Do
you have any room in your head for the idea that some things are just
"supposed to" happen? Can you imagine that some things just are "meant"
to be? Can you posit that some things might happen for a reason? I'm
not talking about asking you to believe that everything is controlled
by God's will, by fate, or that your unconscious drives your actions. I'm asking if you have ever had the sense that some things are, as is said in Yiddish, b'shert - just meant to be. Like when soul-mates (or children and parents) find each other. My father had the Everett Dirksen
phrase There is no force as powerful as an idea whose time has come
printed on his business cards. That their time has come - that's what
I'm talking about...that some things happen when they are supposed
to...because their time has come. I think this happens - in some way - from time to time. When I describe the entire story of my childhood - growing up in Manhattan in the 1970s and 1980s, going to Tufts University
for my undergraduate degree in Museum Architecture - it's always hard
to logically explain how I wound up in rabbinical school, becoming
ordained as a rabbi, and then starting this internet-based congregation. It's easier and, to be honest, makes a bit more sense to tell you that it was just meant to be. As
other examples, Ron, the proprietor of a stained-glass supply shop I
frequent told me he didn't grow up hoping one day to own a
stained-glass supply shop - it just happened. And my friend Joe went to
medical school only to wind up a consultant to Hollywood medical dramas
- he once said that he was "led by the mysterious hand of chance." How about you? Do
you believe that your life has all been planned or can you accept that
some things happened to you because, well, they were supposed to? I think that it's good for all of us to relax the notion that we are the complete masters of our own destiny. Certainly
we have a say, we have a vote, we control some of what happens to us,
but it's also good for us to take some time off from believing that we
are so powerful.It affords us a chance to look out the window and marvel. This week's spiritual-religious advice: take a bit of the pressure off yourself. Life will unfold. | 
