See the Good

I know it feels impossible right now. I'm struggling, too.

“There’s beauty.”

The graffiti spoke to me.

“There’s beauty,” it called out, those green eyes staring me down with loving intent. I heard what it was saying, but c’mon. Hasn’t the artist been watching the news?

I stopped to take a photo of it anyway. To preserve it for later, just in case. Because somewhere in my kishkes, I sensed that whoever had spraypainted those words on the wall was right, not that I was ready to believe it.

There is beauty. There must be.

It was on the second afternoon of my recent trip to Israel that I happened upon this display of street art on a building in central Jerusalem. I’d come to visit my son, who made aliyah just two days before Rosh Hashana. He was at work and I had hours to roam until we met for dinner at his favorite schwarma and felafel stand.

My flight was booked months earlier, when we were still living in the before. In the early days of the after, I spent a lot of time reading Chaim Nachman Bialik’s brutal poem, In the City of Slaughter. Nothing else held my interest for weeks post-October 7. We were, we are, a people in mourning, after all. Given that, I wanted desperately to have positive impact during my trip. To volunteer and pray and connect, though as the days passed, I discovered that just being in Israel now was important (and for me, life-changing).

I sat with a friend and our conversation was the same as the one on everyone’s lips. The war, the losses, the hostages, the soldiers. How could it be otherwise? So it felt wrong, or at least extravagant, to dine on shakshuka and iced coffee in a restaurant. She chided me. “We must enjoy what we can. To continue as best as we can.” Meaning, the desire for a boureka that melts in your mouth can coexist with one’s sadness, worry, and fear, and with wanting to do something that matters. It is a way to keep our forks, if nothing else, in a place of normalcy.

“There’s beauty.”

I carried the words with me like a set of keys. And before I knew it, they were true. My lids lifted. I saw beauty, felt its pulse, sensed the world spin as it does even at the darkest of hours. The stunning new National Library opened in spite of everything — books as normalcy, books as signs of life — so I visited. Stirring melodies, a war playlist, filled the airwaves; unity the streets. I took it all in, admiring the tempting sufganiyot on display in bakery windows in anticipation of Chanukah. Nothing was normal. And yet, there were, thank G-d, so many beautiful new Jewish babies (may H’ watch over them) on the streets of Jerusalem. It made it possible to imagine a day when things might be normal again.

Sorrow and fear still shadow me now, weighing me down as they do so many of us. How could they not? But I’m working hard to let appreciation for all that remains beautiful in the world coexist with it, to give it the air to breathe inside me.

I cannot say when the graffiti artist painted his or her display, whether it preceded or followed the day that changed everything. Still, I know that the words are as much a glimpse of the before as they are the hope for the after. And that in the meantime, they are a sign of faith.

Two words, like a life preserver, handing us the language to get through difficult times.

Love,
Merri

P.S. Thanks for being here. If you’re reading this and not yet a subscriber, please sign up and join the Days of Rest community.