I also learned, from our text book by Michael E. Kerr MD and Murray Bowen MD (Family Evaluation, W.W.Norton, New York and London, 1988) about the binding of anxiety.
Overachievement and underachievement are binders of anxiety.
Overeating and over reading are binders of anxiety.
Over reading is a Faustian form of substance abuse as I learned from my master and mentor Rabbi Edwin R. Friedman. His fables are a type of bible for pastoral counseling. More on my mentor in a moment…
Perfectionism, paranoia, pessimism and passivity are also binders of anxiety.
Isaac, the time comes when you must strong arm your old man and cut the binds. How else will you get the last laugh? Religion unfettered from itself.
Realigion.
Finally!
Temperance can bind as much as indulgence.
A moralist can bind, as Abraham binds Isaac.
Idealization and romanticization bind.
Too many potatoes and white flour products bind.
Being overly literal binds. A friend who actually rewrote the Bible also put the A in Anxiety. He is the most sincere messianic pretender since Shabbati Zvi.
Sincerity can bind.
These are the anxieties of Rabbi Laurence Maurice Aryeh Moshe Isaac Alpern:
If I am Elijah who and what am I announcing?
Is the personal messiah still a viable message?
Does he or she speak English?
Will the Final Age Testament bring us any closer to a better world than its predecessors?
Should we burn all books with “Testament” in the title?
Who will read my scriptural novels?
Where are my scribal editors?
Who is going to pay for all of this?
Will we ever catch up to Frey, and his possible plagiarism, in readership, on our Final Age Testament website?
Will lightning twice in Germany or is America a more likely location for the final final solution?
Will the Germans ever repudiate the blood doctrine of citizenship? Is the German holocaust still happening until they do?
How will the Am Ha Aretz learn to live and teach One Earth?
Is this memoir finished?
I have not spoken about my twenty five years in prison and what I learned.
Will I have to write a separate book, Twenty Five to Life, about my experiences as a prison Rabbi? The screenplay about my first year in prison Days of Awe will never be a movie, but I still must tell that story. The State of New York censors books like this so I will wait until post retirement. How much of that story should I tell here?
