Rainey Blogs on Some Days

I had always wondered why God so harshly judged David after he took the census of Israel to count the fighting men. I think I understand it better now after I started counting things too—like chin-ups. A few years ago, I moved to a new job in my company, so I tried out a new gym down the street. It was a little pricey, though, even though you did get mouthwash in the locker room. So during my lunch hours, I tried going back to a Bally’s gym where I was already a member, but it was a little too far away and you can only take so many two-hour lunches before someone notices. So I started driving to a local park and doing what I had done with some guys in my department when we worked together before my move—lunchtime chin-ups at a playground. During that time, one co-worker taught me “steps” with chin-ups. Start with one chin up, and then stop. Then do two. Then three, four, five and so on until you cannot complete the number. Then you do “steps” back down from that number until you retu...

This was a written and read at a men’s meeting at our church in April 2008 on the topic of “Our Need for Friendships and How Governor Eliot Spitzer Fell.” If a Jew has not seen a friend in over 30 days, tradition calls on that person to greet that friend with this blessing: "Praised are you Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe, who brings the dead back to life." The blessing is a response to the rabbis' belief that when we lose touch with a friend, we lose a little bit of ourselves too. The author went on to explain: "To renew contact is to reawaken the part of us that no one but our friend animates. For each friend enlivens a specific constellation of our spiritual lives, impulses, our desires, our strengths, our hopes, and our memories." As I thought about this, I felt the rabbis were on to something important. What they seem to suggest is that the richness of a person's life is determined by the friendships they have. The blessing affirms this b...