As I considered this month’s topic of “Noble Ideals, Tarnished,” my first association went to the B-52’s song Love Shack, where at the end Cindy Wilson wails, “Tin roof, rusted!” This apparently became a slang term for “I’m pregnant.” Who knows why? But it sounds like a declaration – “noble ideals, tarnished!”
So fatigue, lack of fulfillment, moral equivocation, and scandal can tarnish an ideal? They can tarnish what the ideal means to me, or how highly I hold it in regard, but the ideal itself still shines forth. Musar teaches us that we should try to cultivate deep character traits through behavior. According to Moses Chayim Luzzato, author of Mesilat Yesharim (Path of the Just), those traits are a path beginning with awareness, proceeding through urgency, blamelessness, abstinence, purity, piety, humility and holiness. The tarnish is our lack of focus getting in. Nachman of Bratslav had a doctrine of striving for happiness to chase away melancholy.
Last month, my beloved Seattle Seahawks won the Superbowl for the first time. I was there, and it was awesome. I still have moments of disbelief that the world is still spinning. But the next day the clock kept on ticking, the problems and issues were still there. The life-long dream fulfilled, a long life (hopefully) still stretches before me. Even the team began a quest to do it again: the moment of exultation was in the past.
Tarnish is inevitable. Our world is imperfect, but we can’t just leave the tin roof rusted and walk away from the Love Shack, now can we? Even tarnish adds a glimmer of a greater shining forth.
This song is called “Chizku V’Imtzu” – Be courageous and of good heart. It is a pluralization of God’s injunction to Joshua after the death of Moses. More than a ‘buck up’, it urges us to take all of the difficulty we are faced with and to channel it toward something positive.
V1: White snow scabs over with oily crust
My knuckles ragged and jagged and torn up
What was supposed to happen? What were we hoping for?
All that struggle and then we are shown the door.
My cup overfloweth yet I am not fulfilled
The future’s not living up to what was billed
Crumbling, bumbling, stumbling through this mess
Moshiach took the local and we’re all on the express
C: And yet hope shines through, Chizku V’Imtzu
V2: The morning screams disappointment on front pages
Another day of chasing after wages
the light at the end of the tunnel’s just a mirror
The picture isn’t getting any clearer
The world is not Return of the Jedi
If Immanuel Kant then neither can I
It’s everything I can do to roll off this cot,
When all else fails, use what you’ve got.
C: And yet hope shines through, Chizku V’Imtzu
Bridge: Take heart and strengthen yourself
You’re not the only one, you’re not the only one
Take hold of something even if it fails
You got to hold on, you go to push on through…. Chizku V’Imtzu
Chords:
Cadd9
Em7
chorus, bridge: Am7, fF, G
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