“Every night I lie down in bed, look up, and yell silently at God: Why did you do this to me? What kind of terrible life have I lived that this is what you do? Why do you hate me so much?”

I already wrote about a very dear friend who “spends time with Uncle Al,” as she calls it. Alzheimer’s. And she has been talking to me about her disputation with God whenever we talk by phone. Sometimes she asks me: “Eve, did I really live such a terrible life that I deserve this?” I tell her no, I don’t think deserving has anything to do with it.

It’s almost funny because it’s too Jewish, alternating accusations and guilt, yelling and weeping. The Biblical words that come to my mind are gnashing her teeth. How could this happen to me? What have I done? A modern version of Job suffering and arguing with God again and again.

She had a hard life, and when she turned 70, I took her out to a terrific long lunch at one of the Valley’s finest restaurants. We raised a glass of champagne and she said to me: “Eve, some people hate turning 70, it feels like the end of the road to them. Me, I can hardly wait for this new decade. My 70s are going to be my best years, the very best. I can feel it!”

That was six years ago, just before Bernie died. And very soon afterwards she began to show signs of mental decline. She wouldn’t go to doctors because she dreaded the diagnosis, covid came and went, and once she finally went, her worst suspicions were confirmed.

What would you say to her?

Some of our biggest questions are: Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do good things happen to bad people? Deserving has nothing to do it. Recently, I bought a new television set. My old one died some 6 months ago after operating beautifully for 20 years. I wasn’t sure about spending money to get another one, but people encouraged me, saying: You deserve it. They meant well, of course, perhaps encouraging me to relax more, but the word deserve means almost nothing to me because it’s got little to do with my sense of reality.

Speaking of television, I’ve been watching a superb series made by Turkish TV on the life of Yunus Emre, the 13^th century Sufi poet (you can find it on YouTube). I found it inspirational, especially the character of the Sufi Sheikh who trains Yunus.

At some point Yunus, who’s very learned and was educated to be a qadi, a judge, giving all that up to become a Sufi dervish, studying with a sheikh who himself is illiterate, cuts wood every day in all weather to bring to the Sufi lodge for heating. It’s backbreaking work, and he does it daily for years. As he does this, and as instructed by the Sheikh, each time he wields the axe he utters “Haq!”

Haq is one of the names of Allah, or God. It also refers to Ultimate Reality. Sometimes we say: This is it. I think of it as Buddha. This is your zikr. Not just when you’re back in the Sufi lodge and praying, not later when gorgeous couplets will come up spontaneously to your lips and you will speak them and become famous. This is your worship, your prayer, your transcendence.

Even as the days pass and he gets tired, even when at times he remembers the old days when he was a deeply respected and feared judge and wonders what he’s doing now, what’s happened to his life, he always remembers to say: Haq!

Sometimes, when I look around me at this crazy world, I ask myself: How do I show up? Who do I show up for?

Some answers are clear. I show up for my housemate Lori, who needs care and support, much as I once showed up for my husband, Bernie. I show up for dogs that need food and walks. I show up for students, family and friends. This evening, the Stone Soup Café, the community meal program that Zen Peacemakers started some 15 years ago, will host a benefit honoring their terrific director, Kirsten Levitt, who made the Cafe a Greenfield mainstay and who will be celebrating her 60^th birthday. I will show up for that.

But mostly, I just try to show up, period. And when I do, silently exclaim to myself, as I type these words, make minestrone, empty the dehumidifier and fold laundry, “Haq!” Buddha. There is nothing else.

My life has been very fortunate, and therefore easy to show up for. I’ve suffered disappointments and losses like everyone else, but nothing like what others have suffered. You might say: We’ll see you if Uncle Al comes around, or cancer, or a terrible accident like the one incurred by Lori, who currently can only hop on one leg. We’ll see how you show up then.

Life doesn’t seem to have much rhyme or reason to it, and that scares many of us. If leading even a saintly life doesn’t necessarily lead to a good outcome, if we have so little control, then life can seem frightening. Some fall into apathy, many into smirking cynicism, and others become even greater control freaks than ever. Some, like my friend, yell silently at God at night: Why me? What have I done? That lone, scared, beseeching voice is the most human voice of all.

Me, I have faith. In what? In Haq! God doesn’t play dice with the universe, Einstein said in the face of other quantum physicists who seemed to claim otherwise. We’re one ocean with a vast, discombobulated world beneath the surface, volcanos, earthquakes, tectonic plates shifting, anchovies eating plankton which eats bacteria, all consumed by great tunas or sharks. Broken hulls of slave ships that sank with their human cargo chained one to another, lying near the wrecked bow and stern of the Titanic that sank with its passengers in evening gowns and black tailcoats.

We’re all equal there. What could we possibly deserve, inhabiting—no, being—that vast ocean.

There is only one logic I can fathom in that ocean: It promotes life, it cultivates more and more diverse life forms even as others get eaten and entire species disappear. I don’t agree with those scientists that human beings are destroying diversity of life. Diverse species—and a high number of them—yes, but I have complete faith that we, frail and arrogant homo sapiens that we are, cannot limit life’s potency or even slow down its luxurious fecundity. It goes on, with and without our help.

Sometimes we call that love.