And now that I’ve complained about my smart phone addiction, I’d like to sing it’s praises. I see a flower, a beautiful flower among thousands of others, hanging from a branch in the Presidio, wet with dew. I want to share how beautiful this flower is with my husband, or maybe with other friends. I pull out my phone and photograph the flower. I use one of my editing apps and zero in on the droplets of dew. Others, who I know, who may be at work, or are otherwise indoors and will never see this very flower, can now see it, if I share the picture with them.
I take a long bus ride to my favorite café and in-between looking out of the bus window I read Stephen Batchelor’s latest book, after buddhism: rethinking the dharma for a secular age. The lower case letters of the title are not an accident. I read this book on my smart phone. I believe that this book is especially important right now. I’ve always enjoyed Batchelor’s books about Buddhism, beginning with Buddhism Without Beliefs, a Buddhist counterpart to Sherwin Wine’s Judaism Beyond God.
One does not have to accept dogma to be a Jew or to have a Buddhist practice, but because people tend to want certainty, we have a tendency to be attracted to institutionalized forms of religion that present absolutes. I recommend both of these books, and, if you’re interested in learning about the middle way that I think these approaches suggest, do pull out that smart phone or computer and see The Middle Way Society website: http://www.middlewaysociety.org/ Also, if you’re interested in a secular Jewish practice, check out The Society for Secular Humanistic Judaism: http://www.shj.org/
After reading Batchelor’s book on the bus, I went into a café and continued to read on my computer. My attention was strongly grabbed, though, when I heard a lovely, moving piece of music. What was I hearing? I pulled out my smartphone, opened the app called Shazam, and, bingo, found the music and was able to identify it. The group was not a group I ever would have heard of and I was happy to buy the 6- minute piece of music on my, you guessed it, smartphone.
I’m remembering discussions during the 1960’s about technology. We discussed everything back then – maybe it was because I was of an age when one questioned everything, or, it’s probably partly true that the 1960’s youth culture encouraged us to question everything. In any case, we talked about technology. Should we try to go back to living a life without technology? Many folks went back to the land and tried to live what they thought would be a quiet, simple, life. Others of us thought that technology was neither good nor bad, but depended upon how we used it. When I think of my smartphone, I see an object that has positive uses for me. When I use this piece of technology, I’m able to read, listen to music, read about philosophies that make sense to me, communicate with friends on Facebook, write emails, take photographs, make collages, and even identify a piece of music that I’ve never heard. What a powerful little object this is. On the other hand, as I wrote about in my last post, one can easily become addicted to smartphones. I know I walk a fine line here.
As long as I continue to see the world around me, can be inspired by great writing, hear beautiful music, take photographs, create collages, communicate with those who are not nearby, listen to podcasts, and, most important, do nothing and put this little object away, all is well.
se whom we wronged. We seek to be more understanding and compassionate. There are many websites that help us at this time. We don’t have to rely on a particular rabbi or synagogue for our inspiration. I found a website that I thought was particularly inspiring. It’s called 
o. Slowly, the horse appears to be more and more comfortable in the water. The girl leads it in further. The horse splashes the water with glee. 
The girl laughs and laughs and the horse, its comfort level quite high at this point, keeps splashing and splashing. The joy of the splashing is punctuated by the girl’s infectious laughter. Pure joy is expressed by the horse and by the girl. If we empathize with these two beings we experience deep fear, patience, curiosity, and joy all in a period of 2 minutes and 19 seconds!
be interested in such self-involved people. I tend to be judgmental and I don’t like that about myself, but why would I be interested in this program? None of the characters do anything for anyone else. The closest thing to service is that one character is a high-end hostess. Of course, the main character is a writer and perhaps what she is writing will have relevance to others – though perhaps not. At one point she has a writing assignment to get out of her comfort zone, to take cocaine and go wild and write about it. I’m not sure how comfortable I am with that scenario, although, perhaps the idiocy that transpires in the episode is a life lesson we might take from the story. Or maybe she is doing art for art’s sake. As I think that thought I have an “aha” moment! Over the past week I’ve been photographing my old paintings that I’ve had stored in the basement for as long as 30 years. I no longer have room to store these paintings and will be releasing them to family, friends, and non-profit institutions that will display them. This morning I thought about why I had stopped being a painter and chose, instead, to become a humanist Jewish leader and then a rabbi. Here is a short version of the story.
Rabbi Susan Averbach 