Reality... What a Concept!

The purpose of this blog is to reboot the Shabbat table... Please share...

Do you know how many days til Channukah?

As I mentioned last week, we are just now wrapping up Sukkot and the Holidays.

Real life can now begin again.

But what is "real life"?

To nurture this topic, for your table tonight, I would like to offer:

(a) A radical idea about reality
(b) A realistic fact about reality
(c) A question about reality

The radical idea about reality is that contemplating even a single wonder of nature is one of the fundamentals of cultivating spirituality and therefore we should strive to make such contemplation part of our daily routine. But not to make it "routine" - it must be juicy — an experience of radical amazement. 

For example, once a day try pausing to appreciate the incredible human body.

Or the wonders of a single cell. Or the miracle of DNA (or this). Or Einstein's Big Idea. Or quantum entanglement. Or...?

But here's the realistic fact about reality which you already know: not everyone gets turned on by the same WOW. 

For example, this week I took a few kids to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

I personally had one goal: experience the eye-popping wonders of Geology, Gems and Minerals. 

But guess what — to get to Geology you first have to walk through Oceanea and dodge Mammals, etc. etc. Trying to get even three people to follow the leader in a place like that is like taking a child through a candy store. My WOW may not be the same as your WOW.

For example, I know one person who LOVES the daily download from the JWST (click on the image above for a full-screen WOW) and I know another person who finds these photos rather dull....

Question for your table: What's your WOW?

And all this amazement leads to the promised question about reality... What about inward contemplation? 

On this topic, you may have heard about the Baltimore-based organization called the Holistic Life Foundation that has been successfully lowering rates of violence, truancy and general mischief in public schools by replacing detention with meditation.

Into a room of pillows and lavender, an elementary school student walks, enraged.

He’s just been made fun of by another student, an altercation that turned to pushing and name-calling. But rather than detention or the principal’s office, his teacher sent him here, to Robert W. Coleman Elementary School’s meditation room.

“I did some deep breathing, had a little snack, and I got myself together,” the boy recalled. “Then I apologized to my class.”

Let's lob this one to the table - What would be a more pertinent daily practice: contemplating a wonder of nature, or cultivating serenity?


Shabbat Shalom

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