From Cantor Lee

An article was recently forwarded to me about a woman who joined a prayer group to pray for a child with cancer. Each night the woman participated in a conference call that included a leader reciting psalms. Although the woman felt quite transformed by this experience, in the end the child died leaving the prayers of the group unanswered.

This is a difficult topic to understand. Why pray if our prayers are not answered? In our Hebrew School we have a ritual each week where the children pray for people and animals they choose which sometimes includes an ill grandparent or other loved one. And yes, sometimes that loved one dies. Our children have learned that we might not always receive the answer to the prayer that we personally want but that prayer always helps.

Thirteen years ago, Rabbi David and I began praying for one of our neighbors, a sixteen year old named Sean who had been battling cancer for three years. I kept getting the spiritual message that I was to form a healing circle for Sean with our neighbors. This was quite out of my comfort zone at the time as I wasn’t sure how my neighbors, of all different religions, would react to such a request. However, my spiritual guides would not leave me alone so I finally approached one of my neighbors, a devout Christian. She loved the idea and offered to have the circle at her home. We began with five of us but word spread and at the peak of the healing circle we had over 100 people!

We were all very excited when after a few days of our healing circle Sean began to improve! In the end however, he too passed away. Sean’s mother and I often spoke afterwards of how the love and support of the circle helped Sean and the family with his transition. Those of us in the circle also understood that Sean’s soul had decided it was his time.

Rabbi David and I have a saying, “Not Everything is as it Seems,” for what often doesn’t make sense in the physical world makes sense in the spiritual world. To cover all bases we always pray for the “Highest Good.” As an evolved soul, Sean touched everyone he met and helped me in my own spiritual understanding. His mother and I both felt that Sean left when he did to help many souls cross over who died on 9-11, the day he was buried.

We know that evolved souls may take on extremely difficult assignments to help our world. Perhaps this is the case with Robin Williams who despite his illness brought such Joy to us all! Did he on a soul level choose to leave the planet through suicide to save many others from doing the same? His death has certainly raised awareness of mental illness, depression and suicide. Just the outpouring of compassion and love has to have helped raise the vibration of our planet.

In the end, we really don’t have the answers and no matter the Higher Plan, still we mourn when we lose our loved ones. For me it is a little easier knowing that not everything is as it seems, what often doesn’t make sense in the physical world makes sense in the spiritual world.

From Rabbi David aka The Reb
Most of us are familiar with the classic love triangle story with King David, Bat Sheva and her husband Uriah. The king and Bat Sheva have an affair, she becomes pregnant and King David has Uriah killed by sending him to the battlefront. After the baby is born, the king is told by Prophet Nathan that the baby will not live due to this transgression.

As the baby becomes sick, King David goes into seclusion and fasts for seven day begging G-D for forgiveness. “Why punish an innocent baby for his father’s sin?” he argues while intensely praying. After crying and pleading throughout the week, the baby still dies. To the astonishment of his servants, King David gets off the floor, washes his face and sits down to eat breakfast.

The death of the baby made no sense to the king. G-D was upset with him as he should be, but punishing the child went against G-D’s own words in the Torah, as it specifically and very clearly decreed that children should never die for the sins of their fathers (and vice versa).

Yet, while mourning the death of his innocent baby, he immediately accepts the divine verdict despite the obvious contradiction to G-D’s own pledge. What is it that King David knew that was unknown to his servants?

If we lived in a physical reality only, with nothing else but the here and now, then we would simply say that prayers are a way for us to manifest all of our wishes here on earth. But this is not the Jewish reality. In its basis, Jewish theology recognizes that the here and now is but a minute component of that which is around us. Our physical life on earth is a very small part of the spectrum of all that there is.

So where is the rest of this giant spectrum? The Hebrew term for it is “Nistar,” Hidden. We know for example that there is a designer, a maker of the universe with its laws and nature. We just don’t know who and what it is.

And of course on the human level we justify the idea of G-D and other spiritual matters by explaining that nature is too complex to randomly work in such perfect harmony. We also say that for every cause there is an effect, so that even the “big bang,” is still an effect, not a cause. The original “Cause,” (G-D?) is a concept which the human mind cannot truly understand.

When praying, we enter into a world which is not understood by the physical tools we possess in this physical world. It also is not necessarily a linear process where we have an issue, we pray, the issue is solved. It would be wonderful if prayers worked that way all the time but they don’t.

The world of prayer is a two way street. When we petition the Higher Power (AKA ” praying”) we are changed inside. It draws us closer to the “Nistar” the unknown. While King David prayers were not answered despite a night of intense prayer and fasting, this episode did draw him closer to that spiritual unknown. One can sense that the king went through a paradigm shift, a spiritual enhancement which changed him forever.

I believe that the world of the unknown is vast and complex and that when a human soul lives on earth it may be for reasons far greater than we in the physical world can comprehend. Yet, it is this understanding which helps us become the spiritual beings we all strive to be.

Prayer may not always achieve our intended desires in our physical world but they do open the gates of heaven deep within our hearts and minds.