Duty

 What's taking the Messiah so long? 

While duty has not fashionable since the rise of individualism in the '60s, it is hugely important.

In his book The Wounded Healer, Henri Nouwen recounts a story that was told in the Talmud. Rabbi Yoshua ben Levi asks Elijah the prophet when the Messiah will come. Elijah tells the Rabbi to go himself and ask the Messiah, who is sitting outside the gates of the Rome, with the other poor folk. When Rabbi ben Levi asks how he will know the Messiah in the crowd at the gates, Elijah replies, "He is sitting among the poor covered with wounds. The others unbind all their wounds at the same time and then bind them up again. But he unbinds one at a time and binds it up again, saying to himself, 'Perhaps I shall be needed: if so I must always be ready so as not to delay for a moment.' " It follows from this that we (following the Messiah) at the very least have a duty to take good care of ourselves ( i.e unbind, clean, and re-dress our own wounds, one by one) so we are always ready to help one another and the world at large if needed. 

And in this time of widespread loneliness, community breakdown, inequality, powerlessness, injustice and environmental destruction our duty is to work together to find political social economic and ecological solutions to these problems.