(no subject)

[elainegrey]

This model of a ritual of release from the Jewish tradition -- http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2010/08/release.html -- strikes me as very wise and meaningful ritual. I wonder about making my own.

An early Velveteen Rabbi blog notes

The Kotzker rebbe (Reb Menachem Mendel of Kotzk) is reported to have taught that "There is nothing so whole as the broken heart." It's a powerful paradox, to think that we can find wholeness not despite our brokenness but through it.

I've felt that paradox, connected with it in a mystic space, but intellectually i have issues with it from a justice point of view. Our narrow labels of good and bad crack as one considers an experience that shouldn't have happened (pick something you think of as a violation, a betrayal, an injustice) and how the "victim" might grow and become a better person for it. I recognize though, that our hearts can break even when it's not a "wrong" act, that the breaking can just come about because of the general brokenness... and perfection.

...reading some blog posts and taking things slowly....