Noticing: inner treasures

Has this been a summer of relaxation and refreshment for me?  Quite the contrary!  But I can honestly say I’m happy.  I’ve had all kinds of experiences this summer, most of which of which were uninvited, and most but not all, of which I could have lived without.  (I’ll get back to that in a paragraph or two.)  And, for now, when asked how I am, I honestly answer: “I feel great.”

I had an epiphany this morning.  

I was reading the Book of Exodus (as opposed to the book, Exodus) in preparation for my Shemot class in school this year.  (Thank you, Shayna).  When I read the second part of Ex. 31:6 ובלב כל חכם לב נתתי חכמה I thought “woah!”  For starters, where does the punctuation go in this phrase?  Mostly because it does make sense AND it contributed to my “aha moment”, my current thought about its translation is “… and in the heart of all who are wise-hearted, I give wisdom…”  But what a strange turn of phrase.  What does it mean for God to give one who is “wise-hearted”, wisdom? 

The text is referring specifically to Bezalel.  He, with his helpers, was to execute God’s instructions for building the Tabernacle; the place where God would dwell among the Israelites in the desert. He was to follow the instructions exactly as God gave them to Moses.  Robert Alter translates the phrase “…and in the heart of every wise-hearted man I have set wisdom…”  His note reads as follows: “…the capacity for skillful artisanship is innate, one of the person’s attributes, but God is the ultimate source of all such capacities AND the enabling force for their realization.”[i] (Capital letters and italics are mine).  Holding my new identity as a person with cancer and supporting my ongoing spiritual journey and the evolution of my relationship with God, this understanding of that phrase feels like it was written for me.  Being a wise-hearted person is at, or very near the top of my “I wanna be like that”, list. 

In many ways this whole cancer thing has felt like an “out of body” experience which, of course, is extremely ironic because I cannot imagine anything more “in body”.  Yet, as I step out of myself and see "me" during this past 2 months, I'm filled with gratitude for the strength and grace which I've found within.  One of the many blessings in this experience has been my clear understanding that the propensity to feel gratitude and express it, appears thankfully to be innate for me and God has enabled me to realize those capacities from deep within, at a time when She knew, I needed them most. 

So, ya; I'm great!  Thank you for asking.

---

[i] The Five books of Moses, with commentary, Robert Alter, p. 490