calling the moon, revisited

When I was in Yom Kippur services last weekend, I read this Talmud story (reading a separate book about commentary on the holidays because I was boooooored and unhappily wondering what I was doing in services anyway if it isn't meaningful for me at this point in my life. but then I read this story and it felt very profound, and I feel like little moments like this sometimes happen to me at synagogue, and maybe that is reason enough to go. but they also happen on the subway sometimes, so I don't know what that means) that went a little something like this:

A big important rabbi presided over his congregation for Yom Kippur. At the end of the service but before breaking their fast, everyone was supposed to go out and celebrate the appearance of the new moon, which symbolized rebirth for the new year -- but this year, the rabbi looked outside and the moon was invisible, completely clouded over. He got very worried and, fearing this was a bad sign for the coming year, tried to will the clouds away and force the moon out with his mind.

It didn't work, and the rabbi sat alone in silence, concentrating on the moon. But his faithful followers -- his hasidim -- didn't know to worry about the moon, and they were so full of joy about the end of the sad holiday and hope for the new year that they began to dance. Eventually, their enthusaism was so contagious that the rabbi got up and danced with them and forgot about the moon. And the moon looked down and saw their dancing, and it smiled, and (you guessed it) came out from behind the clouds. And one of the hasids looked out the window and told the rabbi the new moon was out, and the rabbi saw it and realized his mistake.

Moral of the story: joy, not concentration.

I think I've been applying too much of the latter and not enough of the former to my problems these days. You can't force joy and you can force concentration, which makes the concentration easier in a way -- it makes sense that we'd try to tackle uncontrollable things by addressing them as though they were under our control. But it doesn't work, and there's no dancing in the process. Not sure exactly how to fix this, but I'm working on it. A friend gave me an awesome book tonight about how to knit socks... maybe socks are good first step...