As posted on October 19, 2012 by Sam Blustin on Soup for the Neshama
“Reb Shalom Ber of Lubavitch once took his family to a summer resort in the country. Going for a walk with his son and eventual successor, Reb Yosef Yitzchak, Reb Shalom pointed to the ears of corn covering the surrounding farmland.
‘Behold divinity!’ the rebbe said. ‘Each stalk of corn, and every movement it makes, is a manifestation of the mind of God. Creation is the thought of God expressed as the physicality of the world.’
Reb Yosef Yitzchak listened to his father’s words and soon found himself lost in the wondrous realization that this world, his body, and all bodies were expressions of God. As he walked, he brushed against a tree and plucked a leaf from its stem. Absentmindedly tearing the leaf into strips, he slipped deeper and deeper in joyous contemplation.
‘Yosef Yitzchak!’ the rebbe called to him sternly, breaking his son’s concentration and returning him to the world of their walk. ‘We are speaking of God manifest in creation, and here you rip a leaf from its place and destroy it for no reason at all. Do you imagine that this leaf has no purpose in this world but to sacrifice itself to your thoughtlessness? Is its ‘I’ of lesser value that your own? You are different, yes, but superior? No. Everything has its divinely directed purpose, and you have made it impossible for this leaf to achieve its reason for being.’
Reb Yosef Yitzchak was ashamed of his behavior. His father said: ‘Remorse is good. Now learn from it. For our sages say, ‘A person can do damage whether awake or asleep.””
Despite (or maybe because of) this story’s Lion King like sounding advice, this is one of my favorite stories. Why? Because there are so many lessons we can take from it.
One lessons we can learn is the value of being awake and present in our world. “Am I sleep walking through life?” “Dreaming of how life could be?” When we are asleep, or just going through the motions, we miss many of the opportunities that are out there in life for us to experience. When we obsess over the little things, or forget to count to count the blessings that are right in front of us, we miss opportunities to live life fully. The mind is a powerful tool, and how we look at the world can greatly affect the quality of our lives.
Not only must we be physically awake, but we have to be spiritually awake as well. “Can I see God manifest all around me, inside myself, in others, and even in inanimate objects?”, we might ask. The Torah says that God created man [people] in God’s image. If this is so, then it’s our responsibility to find that piece of Godliness in every single person. It’s up to us to nurture it, and help others develop into Godly beings. And part of being a Godly being is realizing that God is constantly present in our lives. God is in our food, the people around us, the interactions that we have, and God is even with us while we’re going to the bathroom.
But this story goes further. Not only are we supposed to treat others with dignity and respect, but we are supposed to extend this lesson to all things, animate or inanimate. If a measly leaf or a blade a grass is an extension of God, and we are supposed to treat it as such, how much more important is it that we treat others with respect, courtesy, and love?
And while those are all great lessons, there’s even a simpler lesson that I’d like all of us to consider as Shabbat begins and as we start a new week.
We live in a world where we are constantly on the run. We multitask with two, three, ten different activities. We use multiple laptops simultaneously, all while checking our email on our cell phones. We are always on call. But sometimes, we forget to stop and look around. We forget to enjoy what we have, to admire the little things that happen in life, and to just take a few minutes for ourselves to think. This is what Shabbat is for! So take some time to relax from the daily grind and enjoy the company of yourself, and the people around you.
This Shabbos, I encourage all of us to remember this story, and “behold divinity!” God is everywhere, in everything, and it’s really a beautiful thing.
Shabbat Shalom
-SB
There’s a time for everything in the world, and a purpose for it all.
(Story was taken from “Hasidic Tales” by Rabbi Rami Shapiro)
