By Netanel Miles-Yépez
One day, several years ago, Israeli scientist and Jewish spiritual teacher, Michael Kagan, sat down to pray, carefully laying his tefillin, just as he had done on so many other days. But as he was about to take up his prayer book on this particular day, he suddenly heard the words—“Are you ready?” Ready for what? he thought. “Ready to write,” came the response. Somewhat bewildered by this ‘other voice,’ he argued that it wasn’t appropriate to write while wearing tefillin. But the voice insisted, “Write!” What could he do? He found a notebook and began to write the words that immediately poured through him from a voice protesting our abuse of God’s creation, of the planet and our fellow human beings. It carried a reproving message for the three children of Abraham—Jews, Christians and Muslims—and called upon these siblings of the same Divine Parent to stop their fighting and come together to fulfill their purpose on Earth, to complete God’s “perfectly imperfect” creation as true partners in God’s plan! Whose voice was it really? Who can say? Kagan himself does not claim to know. But what is clear is this—its message is uncomfortably compelling, utterly necessary today, and as difficult to ignore as it is to hear. This is not a book to be reviewed, but a message and a challenge to be shared and contemplated:
Children of Adamah, know this:
If you disappear off the face of the planet,
no one will grieve for you.
The birds will sing free,
the forests will grow back;
The seas will be renewed,
the fish will repopulate the seas.
Those creatures that
you have enslaved will suffer,
but that is the way of the enslaved.
No one, no thing, will grieve your passing.
Do you hear that, O false kings and queens?
But I will cry.
You are My partners.
I love you.
If you fail, I fail.
But the world will live on.