May is ending and June begins, soon to bring the summer solstice the Northern hemisphere, as well as more news on midterm primaries and election bids. Earlier this week I was rummaging around my book shelves, feeling the need to shift my own thinking with the shift into June. My eyes landed on a book, rather tattered with age: The Legend of the Baal-Shem by Martin Buber. I have not picked it up in years. Curious, I randomly flipped through it. The Baal-Shem (meaning Master of God's Name) was an 18th Century Rabbi in Eastern Europe, who founded and led the Hasidic movement. Hasidism is known for being a fervent, devotional and mystical branch of Judaism. There is always a bit of magic to stories of the Baal-Shem. What caught me, was simply the opening of a chapter that began with the death bed of the Master, surrounded by his closest disciples.
As he lay on the bed close to death, the Baal-Shem spoke quietly to each disciple in the room, advising them of their life without him, and the spirit in which they should live. It evoked memories of my experience of a silent "death watch", sitting with my friend and teacher, U.G. Krishnamurti. So I leaned into the powerful opening of the story. Later in the chapter, the story takes a different twist and turn, but what caught me was the opening, and the Master's message to this last disciple, the one who served and stayed near, Rabbi Simon. The Baal Shem announced that following the Baal-Shem's death, Rabbi Simon must travel constantly. He was charged with going to all the places where Jews dwelled, visiting their homes, telling the stories of his own experience living with the Master. He would have no home, and live by only what money and provisions the people placed in his hands. Rabbi Simon loved to talk about the Baal-Shem and loved repeating his words. But he could not grasp how he could live as an "eternal wanderer", without tangible means of support. He felt it was not possible. He stubbornly challenged his fate with "a drop of bitterness"that pierced the death scene, as he bitterly declared to the Master that these final instructions made no sense. His intolerable fate would make him a "wandering vagabond" and "the poorest pilgrim below".
I will stop the story here and tell you, in time, Rabbi Simon accepted his fate, and became a wanderer. Things did work out for him, as the master had reassured him in that final encounter. But what struck me, as I read, was the phrase "a drop of bitterness". Spiritually, we often talk of the power of love and forgiveness--itself a form of sweetness--when reconciling our emotional pain and disappointment. It's easy to just skip over recognition of human bitterness. Bitterness is not just anger or hurt feelings; it has the element of a sharp, unpleasant, even acred "taste". In this case, the "taste" is felt emotionally, as resentment, as festering dissatisfaction, or hardened hatred. Bitterness blocks forgiveness and our ability to reconcile.
We can try to bury resentment and cover it over with various spiritual practices, but it seems to me more adaptive and freeing to explore it within our own nature. There are those who say, "take the bitter with the sweet", in the unfolding discovery and maturation of our lives. What does your inner life tell you? Is it time to release the bitter? (Susan Nettleton)
For poetry: https://allpoetry.com/poem/8540251-Forgiveness-by-George-William-A.E.-Russell https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/D/DickinsonEmi/ImcededIve/index https://wordsfortheyear.com/2014/05/20/a-settlement-by-mary-oliver/poem/