ויחד לבבנ

Sometimes things just happen and we are not sure why…. but we hope that things turn out the way that they were supposed to…faith… everything happens for a reason. The faith in a higher being, a higher consciousness or even a universal consciousness can be very unsettling to some… an idea of totally breaking down the borders which confine the individual soul, the individual “self” and creating the awareness of the soul of the world…ONE being…ONE energy… ONE heart…the unification of the heart…
“ויחד לבבנו” as it says in the 2nd Bracha before the K’riat Sh’ma… we see within the word for heart that the letter “ב” is written twice in a row …according to a midrash…this repetition is thought to symbolize the unification of the lev tov (the good heart) and the lev ra (the bad heart) or simply just to further demonstrate the for unification in general…the unification of a people…. The unification of “am Israel” (nation of Israel)
I woke up this morning fairly tired but full of light from a marvelous Shabbat- filled with new friends and new family, good food and good words of Torah, good songs and beautiful blessings…I was ready to start the day and had the intention of going to Yeshivat Simchat Shlomo to do my weekly Sunday learning…but… I missed my bus and couldn’t make it to class on time… so, instead I went to breakfast and did some reading for my spirituality class that I am taking at Hebrew U… I read about the oneness of man and the idea of G-d being “within the self” rather than “up above” as explained by Arthur Green. I ate my muesli and sipped my Americano. My thoughts began to fade in and out between words of divinity and my planned schedule for the rest of the day. I checked my watch and saw that the next class at Simchat Shlomo would be starting soon so I paid my bill and went on my way. I got to my “Siddur and Tefilla Content Skills class” and we began talking in depth about the Sh’ma and the blessings before and after (which is were the thoughts in my opening first paragraph mostly came from) Our class lasted about an hour and a half and I was inspired but felt the need to dwell more on what I was just taught. Rebbe Nachman stresses the importance of living the Torah that one learns. If you learn, and then you pray to instill what you learned into your life, this pattern will continue to build and strengthen your connection to the world, to Hashem, to Judaism, to yourself etc. So I left the class with the intention of meditating a bit on the bus home on what I had just learned. I hoped to relax, contemplate and figure out what these new words of Torah meant to me in my life and how I wanted to grow from this new knowledge. So there I stood at my bus stop waiting for the 23 and I began to think, what do I want to bring into this world… I want to heal, I want to bring light, I want to bring smiles, I want to love, I want to be loved, I want to comfort (the list goes on)….it was at that moment I heard a scream… I snapped out of my thoughts, opened my eyes to the world and looked up… an older man was hit by a bus. He had been walking between the curb and the buses trying to balance himself with a his cane and a bus drove by and knocked him over… he wasn’t run over by the bus but he had fallen and hit his nose and head on the curb and was bleeding severly… I didn’t know what to do… I couldn’t even fully process what was going on… I wanted help in some way but didn’t know how to. There were so many people trying to help I figured I should just let the other people take care of him especially since they spoke his language… Some people handed him tissues and others just stared…. There was a religious British women who was standing on the sidelines with me who I could tell was contemplating how she could help just as I was….she took a step forward and helped the old man to a bus stop bench… someone gave her a bottle of water and she looked right at me and handed me the water bottle…the next thing we knew… we were both sitting on a bus bench with a crowd of people around us watching as she held tons of tissues on his gushing eyebrow and nose and I sat on the other side of him with my hand on his shoulder offering him water and doing my best to talk to him in Hebrew and try to clam him down… the poor man was so scared… and maybe even a bit embarrassed… I sat there; water in hand thinking… how I got into this situation… everything happened so suddenly… and now here I am… I was living my prayer…I was healing, I was comforting…. this is what was supposed to happen… I transformed into a vessel for Hashem to bring healing and comfort into the world….what a blessing… what a sign…. There was and Israeli girl next to me phoning the Magen David Adom (ambulance)… help was on the way…. ONENESS…. Oneness at its finest… me and the other two women uniting to help a hurting body…our hearts unified to provide strength and comfort for a heart filled with fear and pain… …ONESS…wow…. What an experience…. After the man was taken away, we knew he would be okay…I then grabbed the hands of the British women and asked her what her name was…Shoshanna Levi…. We looked at each other in the eyes and smiled…. a smile from the deepest parts of our soul…a smile that embraced the joyfulness of acting on behalf of G-d and kindness… we then squeezed each others hands and said Shavua Tov… after this “balagan” I wanted to laugh, cry and smile all at the same time… I felt so blessed…
I took a deep breath and tried to run through what I had just experienced… I couldn’t comprehend it all… minutes went by and the bus stop hustle and bustle continued as normal. I watched people walk by knowing that they had no idea what happened at this very spot 20 minutes prior. I was still waiting for my bus… constantly weaving through people trying to get a glimpse at the lit up numbers on the front of the buses…. Still… no 23… someone grabbed my arm… it was the Israeli girl from before who had called for the ambulance… she said to me in Hebrew “he needs the 25” and she pointed to a blind man… I was in shock another mitzvah to do… I giggled while still kind of crying and said okay… so there I stood this time with a blind man holding onto my arm… telling him in Hebrew the number of every bus that passed by… finally the 25 came and I helped him onto the bus and wished him a good day. He smiled a big smile and said thank you. I smiled back knowing that he would feel it within his heart. His bus drove away…and I was still smiling… I looked up and said in a whisper “okay…I get it Hashem”… Live your Prayer….We are one breath, within one unified soul, walking in each others foot steps…be the best YOU that YOU can be and peace will be brought into the world… Shavua Tov… I miss you all
Blessings,
C