By the Grace of G-d
Dear Friend,
I write these words from Bangkok…
Yesterday we arrived back ‘home’.
After being away from ‘home’, ‘on the road’, for a while.
Overnight, I got a chance to reflect a little bit about what the difference is between being ‘on the road’ or being ‘home’.
Two things come to mind.
Home is a place where we try and make ourselves as comfortable as possible. Whereas when we are not at home, we make peace with not having all the things we are used to having at home, at home we try and make sure we have all the things we ‘need’ and plenty of stuff we don’t ‘need’. We try to create the ambience that makes us feel comfortable.
Home is also a ‘state of mind’. Home is a place where we feel comfortable just being who we are. Especially if we are at home alone. No need for societal niceties and ‘dressing up’. At home you can just be ‘you’. The way ‘you’ truly are. It is nice to tell your guest ‘make yourself at home’ but as a guest you can’t really ‘make yourself at home’.
At home you can ‘make yourself at home’.
Based on these two points there are two meditations I would like share.
One:
Truly, we are never really ‘home’ in this material world. This world is an antechamber for the true eternal world. When we depart this world we don’t take our material possessions with us.
Our true ‘home’ is built by the Torah and Mitzvahs we fulfil.
This makes a critical difference in the way we live our lives.
If our material life is not truly our final destination, we can learn to make do without every minute detail of our material life being perfect. The furniture in your hotel room, rented Airbnb or mothers-in-law house, is not so important to you. You don’t obsess over the details of your accommodations because ‘you are just passing through’.
If we realize that during our lives, the material ‘stuff’ is merely meant to serve us as we ‘pass through’, we will not get so caught up in accumulating and perfecting our materialistic desires.
How nice you are in the way you treat others should thus be more important to you than the quality of your furniture or the make of your car.
Making sure to light Shabbat candles before sundown on Fridays will be more meaningful to you than the details of the splendor of the chandelier in your living room.
Our true focus and investment would be in our spiritual palace that we are building. Through doing good deeds and studying Torah.
Those are the things that really count.
Those are the things we should make sure to get better and better at.
This link is to a song which I found really illuminating. *Lyrics pasted below.
Two:
G-d wants us to prepare a ‘home’ for Him in this world.
The home design and ‘décor’ G-d feels comfortable with, is outlined in the Torah. Follow the instructions in His manual, and He says (so to speak) ‘I feel so at home here in this physical world’.
Home is the place that we feel comfortable just being ourselves. Not getting dressed up, just being natural. The true being of a person is expressed in their home.
Same with G-d (so to speak).
When we make the world a ‘home for G-d’ the result is that He treats it like His home and reveals His deepest essence, just like a person who is has no need to be ‘dressed up’ while at home themselves.
Link here to article about creating a ‘Home for G-d’.
This revelation of G-d’s essence is what will happen when Mashiach comes.
This ‘home for G-d’ is what we are creating through our Torah and Mitzvahs.
We have been building it for nearly two thousand years.
The Rebbe told us that it is about to happen.
Imminently.
Then we will exclaim loudly and jubilantly
G-d, WELCOME HOME
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yosef Kantor
PS: I copied from someones email to me last week in which they used the world ‘gloomy’ to describe the situation in Thailand.
I should therefore copy from an email I got after that
Dear Rabbi,
Since you’re sounding like everyone else in Thailand, this chart from Johns Hopkins, puts things into a better medical perspective, from the news, where things are said to be significantly more dire.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/embed/mortality-rates/mortality_top10_720.html
I have not researched the topic myself… but since I shared one perspective I figured it may be helpful to some of my readers to share this other perspective. Our behavior must remain the same in terms of precautions and following the governments directives, but perhaps it will help reduce the fear factor and allow for more peace of mind.
May G-d bless us with health. Through the natural means that he he empowered the doctors with, (vaccinations and medicines) and through above-natural G-dly miraculous means, whatever it takes, in whatever way He chooses… the main thing is that He should bring healing to the world. AMEN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhSG1aEvChA
*Just Like You - Lyrics:
I traveled halfway across the world to see a sage
I heard he lived like such a poor man in this day and age
I said, where’s your leather couches where’s your golden chandelier
Where’s your walk-in closet for all that stuff you could wear
Well all you got is that suitcase my friend, ain’t that true
I said, yeah but you know that I’m just passing through
That’s when he said…
I’m just like you, just passing through just like you
My heart wants to feel something that’s real
And my mind hopes to find treasures of another kind
And if you had my eyes you’d see a palace For you and me
Although he’s been forever living in this town
People say he never really settled down
They say, where’s your leather couches where’s your golden chandelier
Where’s your walk-in closet for all that stuff you could wear
The neighbors talk but they don’t understand
The things he’s collecting you can’t hold in your hand
Like he said…
I’m just like you, just passing through just like you
My heart wants to feel something that’s real And my mind hopes to find treasures of another kind
And if you had my eyes you’d see a palace For you and me