My friend, and former Kabbalah student, Nancy Sharp is a “professional blogger” and has recently being huffing on Huffington Post (I may have just come up with a new word!). Her latest post is entitled Fragments of a Life in which I came across this gem: “Maybe life was always a sweep of contradictions and I just never saw it that way.”
How can something be both whole and in fragments? I trust that many of you remember one of Isaac Luria’s teaching of the shattering of the vessels and how what once was whole is now in fragments. Yet, those fragments, which include us, are always seeking the wholeness from where they came and where they are going.
This summer we are introducing some new classes and teachers (so please look over the schedule) and I will offer two film classes. The Tikkun Project will explore films that highlight how we are fragments of each other. I began my search this week of new films with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The key (literally and figuratively) of the film emerges when a hidden vessel, belonging to the main character’s father who died in the World Trade Center on September 11, shatters and reveals “the key.”
It is a remarkably sensitive film about healing the fragments of lives shattered by loss. Based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, the story poignantly brings together three people whose loss of parents appears disconnected, only to reveal, upon closer examination, how the key unlocks the possibility of their sharing in and helping heal each other’s grief.
9-11. A fragment of shattered reality. Its debris is in every square inch of human consciousness. It is indeed in fragments until we create wholeness by brining the fragments together. The larger scale Tikkun is to bring wholeness (peace). The film reminds us that there are a million stories of intersecting and interconnecting fragments. Bringing the fragments together is one small step to having it be incredibly close and, if you listening, extremely loud.
Click here to read Nancy’s blog.
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