Yom Kippur Reflections

One of the many things I like about the synagogue where I attend High Holiday Services is the fact that the rabbi opens services by giving us permission to let our attention lag. That's right, if we find ourselves getting bored during prayers and find ourselves daydreaming, reading ahead through the prayer book, even dozing off, we have our rabbi's blessing.

The idea here is not to indulge the ever-diminishing attention spans of a contemporary congregation, but in fact to give our minds some valuable time to pause and breathe between moments of pious contemplation.

During one of these moments, I happened to read through some of the anecdotes printed in my book, and I came across one that I found particularly inspiring. A prophet goes to the city of Sodom to try to get its citizens to change their evil ways. Predictably, he has no success. Still, he keeps preaching. A child goes up to the prophet and asks why he bothers, since there's no sign he'll ever succeed and getting the Sodomites to reform themselves. "At first I did it to try to get others to change their ways," says the prophet. "Now, I do it so that I don't change my ways."

This story is the perfect analogy for being an artist at a time when the arts are hurting, not just for money, but also for passionate and discerning audiences. Why write, paint, act, dance, compose, on and on, when there is so little hope of being read or watched or listened to? In order to preserve one's soul from getting sucked into the vapid wasteland otherwise known as our contemporary culture. Every minute I'm working on a book, story, or essay is a minute I'm not spending answering the latest Facebook poll, researching the lives of John and Kate (whoever they are), or downloading some useless "app" for my iPhone. Every precious minute I'm sitting quietly reading a book, I'm not checking email, watching TV, or doing some other activity that feeds my candylike craving for instant gratification, but leaves my soul to starve.