I who have made my living with words find words inadequate to describe the experience of being alive while the world is literally breaking apart.
Do I need to see one more horrifying video about the police state that exists
in Victoria, Australia? Do I need to hear one more testimony from someone whose life was
ruined or hear one more brave physician
speak about the adverse effects they are seeing in their clinical practice? Do
I need to watch one more healthcare worker escorted from the workplace because
they refuse to comply with a vaccine mandate? Do I need to watch one more
parent express delight (I shudder!) that the jab will soon be available for their 5
year-old? Do I need to hear one more otherwise rational person lose his composure
over a family member/friend/neighbor/colleague/stranger who is not masked or who has chosen not to vaccinate? Do I need to see another screenshot of heavy-handed censorship? Do I need to listen one more politician lie?
No, I do not.
And yet, I am, in equal measure, obsessively drawn to, and acutely repelled by,
the mounting daily evidence that our world has lost its collective mind.
Compulsively, I ask myself unanswerable questions.
How is it possible to not see the heavy-handed oppression, the insufferable censorship,
the tyrannical mandates that cannot be justified from a public health
perspective?
How can people remain blind to the chaos that has overtaken our world?
How
are they tolerating blatant discrimination and the stripping of civil liberties
with nary a peep?
How can all this have devolved so quickly?
Why is Hashem allowing this evil to prosper? What long game is He playing?
The only thing that soothes my distraught soul is learning Torah and, occasionally, prayer. When I learn Torah,
I peer into the deeper unity that exists beneath the absolute hollowness that passes for reality. I connect
to the eternal Master of the Universe and I am reminded of the rock bottom reality of אין עוד מלבדו
– there is nothing except God.
Most of the time, our perception is hopelessly distorted. The chaos is not
about the vaccine and everything that emanates from it. That’s just the most
external layer. That's just the physical manifestation of a spiritual reality.
Hashem is dismantling the world. He is showing us the absolute rot that lies underneath
what we have accepted as reality. He is doing us a very great favor, though the
cost is painfully high.
Like a kitchen renovation that begins with demolition, He is preparing us for the glory of redemption.
Before He can rebuild, what exists must be obliterated. That’s the agonizing process
through which I believe we are suffering.
Since it's a spiritual war, our response must be a spiritual one.
This stage, this anarchy, won’t last forever. I’m not a prophet and I
don’t know how bad it will get before it gets better. But I do believe this:
