G-d Stuff, Part Two

When I got to Mount Sinai (the hospital, not the mountain; I haven't blogged about it yet) I afforded myself of the opportunity to speak to the chaplain. Rabbi Goldstein is a very amiable fellow who was very easy to talk to. The day he came to my room I was in particulalry bad shape: I was having a lot of trouble breathing and consequently a good deal of trouble talking as well. I explained very briefly what had happened to me and again broached the question of WHY? I was still clinging to my theory that my illness was Divine punishment, and it was up to me to figure out what I was being punished for. He saw it differently. Apparently he does not subscribe to the notion of a wrathful, vengeful Supreme Being, but rather a loving, caring Heavenly Father. "Yes, but even a father gives a misbehaving child a potch (slap) once in a while," I countered. Rabbi Goldstein then came up with what I thought was a great line, one I'm thinking of having made into a needlepoint. "G-d," he said, "is not in the potch business". Boy, do I hope he's right! Then the good Rabbi offered an interesting theory of his own. While I found it somewhat esoteric and perhaps even convoluted, it was pretty darn intriguing nonetheless. In Genesis we find that when G-d created Adam, He breathed the breath of life into his nostrils and Adam became "a living soul". What's your problem, medically, Rabbi Goldstein asked, rhetorically. You can't breathe. You can't accept the breath of G-d (i.e., G-d) into your body, into you lungs. And the reason you can't accept G-d is...are you ready for this?...because you don't accept yourself. Whoa! Now that's heavy!

Anyway, I don't know if Dr. Lief and/or Rabbi Goldstein have all the answers, but they certainly gave me some things to think about. What I can say conclusively is this: during my darkest days in the ICU, what kept me going was that I wanted to meet my new granddaughter, Meira, and I wanted to be at my grandson Menachem's Bar Mitzvah. G-d was gracious enough to allow me to partake of those two indescribable pleasures, so I figure I owe Him. I'm not quite sure what I want to work on first (there's soooooo much that could use some fixing!) but I'm going to try to be a better person in general and, dare I say, perhaps even a smidge less self absorbed as well.