Thursday, November 18, 2010

Thursday Morning Kavvanah, 11/18/2010

From the poet Rahel, who lived in Mandate Palestine:

וְאוּלַי לֹא הָיוּ הַדְּבָרִים מֵעוֹלָם
Ve-ulay lo hayu hadevarim me-olam
And perhaps these things never happened...

It is one of her better-known poems, and all the more so because the words were set to music by Yehuda Sharett and sung by the famous Israeli rock 'n' roller Arik Einstein, among others. She wrote it while surveying her years of hard labor taming the agricultural fields around the Kinneret, making the hills of the Galil green.

Sometimes, when we come very far in a task or project or process, the beginning seems so far away that we wonder whether or not it actually happened. But that is the nature of commitment and growth - every task is a learning process through which we are fundamentally changed. If it's a very long task, it makes the beginning seem so far away, like another lifetime.

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