I dare not, by the way, be so bold, in this modern society I live, to call either of these views of gifts right or wrong, lest I be thought of as radical or worse, much much worse, close-minded.  

But ponder Aryeh’s view, if you can stand it.

Several months back, I suffered through an obsessive Jewish Mysticism stage.  It was up to the point where I took the initial steps to learn Hebrew in order to better understand the Kabbalah.  Needless to say, I never learned Hebrew, and like most of my interests, the flame of my Jewish Mysticism stage went out like a neglected cigarette.

During that time, however, I did share quite the courtship with Martin Buber.  In particular, “The Way of Man,” which is a compilation of several reflections derived from Hasidic folklore.  Buber makes a striking distinction between Christianity and Judaism that has haunted me ever since. 

One of the main points in which Christianity differs from Judaism is that it makes each man’s salvation his highest aim. Judaism regards each man’s soul as a serving member of God’s creation which, by man’s work, is to become the Kingdom of God; thus, no soul has its object in itself, in its own salvation….but [in] the work which it is destined to perform in the world. — Buber, The Way of Man

I’m not sure he’s exactly right.  But too often, way too often, Christians do seem to have salvation as their ultimate goal.  That faith is something we achieve rather than something we use.  What a goddam selfish, fruitless, and stupid way to look at it.  

That the gifts we possess are meant to contribute to the purpose of serving as a destined member in Creation is the only non-contradictory way I can reconcile the good of individualistic self-interest with the righteousness of altruism.     

And I suppose the one thing that Ayn Rand did get right (and then comically, embarrassingly, outright offensive to common sense, completely fucked up the point of) was that we start with the selfish pursuit of our gifts, our interests.  We use our intrinsic desire to perfect our ability to add beauty to Creation, disregarding all the scruples of the outside world.  And we do this in an effort to perform the work we were destined to achieve in the world.  Agents, relational and rational, collectively restoring beauty to a fallen Creation — a job only daunting when taken on alone.  

To lay waste this calling, to pursue something else, is foolishness, dangerous foolishness.