Yom HaShoah is a solemn remembrance of the millions of lives lost in the Holocaust—entire communities and a whole way of life stolen forever. It hurts to remember such devastation, whether your family was associated with the oppressors or the oppressed. But building a new way demands rigorous attention to how we got where we are.
What from your personal or family history warrants your rigorous attention?
It often seems like the grass is greener, the people cooler, on the other side of the fence. But if we are lucky, someone or something grounds us right where we are.
Who or what helps you to feel at home?
“There’s a crack, a crack in everything…that’s where the light gets in.”
–Leonard Cohen
What cracks in your life have let the light in?
Our brains are programmed to respond to emergencies—we pay far more attention to sudden crises than to the large issues that build over time. A plane crash that kills two people gains far more attention than heart disease that claims hundreds on the same day. The threat of terrorism gets far more of a public response than does the threat of climate change. But sometimes what needs our attention is not the emergency, but rather the issues that niggle at the back of our brains, calling for a creative response.
What will you attend to today?
Imagine what the world would look like if you were so small that the hairs on a person’s arm appeared to you as a thicket. By comparison you are a giant, with no conceivable reason to be afraid.
What makes you feel big?
