Day 76 What’s Good, What’s Bad; and, Manna From Heaven

Many years ago I had a friend with a truly annoying habit. She’d tell me about something that happened in her day, or her life, or the life of someone we knew, and then she’d add, “So that’s bad,” or “So that’s good.” At the time, I had just admitted to myself that I really was an intuitive, and I had begun my first tentative steps onto the path of living a spiritual life.

I’d known her for more than a decade when I noticed her habit. Everything from finding a lucky penny, “So that’s good,” to losing her keys, “So that’s bad,” to finding them, “So that’s good,” got a rating. Rating? Is that what I mean? A judgment. A commentary. A qualification? Maybe quantification is better. Point being, she tacked on a judgment at the end of every story like some constant binary report card.

When I was stronger in my own spiritual studies, a journey which she not only witnessed with me, but quasi-participated in, three or so years later, I asked her if she knew that she judged every experience or if she was unconsciously keeping a tally.

She looked at me as if I had just landed from Planet Q, and responded, clearly astonished, “I do?”

The United States has just passed a stranger-than-usual Memorial Day. The news is full of the good and the bad. Consider these:

Major crime is down all over the country. So that’s good.

The Imbecile-in-Chief and his Stepford Wife refused to wear masks at a service celebrating veterans in Baltimore. So that’s bad.

The W.H.O. stopped trials on hydroxychloroquine. So that’s good.

The beach house share, a New York summer ritual, is cancelled. So that’s bad.

The wealthiest New Yorkers snapped up the long-term rental properties so they could escape the City months ago. So that’s good.

People in need of care are not going to doctors or hospitals because they are afraid of contracting Covid-19. So that’s bad.

Joe and Jill Biden, masked in black, placed a wreath on a soldier’s grave in a ceremony in Wilmington, Delaware. So that’s good.

The pandemic, basically upended Ramadan, Islam’s holiest month. So that’s bad.

A rodentologist [who knew?] confirmed that the rat population is getting hungry, ergo dangerous; they’re turning on each other. So that’s good? For us. So that’s bad. For the rats.

All kinds of organizations in New York State plan to pay death benefits to those whose loved ones died of Covid-19 as they served the rest of us. So that’s amazingly good.

Kenny Chesney debuted his new album, not from the Dallas rock ’n’ roll arena that had been planned, and not in his signature hat and kicker boots, but from his basement in a baseball cap and flip-flops. So that’s bad. For his fans. So that’s good. For civic respect.

Actors, writers, dancers, painters, filmmakers, singers—artists of all stripes—have lost opportunities for debuts they’d been planning for years. So that’s bad. For the artists. So that’s good. For who-knows-who? Yet.

Opinion columnist Elizabeth Rosenthal’s mother died due to coronavirus. She is calling for her mother’s nursing home death to be counted, calling for a real count of the dead. So that’s good. For us. So that’s bad. For her.

William Shakespeare was the leading psychologist of his time. Let us repair to The Tragedy of Hamlet, as it is properly named, Act II, Scene 2. Hamlet chatting with the redoubtable Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, “For there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Thinking makes it so. Not good. Not bad. Thought applied to experience is what determines good or bad or like Charlie Warzel, Opinion writer at large for The New York Times, gives us in his a professional singles tennis report on his personal work-life balance.

“But you are not working from home. You are laboring in confinement, under duress.” So that’s bad. “The WFH Forever revolution promises to liberate workers from the chains of the office.” So that’s good. “In practice, it will capitalize on the total collapse of work-life balance.” So that’s bad.

“Through trial and error, I learned many lessons about how to work from home without losing my mind:” So that’s good. “... put on real clothes in the morning,” So that’s good, too. “... try not to do work in the same rooms you sleep or relax in,” So that’s good? bad? impossible? “ ....break up your day, set boundaries.” So both are good. “I began to use the privilege of working from home to prioritize balance, not productivity.”

Ah! Therein we findeth the culprit. Productivity, as measured in the U.S. of A. is the logical extension of report cards every thirteen weeks. Productivity is how my friend, who, I must add, was horrified when she realized what she’d been doing, began to deem everything good or bad.

So, let’s get to it, shall we?

A global pandemic is bad. There is no known vaccine. That, too, is bad. The economy is in free-fall. That, too, is bad.

And yet ... and yet ... and yet ...

People are working from home. That’s good. The pollution level in our cities has dropped precipitately, and that’s good. Less commuting means fewer cars and less exhaust. All good. We are learning almost instantaneously how to create and maintain boundaries. And that’s excellent. Education has leapt online. That’s good, and bad. The racial and economic divides in our country are in high relief. That’s good. The healthcare system is profiled daily. That’s good because it might cause some long-needed change.

All thinking, Beloved. All opinion, Beloved. All, my personal thinking making it so.

Here’s a long-ago story from my life. Once upon a time ... for that is how all good stories start ... I had a Jewish friend named Steven. Tall, gorgeous, gay. Sweet as could be. He was a Broadway theatre producer. Then came the plague a.k.a. The AIDS crisis.

As it did for so many, the plague kicked up Steven’s latent religious upbringing, and he became an observant Orthodox Jew living with AIDS. He thrived in his new spiritual environment and was happier than I’d ever seen him.

One day my phone rang and it was Steven. “Hey, beautiful,” which is what he always called me. “I need a favor.”

“Oh?” sez I.

“Uh-huh. My rabbi needs a shiksa witch.” This is one of those phrases so little heard that I asked him to repeat himself. “My rabbi needs a shiksa witch.”

My shiksa status was unquestioned. I was the wrong-half Jewish—my dad. Judaism is a matrilineal concern based on the notion that anyone could be a father, but a mother is unmistakable. Witch? Well, that’ll work.

“For what?”

So the long and the short of it was that a family who followed his Esteemed Rabbi, May He Be Forever Blessed, had been cursed, and the rebbe had determined that only a shiksa witch could break the curse.

Well, I don’t really believe in curses per se, unless the cursed believes in them, and apparently this family did. They were suffering and suffering a lot, and they needed me. And Steven wanted the honor of supplying this very real need of his rabbi’s.

“What’ll you charge?” he asked.

“Charge?”

“Yeah, what’ll it cost? The Rabbi is paying for it.”

To this day I cannot tell you what made me ask this, but I said, “I want to ask the rabbi one question. In person.”

Well, you’d have thought I’d suggested a lap dance. Steven went all kinds of ballistic which made me howl with laughter. When he finally calmed down, I said. “So, do we have a deal?”

“I have to ask the rebbe,” he said curtly, and he hung up. My phone rang less than a minute later. “He’ll do it.” We sorted out the details, and I got on the train to go to deepest, darkest Brooklyn armed only with my pewter wand and my thinking.

When I arrived, more than an hour later, I walked into a family made of misery. Their faith, misapplied to what they feared, had left them rent limb from limb. Health issues. Wealth issues. Marriage issues. Parenting issues. It took them more than an hour to catalogue all their woes.

When they finished, I said, “Is that all?” In my best flippant. They gaped at me. “Sit where you are,” I said. “I’ll be back.”

I rummaged through the kitchen for a clear glass bowl, salt, and water, and I walked widdershins [counterclockwise] through the three-story house spritzing everything with salt water—an emotional cleanser. When I finished, I walked back through the house deosil [clockwise] and spoke a quiet “God’s richest blessings” over each wall in each room. Then I returned to the living room where I’d left them.

“Now, this spell will not hold unless and until you all,” emphasis on the all, because, of course, men in Orthodox households do not clean, “all clean and straighten this house from top to bottom.” It had been filthy. “Throw out what you do not use or wear. No just-in-case things. And it must be sparkling clean top to bottom within 24 hours!” I approached the door, “Or,” I turned back, “it will not work.”

Exit One Shiksa Witch with powerful acting abilities, along with her own thoughts that a curse is only a curse if you think it is.

Fast forward a week. They cleaned. The spell held. All was well. Steven rang my doorbell to take me to see his Esteemed Rabbi. I wore a fluttery, summery dress, hem above my knee, bare legs, sandals, and my trademark Cherries in the Snow lipstick. Steven looked down at me horrified.

“You can’t go see a rabbi like that!”

“I can’t?” I replied slipping past him. “Well, I am.”

So we breeze in. Or, I breeze in. Steven approaches with fear and trembling. “Esteemed Rebbe, may I introduce to you ...?” I didn’t let him finish. “Rabbi! Such a pleasure to meet you.” I took his hands in mine. Steven gasped as though someone was strangling him. The rebbe sparkled at me.

“You have a qvestion?” he asked in a thick Eastern European accent.

“I do.” I looked seriously at him. “What ... does manna mean?”

Twinkle doesn’t say it. His eyes were a galaxy. “Such a qvestion,” he mused. “No student has ever asked me that, and now, now it comes from a shiksa witch.” He smiled. “Such a good qvestion.”

I waited, watching him, in silence.

“Manna, my dear, manna means ... ‘What Is’.”

You know how there are times when truth is so clear that it sounds an ancient gong in the room where it’s spoken? It’s the sound of awe.

“Of course,” I laughed. “Of course. Rebbe, thank you!”

He held out his arms to me. And I, knowing full well that Orthodox rabbis never do this, stepped into them, hugged him, and kissed both bearded cheeks. I whispered, “Goodbye.” He did the same, and some sort of anointing passed between us. Steven showed me to the door, and I floated home.

Manna means what is. Not good. Not bad. What actually is. Whether you quantify it or not. Whether you like it or not. Whether you agree with it or not. When I told my friend the quantifier about the rabbinical visit, she heard the ancient gong of awe. At that moment, she stopped her judging and began to deal with what is.

This is where we are right now, Beloved. We must deal with what is.

The phrase that goes with manna reads “manna from heaven.” It means an unexpected benefit or assistance, especially when it comes at the time when it is needed most. It’s a reference to the Biblical story of the food that God miraculously provided to the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness.

I am beginning to see glimpses of the unexpected benefits of what is even now, Beloved. Are you? If not, drop your measuring, and look at what is. Perhaps you will discover the heavenly blessing in what is if you’ll look with an open heart and an open mind for as long as it takes to get to happily ever after.

Dr. Susan Corso is a metaphysician and medical intuitive with a private counseling practice for more than 35 years. She has written too many books to list here. Her website is www.susancorso.com

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