New York — “The light’s gone from his eyes.” It was 2000, and Connecticut Democratic senator Joseph Lieberman was in full campaign mode as Al Gore’s vice-presidential nominee, about to debate Dick Cheney. Lieberman’s son, Matt, was concerned that his father was not sleeping, and maybe not praying, as he normally would. Lieberman’s wife, Hadassah, used the observation as a wake-up call to her husband. Matt had said, “His brain is all there, but his soul isn’t coming through.” “She repeated that to me,” says Lieberman. “It jolted me from my fatigue, and I think, reconnected me to my soul.” (He recounted this in his 2011 book, The Gift of Rest.)
Lieberman died on March 27, and I find myself thinking about him late at night on Holy Thursday in the most beautiful church here (Gothic-style, St. Vincent Ferrer, filled with Dominican friars at prayer). Rain and cold are not preventing pilgrims from stopping by to keep watch in commemoration of the night before Jesus Christ was crucified. Lieberman opened his book with a somewhat ridiculous story about shoes drenched by rain on a Friday night after a late budget-vote night at the Capitol. Capitol police had offered him a ride — which he couldn’t take because it was after sundown, and he was an Orthodox Jew. A small thing, perhaps. But the small things tend to direct the bigger things. Which is why he wrote a book about the joy of keeping the Sabbath — hoping to inspire people of any, and maybe even no, religious faith to pause on a regular basis.
Comments