Leon's No News Bulletin 121 Sat 26th Sept 09

Dear Friends, shalom,

The purpose of Yom Kippur is to keep us searching for an ever more perfect world.

 

Until the Day of Atonement came along with its opening chords of Kol Nidrei I thought my life was perfect.

 

All of a sudden the words of this song try to strike me with fear and awe that God doesn’t exactly see things the way I do and in fact might think that there are some flaws in my perfect world and I’m in trouble if I don’t fix these things up.

 

I prostrate myself, shaking and shivering all over with fear, begging God for mercy and promising I’ll fix things up the way He wants them.

 

Somehow belief in God always manages to reveal a flaw in my life which I never knew existed. No matter how hard I try to achieve it I never manage to find perfection. Every Yom Kippur always manages to alert me to some new error that needs correcting and atoning for.

 

I’m dreaming of a Yom Kippur when I’ll be perfect like Bing Crosby’s dreaming of a white Christmas.

 

When I’m perfect I won’t have to fast and I won’t be full of fear.

 

But really, when you think about it who wants to be free of anxiety and fear of punishment from God?  Who wants to be able to say “now I’ve reached perfection and I don’t have to fast anymore”?

 

Not me. To be really honest I must say that actually I’m enjoying this wallowing in guilt, which I wouldn’t feel if I didn’t know that there was a god about whom Yom Kippur comes to inform me.

 

I’ll leave the explanation why this is so to the Freudian psycho-analysts, but why are we constantly in search of perfection? Why can’t we ever seem to reach the situation of being perfect?

 

From the description of Yom Kippur above it’s clear that perfection is the search not the situation. It’s the constant search for greater perfection, for flaws to regret and atone for and to remove.

 

It’s a constant search. The moment a person finds one perfection another pops up.

 

Perfection is not a stationary situation that one arrives at; it’s being in a state of constant search. The search is infinite because the world is infinite.

 

This is a great comfort to the humans who become attached to the world they live in and suffer great sadness when they have to leave it or when a loved one leaves it.

 

The comfort is that the world continues to become ever more perfect and will continually do so forever.

 

Yom Kippur shows us the way to the Garden of Eden. It’s the world we leave behind after we die. Perhaps we enjoy it as spirits. Perhaps we enjoy it as a reincarnated body. Whatever the case our lives are a once in a lifetime opportunity to make it more perfect.

 

Wishing you a great no news day

Yours truly

Leon Gork

 

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