I know a man. I met him about a year ago.
He works with money. Business.
When I first met him, at his Shabbat table, all he seemed to talk about was the market this, money that, real estate this. Very materialistic.
But it was always in relation to G‑d. Every word about money was met with a word about G‑d; every comment about business was infused with a sort of G‑dly light. I’ve never heard anything like it, really.
Usually, we hear that money, that prosperity, it’s nothing. Gornisht. And if someone is concerned with it, he is shallow.
But this guy, money to him had somehow become this beautiful thing, a means of expressing G‑dliness.
I had never experienced something like that. But that night, as I sat there listening to Torah thought after Torah thought comparing the stock market to G‑d, expressing how people react to the economic times as a metaphor for faith, I began to understand something.
This man, he is a poet. An artist. And that’s not some fancy talk. That’s the honest literal truth. If you knew him, you'd agree.
It’s not that he writes sonnets, or that he would be published in the Atlantic. It’s that when he speaks, he turns the words he speaks into Truth.
Most of us, we think we need to speak about gorgeous sunsets, flowing hills, nightingales, to create beauty.
But the truth is that a poet is just a person who sees beauty in everything he looks at. A person who can see the greatest and truest poetry of all, G‑d’s voice, all around him.
Another word for poet is chassid. A chassid throws away the peal of surface reality, and bites into the fruit within.
What I really learned from this man is that we all have the ability to be poets. To be chassidim.
That no matter what we are involved with, whether it be money, waste management or writing, we have the ability to rip the world open and let G‑d’s song play.
