Kitchen Sink

You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also.  Matthew 23:26  NASB

Inside – This morning I wanted to write something profound in novel form.  As I walked down the hall to my office, it suddenly struck me that there were dishes in the kitchen sink.  Something compelled me to leave the nobler task of writing and proceed immediately to the kitchen to clean the dishes.  Why?  Could they not have waited, patiently soiled, until I put a period after some heavenly ink dried?  Would they have cried from neglect if I forsook their sense of purity?  No, the reason I went to dish soap instead of computer keys is much more revealing.  I procrastinated.  The dirty dishes were but an excuse not to confront myself on this page.  As much as I like to explore the ideas of the biblical text, those ideas confront me and often condemn me.  I want to write—and I want to avoid writing.  Clean dishes are substitutes for washing my soul.  If Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik is right, then my walk with God should be cobblestones not asphalt.  It should be bumpy, filled with cracks, jarring—and very old.  Foot-worn from all previous pilgrims.  Smooth between the holes.  Meandering.  Not the high-speed, flat and comfortable roadway I used to travel.  Not filled with interesting, distracting detours.  Isaiah tells us to make a highway for our God, but I don’t think he meant the Florida Turnpike.

“The role of the man of faith, whose religious experience is fraught with inner conflicts and incongruities, who oscillates between ecstasy in God’s companionship and despair when he feels abandoned by God, and who is torn asunder by the heightened contrast between self-appreciation and abnegation, has been a difficult one since the times of Abraham and Moses.”^[1]

Dishes are a reasonable distraction.  Oh, they need to be done.  If you can’t have a pure soul, you need purified dishes.  Hmm, seems to me I remember the prophets excoriating the priests about sacrifices on the outside.  And Yeshua spoke about dishes too.  Remember “clean the cup on the inside”?  But look how nice and shiny these plates are now!

Now the dishes are done.  Dried, stacked, ready to be used again.  And I am forced to sit here, trying to say something useful.  The pressure is on—once again.  Will you approve?  Will you continue to read the drivel that comes from my inner conflicts, my sense of abandonment, and my longing for relief?  Heschel said, “All creative thinking comes out of an encounter with the unknown.”[2]  Do you suppose our sense of displacement, our discomfort within, is an encounter with the unknown?  Do you think our most creative moments are more likely when we are struggling, anxious, conflicted?  Imagine how much easier it is to stand in front of the kitchen sink.  No, I don’t think you have to imagine that at all.  Neither do I.  Standing in front of the kitchen sink isn’t imaginative.  It’s mindless relief.  Oh, sorry, it’s temporarymindless relief.

Topical Index:  Joseph Soloveitchik, kitchen sink, inside, entos, Matthew 23:26

[1] Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith (Three Leaves Press, Doubleday, 1965), p. 2.

[2] Abraham Heschel  Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 64.