LOST IN THE WOODS

     Ever find yourself turning around in a wooded area and losing your sense of location? How to find your way out to civilization? Or even just trying to maneuver around the eternal detours of road construction that never seems to end? Well, here we are in the midst of a forest of our own making, allowing it to grow up around us, perhaps even enjoying some of it until we realized what the truth of it was. Now the question is how do we get out of here?
     From the Code of Hammurabi to the rules of the Bible to the codified laws of society, man has moved positively along the road through the forests. Yes, we have gotten lost at times, terribly lost, and still are, but there was a forward movement. Now? Now is problematic and the question is - how did we get here in the first place? Where did we go wrong?
     I believe we forgot. We forgot that life is not just the accumulation of 'stuff'. It is not just the fancy cars or the bigger house or the costliest clothing. There are social obligations and that is what we have left alongside the road these days, thinking perhaps that we were lightening the load, but instead have found that without it, we appear to be weighed down and are sinking deeply down into a darker, more complex forest.   
     We have wasted funds on egos. Ben Carson's supposed great initiative has bombed. Quelle surprise! The DOJ has become a revolving door at the top and a poor excuse for the defender of the nation, becoming instead, the tool of Trump. Justice has gone out the door and taken another path, leaving other levels of government to challenge what has become a nasty status quo.
     People charged and convicted of crimes see nothing wrong in sending threatening tweets with target and harsh words. Why? Perhaps they feel that the leader of this now perverted society, the one lost in the deep backwoods, will save them when he achieves his final goal of total domination of America and the end of our democracy. When the President of the country is described as "it's possible that Trump is a Russian asset", then know for sure that we are indeed lost. We have thrown away the signposts to safety, defying our allies and making it easier for our enemies to flex their muscles, annex lands not theirs, dominate the world's economy.
     We are imprisoning children, tormenting their parents, allowing people in our custody to die, turning our back on our very being as we deny sanctuary to those seeking asylum, think that we can wall ourselves off from the world with sky high steel bollards, usurping private land to do so, ruining the natural migration paths of animals, and  now - now we are force-feeding those in detention! Admitted to by ICE! What the hell!!!! Are we so deeply in this dark woods that we will never ever get out?
     What is most frightening to me as a Jew is the fact, backed by statistics and gruesome videos, is the immense growth of anti Semitic deeds, words and behavior of the world. Marches, filthy epithets, beatings, killings, threats, and the same old same old of blaming the Jews for the misfortunes of the world, for its uneasiness, for all its ills. Have we not learned anything from history or are we perennially doomed to repeat it? Yesterday, reading the reports and statistics from all over the world made me wonder what the end of it all would be.
     Perhaps we are getting some warning. One of the largest glaciers in Antarctica has a huge hole beneath it where melting has occurred. Should this glacier collapse, well, you figure it out. There is a Biblical promise that the world would never again be destroyed by flood, but we are doing a great job of forcing that promise to be broken - and through our own doing! But not to worry, for if not by water, there are many other natural disasters that we are courting, so patience!
     I hope that many of us are now seeking a way out, finding the true path, challenging the status of lost in the woods. We do not have to be perfect, only to strive to be better than we are. Plenty of room there so why not get started? The increasing forest fires, those catastrophic ones, are ever growing. Times a wasting.