Tuesday morning, December 27, 2011…From the Lab:
I am back. Actually I haven’t been gone from here or Hashem’s House, or the Ranch at all, except for a few trips to NYC…once to bury my dear step-father Paul, twice to try and save an institution from itself (which I could not, in the final analysis do). I have come to grips with all that has happened. Including a very difficult accident on 9/23/2011 where a man, rushing to work, went through a red light and hit the Great Pumpkin on the passenger side. Luckily there was no one in the front right passenger side and luckily I was hit from that side and not the driver’s side. Police and EMTs at the scene said I might not have made it, having been hit on the driver’s side at that angle, at that speed. Honestly, while it was happening, it was all in slow motion in my mind and when I finally realized that I was going to be hit all I could do was to tell all of you, one last time, that I love you and pray that my children were strong enough to withstand the loss.
My upper rib cage sustained a hairline fracture when I hit the steering wheel with such force, even though I had my seat belt on. The air bags did not deploy and I unfortunately hit my right shoulder on the top of the steering wheel more than once. In the after math, it will need to be replaced. The grant I am working on at the moment is alive until March, 2013. I am going to try, with water therapy and shoulder therapy, to keep going until it is over and then have a total shoulder replacement. The present right shoulder cannot be fixed…it must be removed.
Projects continue…and our numbers are up. We are reaching out, forming coalitions and partnerships and working magic as we go. Highlights of my own Fall into Winter, 2011, include performing a wedding for my daughter, Davide Rya and her own private “batman”, Travis Klein, at the Dulcinea Chapel up at the Wizard Academy, high on the bluff, not a mile or so from the Ranch, on September 4, 2011. It was a small, intimate family wedding with all the siblings and parents and a few cherished family and friends.
Other news, from the kids…Ian is moving up at Footlocker’s International Headquarters in NYC and Sascha Michael has finally finished all his coursework at UT Austin. Now speaking Arabic as well as Hebrew and English, he has started the process of looking for full-time employment with several overseas entities with his sights set on the Middle East. If you know of something please let us know.
I have had several very successful gigs as both the Rebbe and the Maggidah…and am finally taking the time needed to work on the final healing of my legs through lymphedema therapy. The left leg is completely healed and the right leg is moving right along. Starting January 16th, 2012, I will be starting a new phase of therapy to include shoulder manipulation and muscle strengthening along with weight training.
I want to leave you today with a piece of text I have taken from a book I am reading. The project I mentioned before, working with ex-offenders and trying to build a coalition of non-profits and city agencies that will help get these folks reintergrated back into society, has sent me researching in new directions. I include this text here because the word “criminals” could be changed to include any group which is singled out for special treatment by society that feels this group is less than it is. Nothing could be worse for us, as a world, as a humanity, as a human family.
Enjoy is not the word, I fear. The word is listen, pay attention, hear what is being said and what is not being said. Take it to heart. Not too unlike the recitation of the Shema, “Hear of Israel, The Lord our G-d, The Lord is One!” or as Rebbe Gelberman use to say, “Listen oh humanity, we are all one with our higher selves and our higher power!”
From Rudolf Steiner’s How to Know Higher Worlds: [Anthroposophic Press, Inc.,Great Barrington, MA,1994, 2004].
Rudolf Steiner presents seven requirements of the student of [life] (my word). Numbers 2and 3 are the ones I will present you with this day.
The second requirement is that we feel ourselves to be a part of the whole of life…this attitude will gradually change our whole way of thinking-about the greatest as well as the least of things. For example, I will look upon criminals differently. I will now withhold my judgment and contemplate our common humanity, thinking: “I am a human being just as this person is. Perhaps it was only my upbringing, which my situation in life has given me, that spared me this fate.” Then I will reflect that criminals, who are my brothers and sisters in humanity, might have turned out very differently had they received the attention and encouragement my mentors gave me. I will be led to reflect that I have received something that was withheld from them-that my good fortune comes at their expense.
From there it is a small step to the insight that, as a member or organ of humanity as a whole, I am jointly responsible, with all human beings, for everything that happens. This insight should not, of course, be immediately translated into political agitation in the world. It should be calmly cultivated in the soul. By this means it will gradually come to expression in my outer actions. Indeed, in such matters, we can begin only by reforming ourselves. To make general demands for social and political reform on the basis of such insights is fruitless. It is easy to say how other people should be, but student of [life] must work in the depths and not on the surface.
The third requirement of the student of [life] is intimately connected to the second. It requires that we win through to the conviction that thoughts and feelings are as important for the world as actions. We should recognize that when we hate our fellow human beings it is just as destructive as when we physically strike them. This brings us once more to the insights that anything we do for our own improvement benefits not just ourselves but also the world…
We must find the middle ground between following the demands of the world and doing what we see as the right thing to do. We must not force upon others something that they cannot understand, but at the same time we must be free of the urge to do only what those around us recognize and approve.
With many, many blessings and very great love for all of us,
Rebba Raine
