HaShem

This passage was shared with me by my friend Sheryl L. around the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur holidays. She received it as a greeting from a cousin.

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1) HaShem' - (neither masculine nor feminine and absolutely no plural;) the word means, literally, 'The Name,' and it is the way that the Jewish people refer to God when not in a Prayer or Torah Reading or Torah citation context.

2) HaShem determines who walks into your life … It is up to you to decide who your let walk away, who you let stay, and who you refuse to let go.

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What I like about the first passage is that HaSHem, GOD (If there is a god,) is neither masculine nor feminine which means that s/he is both masculine and feminine at the same time without needing to discriminate the difference. Ah that our society/culture could be so accepting.

One of my beliefs, not totally original, is that each of us is part male and part female, perhaps with different orders of importance, degrees of strength, levels of experience, types of daily practice, and/or abilities in admitting such.

I believe that to be a "whole person" one must acknowledge both parts of the self, male and female. How one understands those parts and how those parts contribute to one's world view determines how one interacts with others and how one accepts oneself.

Culture plays a large role in determining what is "boy-like" and what is "girl-like," what is acceptable and what is not. To be part of a culture is to embrace those culturally defined differences … but also, I believe, it is necesssary to make some personal decisions on how to adjust the cultural beliefs to fit one's own life. This idea is what the second part of the passage means to me which I rewrite to read: HaShem determines what walks into your life … It is up to you to decide what you let walk away, what you let stay, and what you refuse to let go.