75 Years ago....

Today marks the 75th anniversary of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party taking power in Germany. Avi Priomor, the former Israeli ambassador to Germany, said at an event commerating the Holocaust and the liberation of Auschwitz in Erfurt last Friday:

"Where in the world has one ever seen a nation that erects memorials to immortalize its own shame? Only the Germans had the bravery and the humility."

This is such an important statement, the ability to see what has been done wrong, to remember it, to seek forgivenens...to have the humility---humilitz in its positive sense---to do this and go on. The going on can be such a difficult aspect for some, it can be that we go on and forget OR that we go on and continue to drown in our unrelenting feelings of having done the worse. On a personal level, I understand the second feeling very well. The problem is that this can lead to a deep hardening of the heart on the personal level and on a much wider level. In an article from the IHT this moring, Susan Neiman, directior of the Einstein Forums in Potsdam, and international publich research organization said her own children are saturated with discussions of the Holocaust and no longer want to hear about it. She said:

"I worry terribly that it's going to backfire."

So, not so easy to find the balance between remembering so that we can help ourselves from falling into error again and the other side of beating ourselves down for what we've done, or feel we've done, and not coming to a sense of closure and moving on. A difficult sense to going on...

Here is a picture of the Old Opera House (Alter Oper) here in Frankfurt at Christmas this year. The Opera lay in ruins into the 1980's and it was decided to rebuild it. It reminded me that memories of past mistakes can also be a light to illumintate our present with memory and the hope of going on....

Back Again!

Wow...amazing to think that it has almost been a year since I last wrote. Mostly this was due to other writing and creative projects, but now I'd like to get back to writing on my blog. As always the blog will be about my every day encounters with my spiritual life. And I thought no better way to start off than of the statue that I made which stands in front of our front door. That means, we see it when we leave home and when we return. It is a reminder for me to keep myself open to others and to practice Compassion in the world. And along with the statue is one of my favorite quotes from the Pali Suttas:

"...with a heart filled with loving-kindness...having pervaded one directions with such a heart, and likewise a second direction, a third directions and a fourth direction. Upward, downward, across, everywhere, and in every way, throughout the whole world, he lives with a loving-kindness that is widespread, great, boundless, free from hatred, and untroubled."

This is from the Kalama Sutta and it is from John J. Holder's book: Early Buddhist Discourses. It's a great book and you can even go to the publishers website to download study and discussion questions, which I found wonderful to think about myself.