Fall Harvest Moon
We’ve had snow. Again yesterday. Modest accumulation since the ground is still too warm. These are the days when snow mixes with the golden aspen leaves, throwing white into the green and gold colors of Mountain High. Go, Shadows.
Yesterday I finished my work on kavod. Here’s the end of it:
Text #3 “Kavod is translated as honour/respect. Kavod is way beyond good manners and saying please and thank you. It’s seeing the spiritual value of a human being and yourself. The greater sense of my own value, the more I don’t need to search for the approval of others and the more I am able to honour other people and see a sense of their value. If I give genuine kavod to another person than they in turn will value and respect me. We say “kodosh, kodosh, kodosh, the entire world is filled with the Kavod/honour of Hashem”. http://www.shortvort.com/mussar/10450-kavod>
Rabbi Eliezer said: “Let the honor of your friend be as dear to you as your own.” Morinis, Everyday Holiness, p. 114
Before this text I added an image of Claude Monet’s:
Monet, of course, was part of the Impressionist movement, committed to painting the colors as they were at particular moment in a particular place. They let the colors build the image rather than using color as a tool to build the image in a way that pleased their aesthetic.
This is similar, I think, to the notion of kavod. With kavod we look into the essence of ourselves and others, see that essence and let it build our image of ourselves and the other, rather than using our biases, our assumptions, our judgments. Just as the impressionists did, though, we have to know that our perceptions of that essence change from moment even though the essence, the imago dei, may remain the same. (I have some disagreement with the notion of soul, or essence, as a sort of Platonic archetype, constant and unchanging.)
Anyhow, I’m looking forward to this gathering of the MVP. I’ve done my awe work for the last month and am ready to get started on kavod.
